Hi, I’m Nicole López-Conti.
Let’s get personal.
Throughout my professional career, I’ve identified as an empowerment leader, communications strategist, economic mobility leader, and Certified Integral Coach® using a communications, PR background and Master’s in Communications and Leadership for social good. I’ve served as an adjunct professor of Leadership for UC Berkeley's online extension, secured media placements in Bloomberg and the New York Times, helped craft major brands, and won IDEO’s Financial Empowerment Prize for developing a strategic credit improvement program. I’m proud to have led teams who've developed content, produced media, worked in partnership with leading non-profits, and specialized in crafting communications that led to measurable and lasting community impact.
But we are so much more than our LinkedIn highlights, aren’t we?
My lived experience & nonlinear journey are core to who I am today, and what I want you to know about me.
For starters, I grew up with 50+ foster siblings, which I now recognize as the internal compass that has drawn me to empowering others through the social sector.
I began working at the ripe age of 16 as a bank teller — where day laborers who only spoke Spanish looked to me for support when it came to accessing banking products, navigating tricky fees, and wiring money to support their families. Here I learned to truly serve others and held that role with reverence.
I met my husband as a teenager and we married in our early twenties. I heard about a local college from a radio program, and it took me eight years to graduate from a four-year program while I worked in banking full-time. Eventually, I would walk in my graduation ceremony to receive my Master’s in Communications and Leadership Studies from Gonzaga University — a three-week-old baby in tow.
I entered corporate America and the financial services industry head-on, while also volunteering with addicted and formerly incarcerated folks in my community and better understanding daily idiosyncrasies under capitalism.
I was recruited to help Bank of the West build out their new wealth management division’s communications vertical from the ground up. I landed the role of a lifetime leading a team at a large credit union, partnered with Children’s Hospital of Oakland, helped develop a homebuyers program for Habitat for Humanity, won seven community awards in 15 months… in short, on paper I hit success after success.
And then I burnt out.
It was time to go deep in figuring out how to heal from years of imbalance. Instead of experiencing true satisfaction, I constantly sought endless validation in the form of external accolades. I leaned into rest, while also starting a health journey to become a marathon runner and in general honor my body. I also broke up with a religious community that was no longer serving me and aligning with my values.
This, my friends, is what brought me to my coaching certification.
I still serve in a corporate communications capacity but have discovered a deep passion in coaching people on how to articulate their own personal values, clarify their life’s work, and step into bravery.