Her Story
About Nikki
I'm a first-generation college graduate who started working three different jobs through college to pay my way through Eastern, where I earned my Bachelor of Business Administration in international marketing and French. I began pre-med but pivoted when I realized medicine wasn't my path. Before I even graduated, I had landed a full-time leadership role as a manager, thanks to a boss I met in college who believed in me and referred me to her role when she got promoted. I spent my early career at Quicken Loans (now Rocket Mortgage) for five years, where Dan Gilbert instilled isms in me that I still live by today. That experience taught me the value of hard work, cut my teeth in sales, and gave me phenomenal training and leadership development with direct exposure to top leaders. From there, I moved into higher ed technology sales, spending five years at Pearson where I started as a sales rep and was named Rookie of the Year before quickly moving into management. I then spent nearly a decade at Cengage Learning, beginning as director of sales talent development where I rewrote the sales curriculum and did rookie training, then moved back into sales running teams in the Pacific region and taking on more responsibility and geography over the years. After roles at Packback running both sales and customer success, where I led significant organizational change and launched a field sales team, I recently joined Course Dog as Regional Sales Director. Throughout my 17-plus year career, I've been extremely fortunate to work for great companies and have amazing mentors who saw something in me I didn't always see in myself. My career has looked more like an EKG than a straight ladder climb because I've always prioritized what's right for my family and what opportunity makes sense at the right time. I'm a perpetual student who reads constantly, takes side courses, and works to be the best version of myself. What drives me most is leading leaders, developing talent through mentorship and leadership development programs, and leading teams through disruptive change, whether that's transforming business models or transitioning from perpetual licenses to subscriptions.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Nikki
01What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute my success to putting people first. I genuinely care about people and I love people. I get to know them, I care about them. Sometimes that's a double-edged sword because it can hurt, but if you read through what anyone's ever said about me or wrote about me or referred to me, they would say the same thing. Those relationships and the focus on the people will galvanize people to kind of do anything, right? They believe in you and the mission. That's always been important to me, to put my people first and develop personal relationships with people, and know what matters to them, and learn about their families, and just get to know them as people. I still have some of those people I've worked with and for who are still dear friends in my life, and others are just colleagues and people that I have great connections with and could call after 10 years and connect with. I think that's mattered, and if you put me next to another leader in a room, that's probably what's gonna stand out.
02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
I would say you have to put in the work when something matters. And by that I mean not necessarily working 80 hours a week, but being really intentional about how you spend your time and learning constantly and being able to adapt to what you're learning. So just truly being a sponge. Be willing to do what others aren't, whether that's more time or just the investment of time, you know, scrolling through your phone or being on Netflix versus maybe reading a book. All those things are choices. Everything has a choice. If you say yes to something, you're saying no to something else, and our voice is compact. So be very mindful of the choices that you make, because that compounds over time, good or bad. I've been very lucky that I didn't always make the best choices, but I've made better ones most of the time, and that's compounded over time. The career is many, many choices of compounding over time. I've heard it said before, choose your hard. If you're choosing to spend your time a certain way, it's not easy to do certain things. It's also not easy to have the opposite result. Make good choices, build good relationships, and the quality of your choices and the quality of your relationships are really what will dictate the quality of your life, as far as I'm concerned.
03What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
I believe in kindness. I believe in doing the right thing, and that it's not necessarily about who is right, but what is right. I believe in doing what's right, being a good steward, whether it's of the business or of the world. It's useful to me to make sure that I am mostly investing time and pouring into the people and the activities that matter versus wasting or spending time. So I think really prioritizing where the time is spent. I think all people matter. I have a genuine curiosity about people. I think there's usually more than one way to do things, so I think you have to be open. I've been very flexible in my career. I've been able to be extremely focused when needed, but also can pivot and be nimble when the time is there as well, and that's the same in my personal life. I'm a mom, I have two kids, and I try to teach them to just be honest, be fair, be kind, communicate well with others, be understanding and forgiving, and not hold grudges. Truly, the golden rule, like treat people how you would want to be treated. Sometimes even we have to make hard decisions. It's never about the people. We have to make the hard choices.
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