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Ricardo Williams is currently the host of Nerd Nite Orlando and works as a designer, filmmaker, and musician. He also writes about culture, history, and US politics.

From an early age, Ricardo was fortunate to have great teachers, mentors, and coaches who guided him to excel in a variety of disciplines.

In high school, Ricardo studied television production and worked on the only daily live television program at a high school in Seminole County. During his senior year, after his instructor revealed that she was diagnosed with cancer, Ricardo stepped into a newly created role of student manager. This position, which had only ever been done previously by a faculty member, included the task of producing the school’s daily live morning show.

During this time, Ricardo was also a representative in student government and captain of the track & field team.

While still in high school, Ricardo took on a summer internship at Bad Boy Entertainment. At their midtown Manhattan office, he worked under manager Phil Robinson and learned the inner workings of the department. Afterwards, Ricardo attended Pace University in New York City. During his time there, Ricardo worked in student government and was a member of the Programming and Campus Entertainment Board.

Since studying communications at Pace, Ricardo has worked on grassroots campaigns, startups, and non-profits in roles that all required many tasks with very little resources. During this time, Ricardo also guest lectured on film theory and video production at New York's School of Visual Arts.

Playing piano and guitar, Ricardo is a musician and has composed music for all the short films he has produced as well as for video and commercial advertisements.

Since 2008, Ricardo has also worked as an actor and appeared in various TV commercial spots, airing primarily in the southeast region.

Since 2013, Ricardo has organized and hosted Nerd Nite. With recurring events in Orlando, Nerd Nite is an evening of entertaining and educational presentations where every month guest speakers are invited to give presentations where they “nerd out” about a topic.

Outside of Nerd Nite Orlando, Ricardo has also organized and participated in special events for Comic-Con International, SXSW, and National Geographic’s Future is Here Festival, among others.

Ricardo has also hosted televised programming, including a special Nerd Nite series on PBS for WUCF-TV.