​​​​Nicole Ferreira

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Nicole Ferreira grew up firmly planted within the fantastically, hum-drum bosom of the farming town of Tiverton, Rhode Island. Although the day-to day was inordinately boring, the town was a bustle with compassion and altruism of which Nicole was often the recipient. Growing up, she was a living manifestation of what it means to be raised by a village. Due to the kindness she experienced in her childhood, Nicole is imbued with an insatiable desire to do for others what has been done for her. Her career has been an attempt to balance professional interest and advancement with a deep need to pay it forward.

 

Since 2008, Nicole has excelled in employment at non-profit settings such as Child and Family Services, East Bay Community Action Program, and Newport County Community Mental Health Center. Experience has ranged from managing 13 staff members at a group home for 6 girls ages 13-18, to vocational case management of 330 youth under the Workforce Investment Act. Nicole gained clinical experience toward licensure as a Mental Health Counselor conducting individual, family, and milieu therapy with children ages 0-18. During this time, she has earned training certificates in Motivational Interviewing, Crisis Intervention, Disability Services, Vocational Counseling, as well as Youth Management and Cultural Awareness.  Additionally, she has co-facilitated trainings at the Massachusetts Department of Health, teaching motivational interviewing techniques.

 

Nicole has strengthened her Human Services experience with 3 years’ employment at Salve Regina University. Currently the Admissions Advisor for Graduate, Professional and Continuing Education programs, Nicole's various capacities range from database implementation and management (Mediabin, Ellucian Recruiter, Ellucian Colleague), to student support in achieving academic goals.

 

From Salve Regina University Nicole has also earned several degrees including a Bachelor’s degree in Administration of Justice and Spanish, Master’s degrees in International Relations and Homeland Security, Rehabilitation Counseling, as well as a Certificate of Advanced Graduate Studies in Mental Health. Nicole received several merit based scholarships and grants to support her academic endeavors which include the Department of Education Rehabilitation Services Scholarship, Bazarsky Scholarship, and Dean’s Scholarship.  During her time at Salve, she also held internships with Rhode Island Emergency Management Agency, Rhode Island State Police, and the Wyatt Detention Center, in which she collected and presented data to the 13 State districts. Most notably, for REIMA, and RI State Police, in compliance with National Incident Management Systems, Nicole supported the process of cataloguing the state’s emergency resources through the implementation of database system, AidMatrix, that would be used in crises like Hurricane Katrina. During her time at the Wyatt Detention Center, Nicole supported its accreditation process by collecting and, in some instances, translating Spanish to English survey data for the 700 inmates about the conditions at the prison. These conditions included: comfort, hygiene, food quality, safety from other inmates and guards, health care, and, for Spanish speaking inmates, language accommodations.

 

In her spare time, Nicole enjoys writing both creatively and professionally. For the past year, Nicole has worked as a freelance writer for Lopez Mora Group LLC. While employed at Lopez Mora LLC, she has engineered a variety of research tools, white papers, and marketing assets for companies such as: Leo Burnette, General Electric, and the University of Maiz (Germany).  

 

Though Nicole’s background is diverse, there is a common, humanistic thread that ties her experiences together. That thread is the deep desire to understand and respond to human behavior in an efficacious way. Through both counseling and professional experiences, she has honed skills in communication, empathy, analysis, investigation, human psychology, creativity, and life long learning.