Ivan Nelson

Adjunct Professor

Email: nelsoni@montclair.edu

Photo of Ivan Nelson
Ivan Nelson is an award-winning video producer and entrepreneur, who was recently recruited to teach the first video production class at Montclair State University designed to help aspiring entrepreneurs produce compelling product launch and demo videos.

Ivan earned a bachelor’s at Hunter College with a double major in video production and honor’s curriculum and a minor in Russian. During his studies, Ivan interned at Lucasfilm Commercial Productions and New York Life, where he discovered the world of corporate video production and started his career.

Ivan has been thinking, breathing and working at the intersection of digital video and creative storytelling for years. He was an advocate of digital video years before the explosion of online video: As a young video editor more than twenty years ago, he quickly embraced the creative possibilities offered by digitized video in the emerging AVID Media Composer non-linear editing system and the After Effects compositing and animation application.

After a few years as a producer, and then a senior producer, Ivan took on the leadership role of the video and events production studio of Sanofi-Aventis, the largest pharmaceutical company in Europe at the time. In 2009, he took on a bigger role as Senior Director leading Digital Communications at the company’s Paris headquarters. While in this position, he championed and launched a YouTube channel focused on growing engagement with key audiences. The video content platform became the fastest growing corporate channel in the Pharmaceutical Industry and the third most popular only six months after its launch.

In 2012, Ivan decided to return to the US and to video production. He launched Motivideos, a production company dedicated to supporting the video marketing, communication and employee engagement needs of Fortune 500 companies. In addition to producing custom video content for its clients, Motivideos has endeavored to disrupt the corporate meeting industry by licensing inspirational videos via a subscription-based digital video platform.

Over the years, Ivan and his team have earned numerous Telly Awards in different categories. Ivan was also an active member of the Communications Media Managers Association and the New Jersey Chapter of the Media Communications Association-International for many years.

An avid soccer fan, Ivan can be seen coaching and cheering his children from the sidelines, and of course videotaping and photographing their games as well.