Licensed Professional Counselor Candidate
All PHC clinicians are highly trained and able to treat our clients that are experiencing anxiety, depression, life transitions and/or mood disorders. Please continue to explore our bios if you require a more specialized treatment plan.
Healing does not look the same for everyone. Nicole believes each person’s mind is like a unique fingerprint with its own thoughts, feelings, perceptions, memories, experiences, and motives and that therapy is a place where you can tell your story in order to feel seen and heard. Nicole specializes in working with adolescents and adults struggling with issues related to PTSD, women’s issues, parenting, maternal health, anxiety, depression and race-related trauma. Nicole has also received specific training in Latinx Mental Health and the creation and implementation of culturally adapted treatment and intervention approaches for all Black, Indigenous, and persons of color (BIPOC).
Nicole’s approach is strength-based, process-oriented, empathic, and motivational. She is passionate about helping people heal from past trauma and process distressing life events, while empowering the client to reclaim their agency now and write their next chapter. Clients value her willingness to question traditional theories and therapeutic practices when appropriate as well as her knowledge around how to adjust to the specific needs and best interests of her clients.
Prior to clinical work, Nicole has been a career dancer and arts educator both domestically and internationally for two decades and has developed and sustained numerous performing arts education programs that use dance as a vehicle to foster social-emotional learning and mental wellness for Chicago’s youth. Nicole believes in bringing the body to therapy to promote mind-body connection, and helps clients tap into trauma imprints that are held in their physiology. She is currently in the process of co-authoring a book chapter that will be published by the American Psychological Association that will focus on creative strategies, specifically dance and movement, to resist oppression and heal race-related trauma. Nicole holds a master’s in counseling psychology from The Chicago School of Professional Psychology, her teaching license in early childhood to adolescence from The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and a bachelors in dance from Columbia College Chicago. She is also a certified yoga teacher. Outside of the office Nicole spends her time with her husband, daughter, and rescue pup. She enjoys staying active, writing, improv comedy, hiking, and traveling.
