Bryn Athyn College Alumni Magazine Spring/Summer 2018 | Page 29

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ALUMNI
SPOTLIGHT
Dylan Hendricks presenting
an opening keynote for the
Ten-Year Forecast event
at the Scottish Rite Center
in Oakland, California.
A
As co-director of the Future
50 Partnership at the nonprofit
Institute for the Future (IFTF),
Dylan spends his days on the
cutting edge of research across
a wide variety of industries. His
creative team uses results from
the company’s various research
labs, headquartered in Silicon
Valley, California, which study
trends in everything from sci-
ence to the job industry, to
health and wellness, to trust
in leadership. With this data,
Dylan’s team creates
multi-day events, vid-
eo simulations, and
other tangible tools
to spark ideas about
future possibilities.
These events have proved im-
pactful, particularly to industry-
leading organizations involved
in strategic planning. Some of
these organizations include the
Office of the Director of Nation-
al Intelligence, the Rockefeller
Foundation, Hallmark, Verizon,
UPS, Microsoft, Honda, and the
American Heart Association. 
Despite a full schedule,
which includes digitally com-
muting every day from his home
in rural Texas to his office in
Palo Alto, California (through a
telepresence robot), and speak-
ing at events around the world,
Dylan feels grounded in his
sense of purpose. He attributes
much of this stability to his for-
mative years in Bryn Athyn and
studying at the College. Dylan
says, “My degree in psychol-
ogy and religion gave me such
a rigorous grounding in differ-
ent worldviews and different
ways of making meaning. A lot
of the work I do now is similarly
focused around this. People are
trying to make meaning out of
things that are changing, and
many feel a sense of loss, or fear
of the future. Personally, I feel a
bit insulated from this fear be-
cause of my time at the College.
I learned that we can navigate
life’s challenges while embrac-
ing the changes that allow for
more authentic living. I feel very
grateful for that.”
Coming to Bryn Athyn
Dylan first came to Bryn Athyn
as a teenager, a choice that great-
ly influenced his future path.
Born on an island off the coast
of Vancouver, Canada, Dylan
spent his early years mostly re-
moved from religion. He said,
“There aren’t a lot of churches
where I lived. I was hungry for
th e discipline and spiritual
teachings that I hadn’t really
been exposed to.”
Dylan’s ancestors, who had
converted from Mennonite to
Swedenbzorgian in the early
1900s, had set up a fund to
send future generations of Hen-
dricks children to study in Bryn
Athyn. So, at age 16, “almost on
a whim, and just for the sake of
adventure,” Dylan left Canada
and moved into the ANC dorm
to begin his junior year of high
school. It was by far the farthest
he’d been from home, and yet
he settled right in. He said, “The
relationships I formed with stu-
dents and faculty were strong.
It felt like people cared. It felt
like an intentional community
in a way I hadn’t experienced. It
was hard to leave because I really
quickly felt like a part of what
was going on.”
Finding His Calling
After graduation, Dylan took
a gap year to work on oil rigs
in northern Canada, using the
cash to buy digital video equip-
ment—a technology that had
just begun to hit the market. He
and his high school friend, Luke
Howard (AA ’06), shot and edit-
ed their first film that year, dem-
onstrating a skillset in a newly
emerging field. As Dylan said,
“This kick-started my career.”
After the year off, Dylan
enrolled at the University of Vic-
toria, in Canada. But the school
felt “huge, anonymous, and in-
stitutional.” Dylan said, “I felt
like I wasn’t done with Bryn
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