she/her – Confidential Advocate
Nicola Smith is a multicultural, bilingual Southern Californian native and has been providing support to survivors since 2016. She has her Undergraduate degree from UCLA, in Psychology and Education and her Master’s of Science from the University of Edinburgh in Sociology and Global Change. Nicola started her career in New York City and began working for Non-Profit Safe Horizon in which she was part of a pilot program placing advocates within every police precinct in New York City. There she provided crisis support and client-centered, case-management to survivors of Domestic Violence. Simultaneously she volunteered at the Crime Victim Treatment Center, in which she was on-call to support survivors of sexual and domestic violence at the hospital and advocate for them during that process. Nicola then moved on to obtain her master’s degree from the University of Edinburgh in Sociology and Global Change. Since then, Nicola has been a one-woman office of sexual violence prevention work at Paul Smith’s College. There she has provided education, planned events, partnerships, and supported survivors on campus, some of these efforts have even landed her in the local newspaper. Nicola is passionate about supporting survivors and creating alternate healing modality options. Thus, she provides art healing modalities and is involved in leading support groups at PTC. Nicola loves travel, painting, photography, nature, taking her cat on walks, and her faith.