Chief Change Officer
#398 Nellie Wartoft: Global Fix—Change Management Without the Migraine — Part One
Thu, 29 May 2025
Nellie Wartoft is the founder and CEO of Tiger Hall, a change enablement platform built for teams tired of stale workshops and change theater. In Part One, she takes us from her tiny hometown in Sweden to the boardrooms of Asia, where flipping burgers at McDonald’s, carrying an ice hockey trunk to Singapore, and watching companies struggle with real transformation all shaped her mission. This is change management with edge—equal parts adventure, insight, and rebellion.Key Highlights of Our InterviewSweden, Cows, and a One-Way Ticket“On my 18th birthday, I booked a one-way flight to Singapore, packed my life into an ice hockey trunk, and left my small Swedish village—where the cows outnumbered the people. That was the real beginning of everything.”From Fries to Founder: Discovering Her Professional DNA“I call McDonald’s my most transformative experience. That’s where I learned what I now call my three professional addictions: high pace, commercial thrill, and leadership. Everything I’ve done since started there.”The Real Meaning of Resilience“Workshops don’t build resilience. Hard times do. Either you win, or you build character. That’s the trade-off. And the only way through it is through it.”Don’t Build Your Identity on a Job Title“If your sense of self is built on a title, what happens when that’s gone? I don’t define myself by being a CEO. I define myself as someone who works hard, learns fast, and has good intentions. That can’t be taken away.”Why She Launched Tiger Hall (Spoiler: It Involves SharePoint Rage)“Too many companies still think change means mass emails, intranet black holes, and jargon-filled PDFs. I wanted to build a platform that makes transformation actually work—for real humans, not just consultants.”_________________________Connect with us:Host: Vince Chan | Guest: Nellie Wartoft --Chief Change Officer--Change Ambitiously. Outgrow Yourself.Open a World of Expansive Human Intelligencefor Transformation Gurus, Black Sheep,Unsung Visionaries & Bold Hearts.EdTech Leadership Awards 2025 Finalist.18 Million+ All-Time Downloads.80+ Countries Reached Daily.Global Top 1.5% Podcast.Top 10 US Business.Top 1 US Careers.>>>170,000+ are outgrowing. Act Today.<<<
Chapter 1: What is the background of Nellie Wartoft?
Chapter 2: How did Nellie’s journey begin in Sweden?
Absolutely. Yes, I grew up in Sweden in a small village in southern Sweden. I usually say more cows than people. It's hard to describe that small town. And I wanted to get out as quickly as I could for professional reasons and cultural reasons. and decided to move to Asia.
On my 18th birthday, I went to singapore.com, booked a one-way flight, packed everything I had in an ice hockey trunk and moved across. And I've been very obsessed with Asia since a very young age. I started studying English when I was around 11, 12 years old. I thought the education system was way too slow in how it taught English. It was like, Thomas is one pear, Mark is one apple.
And I was like, I want to work in this language. I need to pick it up quicker. So I started reading more international media and that's when I discovered there's a whole continent out there called Asia and there is China and India and Japan and I was just like so fascinated.
So I did every single school project on Asia and Singapore and Hong Kong where you are and just was super, super fascinated by this part of the world. So I decided when I was about 14, 15 that I want to live in the capital of Asia and that's when I decided it's probably Singapore.
and that's why i moved to singapore when i was 18. so landed in singapore before that back in sweden started working very early i was started mcdonald's when i was 14 before that i was supporting stroke patients with their physical exercise i've been working since around age 12 and continued that throughout my time in sweden and in singapore and then spent a bit of time in london south korea
was in headhunting for a good part of my corporate career. And thereafter started a couple of companies and which ended up being Tiger Hall, which is the business that I'm running now. And that is what ultimately took me to LA. So that's a very quick, brief overview and happy to dive into any of those details that you might find more interesting. Would you call yourself adventurous?
I think a risk taker, like risk addicted or excitement addicted. Yeah, I need to have constantly new things happening. I'm not very good with standard, just daily routines. That's not the kind of person I am. I need adventure and I need risk taking. I think that's a big part of my personality.
Two weeks ago, I interviewed a guest who described himself as a change addict. That phrase stuck with me. When you mentioned being a risk taker and not following a standard playbook, choosing to carve your own path, it reminded me of that mindset. It also explains why you do what you do now, which we'll dive into shortly. You and I are not the type to settle in a comfort zone
When everything seems calm and everyone around us says, why change? Everything is just fine. For us, it's not about comfort. It's about growth, progress, and doing things differently, better. While others may not fully understand, we see opportunities where they don't. and we create our own paths forward. That's why I come up with the term called growth progressive.
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Chapter 3: What transformative experience did Nellie have at McDonald's?
No one is going to read that. You can upload that and it turns into a podcast. And it turns into a podcast in the local language of the person who's listening to it. So instead of having American HQ sending out those English PDF documents, suddenly you have a podcast in Cantonese or Bengali or French or any language that you want to listen to, right?
So it allows for breaking through the noise instead of having all of these PDFs and emails and mass communication that people don't really read. And then you can send that communication, engagement, capability building, training, all of it through very targeted audiences. So you can be very specific around who you target with what message.
It's a lot of audience segmentation, so people only get what they are supposed to receive. So there's not this one size fits none kind of approach where you send the same thing to everyone. And then it's integrated where they work. So you would get it directly in your workflow. You don't need to go to the intranet or LMS or all over the place.
You just have it where you already work, like in Microsoft Teams. And then you can give your feedback. And this is the most important part, that you have your voice heard as an employee and the change leader can then get feedback from the ground. So they can actually get feedback on how is this change received? What are people thinking? What is the input? What's going well? What's not going well?
Because it's really hard as a change leader to have that visibility across so many layers and geographies and the complexity that large organizations present, right? So this way you can get that two-way feedback loop from all over the organization. And then the last piece is you have data. So you have really good analytics and data on all of these things. So you see exactly what's happening.
Are people reacting to it? What do they think? What is their feedback? Who is consuming it? Who isn't consuming it? What is the sentiment analysis of all of these different groups? So as a change leader, you don't have to fly blind where it's like you send emails out and then 7% open it and you don't know where the rest went.
And instead of having that, you can have all of these analytics and data and insights. So it allows you to get much better with strategy. It can be much more agile and adjust your strategy as you're going through the transformation, which helps to increase the speed of execution and retaining top talent is a big one. And also ensuring that you catch those problems early.
So before the big problems become even bigger, you can actually catch them and address them early on. So that's what Tiger Hall helps change leaders with.
So you're running a tech platform, a software?
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