Nicholas MacDonald

B.A., Ashford University

M.B.A., Ashford University

 

Nicholas MacDonald is a Lecturer of Small Business Management at the University of Maine at Machias. Nicholas holds his Financial Paraplanner Qualified Professional Certification from the College of Financial Planning, Bachelor of Arts in Organizational Management from the Forbes School of Business at Ashford University, and Master of Business Administration in Finance and Information Systems from the Forbes School of Business & Technology at Ashford University.

Nicholas transferred from a career in contact center leadership for Machias Savings Bank. Through coaching agents, he fostered a culture that includes a positive attitude, sense of urgency, family-first philosophy, community involvement, effective leadership, employee engagement & teamwork, and relationship building. On top of this culture, the customer service team at Machias Savings is built on employee empowerment and growth. Each employee is empowered to create creative solutions to a customer’s situation. This empowerment allows the agents at Machias Savings to develop a truly exceptional experience. An experience may be as simple as building a conversation around recent activity on someone’s account or as in-depth as sending the customer a gift from their favorite store. The drive for growth at Machias Savings Bank’s contact center doesn’t stop at the employee’s current job description. If an agent wishes to learn about mortgage lending, small business banking, or financial planning, the door is open for them to explore. Nicholas is a creator at heart which lends well to continuous R&D to increase efficiencies and improve the customer experience. He has an innate ability to see when a process is not employee or customer-focused. This ability led to numerous projects that brought significant efficiency gain and customer experience improvement, including implementing a unified contact center solution, Voice Authentication, and Workforce Management. One key process improvement strategy he maintains is that not all modifications need to be big; small incremental changes can add up quickly and significantly improve both the customer and agent experience. He is a national public speaker in Customer Experience and coaches leaders to grow their teams best and take the right tech strategy with his business, Unique Truth. He owns and operates a small goat dairy farm. He has a strong passion for horsemanship and spends his downtime training his young Quarter Horse.

In his transition to UMaine Machias, he will work with UMaine Machias leadership and the University of Maine Maine Business School to grow the Small Business and Entrepreneurship program at UMaine Machias. He teaches courses focused on small business management, entrepreneurship, personal finance, business finance, and human behavior in organizations.

Nicholas is Vice Chair of the Board of Directors of Downeast Community Partners, Treasurer of Whispering Pine Equine Alliance, Member of the Business Studies Advisory Committee at Washington County Community College, Planning Board Member of Jonesboro, ME, and Board Member of Washington County Extension Advisory Council. He has served as State Committee Member of the Maine Democratic Party, Community Captain for Ringelstein for U.S. Senate, and Digital Coordinator of Washington County Democratic Committee.