Transformational leadership practices for organizational excellence
Ways to Work
With Nicole
Organizational Flashlight
Contemporary Educator
Executive Coach
Dynamic Speaker
Dedicated Mentor
Social Work With a Corporate Edge
Nicole Bonnie’s private-sector experience can be acutely recognized throughout her work in the public sector. Mirroring some of the country's largest telecommunication companies and financial institutions, her strategies utilize valuable customer intelligence, which is meant to guide organizations toward closing gaps between the communities they serve and the businesses they run. With a deep understanding of diverse populations, paired with her ability to effectively lead through complex systems and organizational crises, Nicole has much to offer senior-level leadership in her designs and implementation of systemic solutions that are both responsive and accessible. Uprooting long-standing cultural narratives that are often counter to encouragement, upliftment, and the like, it’s her ability to change minds about how public sector work can be done that distinguishes her as the premier organizational change consultant, and executive coach with an aptitude for leaving an expansive impact within the global welfare community.
MY JOB IS TO SUPPORT LEADERS IN BUILDING NEW INFRASTRUCTURE AND APPLY NEW APPROACHES TO MEET COMMUNITIES NEEDS.
As the principal consultant of Firma Strategy Group, Nicole provides unmatched support to leaders tasked with navigating shifting organizational landscapes. Addressing instances of lack in systems liable to cause harm and grow seeds of mistrust, Nicole moves swiftly to build fresh organizational structures that shift power back to inclusive, equitable, and socially just practice formation. Centering underserved voices, she guides organizations through the complex implementation problems that often follow the challenge of distinct privilege areas. As an organizational flashlight, she’s honed the skills necessary to spot critical areas of disparity and make use of various opportunities for improvement.
Core service offerings include:
Crisis management support for executive leadership teams (i.e. Enterprise risk management, pandemic planning, critical incident debriefing, EDI focussed crisis response, employee engagement support, and more)
Transformation of antiquated organizational cultures to those that actively engage in social justice-centered and ED&I practices.
Provincial Government, system leadership consulting
Implementation support of top to bottom organizational transformation strategy, from governance to frontline
Ideation of stakeholder management strategy and governance practices
Operationalization of equity and social justice-centred strategy - whole of organization approach (e.g. data strategy, Human Resource, Service Provision, Governance, etc.)
IMPLEMENTING EQUITY THROUGH FOCUSED, SUSTAINABLE STRATEGY
Organizational Flashlight
Contemporary Educator
TEACHING TO EMPOWER
Nicole has long used education as a vehicle for upskilling client-partners and providing them with the necessary insights for key implementation of transformative leadership procedures. The impact she leaves on students is exemplified by their eagerness to keep in touch with her, long after the course has ended. Beginning in 2014, Nicole spent three years in the Dominican Republic teaching Master’s level coursework at Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra. Leaning heavily on research methodologies and foundations in social work, she taught her classes utilizing decolonized educational frameworks. With a conscious effort to openly oppose long-held Eurocentric ideals, she then challenged them to imagine how they’d connect more authentically with their Caribbean communities through public service work. Transformed by the act of incorporating their learning into practice, and deeply moved by Nicole’s empathetic techniques, many of them have stayed connected with her, sending updates of how they’ve been able to enjoy their careers as they plan goals from an empowered perspective.
CURATING SOCIAL CHANGE AT THE MICRO LEVEL
Executive Coach
Successful leaders know what successful leadership looks like. Nicole has learned through her years in senior leadership that there are formalized constructs around what makes a good leader, rules that inform how they operate within and beyond their organization. Her expertise, then, allows her to be armed with the understanding of how gender-based discrimination and anti-Black viewpoints produce consistent thematic challenges for individuals like herself in the workplace.
As a result, Nicole’s personal insights of how to navigate rigid corporate structures as leaders with intersectional identities distinguish her 1:1 executive coaching tactics from many others. Through teaching executives the importance of making intentional career movements, while prioritizing health and wellbeing of leaders, Nicole’s inside out strategy for organizational change is the catalyst to fresh work trends. After following her guidance, leaders gain the psychological permission to restructure any known barriers to success.
NICOLE ALSO LEADS EXECUTIVES IN:
Learning how to engage in critical reflective practice
Achieving career satisfaction with the use of lasting adjustments
Building options for upward mobility for emerging leaders
Strategizing to achieve personal and organizational transformation
Overcoming and navigating organizational barriers
Prioritizing health and wellness to optimize self-care for a marathon environment
Building a high performance team
Dynamic Speaker
GIVING POWER TO TRUTH
Nicole’s approach to public speaking goes beyond intellectual discourse. As she makes it a point to imbue the subtle nuances of her background into every message she brings forth, listeners are often drawn to her natural storytelling abilities and willingness to be vulnerable. Acting as an organizational flashlight and change agent, Nicole’s talks shed light on community and global disparities by leaning on research and personal narratives gathered over years of working within complex systems, active listening, careful observation, and vigorous research. Alerting audiences to the pragmatic solutions they seek for building capacity and increasing proficiencies, public sector leaders lean on Nicole for perspectives that transform their present understandings of challenges, near and far.
Dedicated Mentor
Similar to the women she began modelling as she grew, Nicole became more comfortable with assuming high levels of risk in her personal and professional lives as well. Confidently organizing innumerable informational interviews with the professionals she admired, she used their teachings to formulate the framework for relationships that provide young professionals with access to treasured information, guidance, motivation and care. By advising them on ways to create proximity and alignment with those that stand where they aspire to be, Nicole’s greatest lesson to mentees is to see beyond themselves to create relationships which seek to achieve personal goals that satisfy purpose.
Mentorship
Mentorship
MY BIGGEST MOTIVATION HAS ALWAYS BEEN TO FEED THE NEEDS OF THE PEOPLE THAT I'M CALLED TO SERVE.
REPRESENTING THE NEED FOR INTENTIONAL RELATIONSHIP
Nicole Bonnie’s greatest contribution lies in her ability to move leaders to clarity in moments when they need it the most. To build substantial relationships with client-partners, she begins her powerful work of implementing organizational change by first building trust. Through careful assessments and conversations, Nicole creates a space where leaders feel a pronounced level of psychological safety, which, in turn, allows them to eliminate tensions related to finding the overarching solutions that often stem from conflicting viewpoints. With the room to efficiently assess and address the needs of a given organization, Nicole walks clients through the step-by-step process of transformative change strategy meant to sustainably close any existing gaps that may lead to harm.
THINK OF US AS YOUR ORGANIZATIONAL FLASHLIGHT, GUIDING YOU IN THE DARKNESS OF UNCERTAINTY, OFFERING CLEAR DIRECTIONS TO REACH YOUR GOALS.
ONE OF THE GREATEST PIECES OF FEEDBACK I TEND TO RECEIVE IS THAT I'VE DONE MY JOB WITHOUT MAKING MY PARTNERS FEEL ASHAMED FOR WHAT THEY COULD NOT OR DID NOT WANT TO SEE.
Instead of giving the false guarantee that the process will be comfortable, Nicole utilizes her extraordinary human skills and emotional intelligence to guide clients toward effective problem-solving strategies. Nicole’s knowledge of marginalized communities and the requirements for providing equitable conditions have been built over decades of academic and field experience. Whether the work is in collaboration with larger groups like United Way, provincial school boards, national and provincial associations or individuals makes no difference to Nicole. Big or small, her strategies remain rooted in an integrative approach meant to provide any organization with the pathways to operationalizing equitable goals. Offering hard truths in consumable ways, she’s become an invaluable resource for public-sector leadership hoping to maintain success standards in modernizing times.