Chi Bartram Wright | Director of Culture & Learning
Chi Bartram Wright is a breakthrough experience leader specializing in the human-centered design and delivery of innovative, immersive, and impactful developmental learning to help senior Fortune 500 executives build better organizational cultures.
As the Director of Culture & Learning at The Applause Institute, Chi is the driving force behind our innovative curriculum. Chi relishes the opportunity to stand in front of a room of a few dozen senior executives, with only five flip charts, three Sharpies, and his deep expertise mapping and inspiring strategic change.
Chi got his start leading transformational events on the day he graduated high school, when he joined the faculty of North America’s largest retreat center — Kripalu — as a program manager and movement catalyst. Since then, he has created powerful breakthrough experiences for thousands globally, including at Goldman Sachs, EY, Deloitte, Disney, Insurance Australia Group, Cisco Systems, Medtronic, AirBNB, Trace 3, State Street Global Advisors, The World Wildlife Fund, Shire, Boehringer Ingelheim, Randstad, Carbon Black, SwissRe, The Young Foundation, The Esalen Institute, as well as business schools ISMI in Paris and Haas at UC Berkeley, the New York City Public Schools, the public school system of the country of Laos, and San Quentin and Riker’s Island prisons.
Chi has coached and developed an executive vice president of the world’s leading medical supplier to successfully transition them from leading a team of 200 to a salesforce of 3K+ to contribute to company-wide annual revenues of nearly 30 billion. He has accelerated the leadership communication of all new direct reports to the CEO of a Fortune 100 internet technology solutions conglomerate on high-stakes presentations, powerful conversations, and negotiations. For a Big Four accounting firm, Chi custom-designed train-the-trainer new talent development for 100+ new senior partners. For one of the world’s largest multinational insurance organizations, through expert coaching he empowered the CEO and their 80 direct reports to reassess corporate culture, reconcile with racial inequity, collaborate more effectively, and cascade strategic change.
Most recently, Chi works with ExperiencePoint as a Certified Facilitator in Change Management and IDEO’s Design Thinking method. He has trained and coached senior teams and leaders at Walmart, Vestas, Cogeco, McMaster University, Huber, Streamline Health, Synopsys, Anheuser Busch, Mozilla, Baker Tilly, TD Bank, Cemex, and Roche/Genentech. Chi is a Certified Facilitator of ExperiencePoint’s Change Management Certification: ExperienceChange, and IDEO’s Design Thinking Certifications: Aware, Learn, Lead, and Impact.
Chi holds a Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Experiential Education from Lesley University and a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Classical Theatre from Columbia University. When not leading strategic conversations or catalyzing culture, you’ll find Chi swimming laps, practicing yoga, or slowly consuming rice pudding.
“Empowered would be the one word I could use to describe [the result of] my interaction with Chi during a recent leadership training. The structure of the course, having the skill set needed to deliver the course, and his ability to work with a group to provide a degree of individual attention created a great learning and networking environment.”
— Maurice Spencer, Unified Collaboration CSE, Cisco Systems