Nichole Nelson, Ph.D. is a Senior Policy Advisor at the National Community Reinvestment Coalition. Prior to working at NCRC, Nichole was a Mellon/ACLS Public Fellow and Policy Analyst in the Economic Justice Program of the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice. At the Institute, she worked on initiatives to help increase the homeownership rate for Black and Brown New Jerseyans. She was the primary author of the Institute’s report Black Homeownership Matters: Expanding Access to Housing Wealth for Black New Jerseyans and wrote “New Jerseyans Deserve Fair Housing and Fair Futures,” an op-ed on NJ.com that discussed the importance of fair housing in New Jersey. Nichole also wrote amendments to and advocated for New Jersey’s Fair Appraisals Act (S777/A1519), which as of December 8, 2022, passed the New Jersey State Senate’s Committee on Community and Urban Affairs and the New Jersey State Assembly’s Committee on Regulated Professions.

Nichole received her Bachelor’s degree in History from the University of Pennsylvania and graduated magna cum laude in 2011. While at Penn, she was the Vice President of the Onyx Senior Honor Society, a historically-Black honor society that emphasizes leadership, scholarship, and community service for Black undergraduate students. After graduating, she worked as an intern at the American Philosophical Society, worked as a Research Assistant at Bryn Mawr College, and later held an internship at the National Urban League. In 2014, she received her Master’s degree in History from Vanderbilt University.

Nichole is a 2020 graduate of Yale University, where she earned her Ph.D. in American History. Her dissertation examined how white supremacy diluted the Fair Housing Movement because a moderate view of fair housing that stressed integration prevailed, effectively overshadowing equitable models of fair housing that called for reinvesting in African-American neighborhoods. At Yale, Nichole was one of three presidents of the Andrews Society, which is Yale’s History Graduate Students’ Association, and served as a member of the History Department’s Diversity Committee. She is also a member of the Yale Chapter of the Bouchet Graduate Honor Society.