NiCole is a Professor of Clinical and Ecological-Community Psychology at Michigan State University (MSU). She completed her degrees at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, starting with my BS in Psychology with a minor in Women’s Studies and my Masters and Doctorate degrees in Clinical-Community Psychology with a minor in Educational/Counseling Psychology.

She has been a long-standing member of SPSSI and was inducted as a SPSSI fellow in 2014. Her career embodies SPSSI values with her research, mentoring, teaching, service and activism being focused on social justice, empowerment, and fostering diversity, equity, and inclusion. She researches the interplay of race, gender and victimization and how they impact the nature of harassment, its impact, and organizational best practices. She also studies faculty of color and ways in which their research is marginalized (i.e., epistemic exclusion). She uses findings from her work to develop trainings and workshops for academic departments to promote inclusive practices and empower individuals to respond assertively when problematic behaviors occur.  She has provided bias and diversity-related training and consultation (e.g., medical professionals, faculty, clinicians, human resource managers, and police departments) across the country and have offered empowerment workshops related to these topics at SPSSI conventions.

Her research and trainings have been highlighted in hundreds of media outlets, and she is a featured speaker for several national events, such as TEDx and National Public Radio (NPR).  She is a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, four divisions of the American Psychological Association (Society of Clinical Psychology, Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, Society for the Psychological Study of Ethnic Minority Issues, and Society for the Psychology of Women), and has received national and international awards for her research, teaching, and professional service.