Nicole’s passion for helping adoptive families can be traced back to her own challenging experience growing up in an adoptive family in Switzerland in the 1980s where there was no knowledge of how adoption impacts a child emotionally and mentally. When she became a teenager, she started secretly thinking about her birth mother, and wondering what had made her give up her baby. This was the beginning of a challenging path of self-discovery, mostly because she had nobody to share this with. The lack of emotional closeness with her adoptive parents added another layer of painful challenges. It is in her teenage years that she started struggling with undiagnosed mental health issues and symptoms which she desperately tried to repress so as to appear as a “normal” and functioning person. 

As an adult, she started working on her mental health with various professionals which slowly helped begin her healing journey. Another highlight in her journey was to search, find and finally meet her birth mother in Peru, which required a lot of processing to do.

Today, Nicole is grateful for her experience as international adoptee because it helps her deeply understand other adoptees and explain to adoptive parents what their children might be feeling too. She transformed her wound into a gift to support others, and found her true life calling.

In 2003, Nicole started her professional life as a High School teacher after graduating with a Master’s Degree from the University of Fribourg followed by a year-long Teacher Training. She taught English as a Foreign Language to High School students in Switzerland for almost 7 years. There, she gained unparalleled experience in the arts of teaching while also learning how to create connections with adolescents. After a few years, she realized that she wanted to work with young people in a different format, namely as a therapist rather than a teacher. So, she decided to immigrate to Vancouver, BC, in 2013, and studied relentlessly for many years until she became trained in Art Therapy, Expressive Arts Therapy, Counselling and Life Coaching.

Nicole is setting a new standard for how to help adoptive families. Thanks to her various trainings, her work experience as a trauma child and youth therapist as well as her personal story as an adoptee, she is offering a unique and unparalleled approach to helping adopted children and youth as well as their families. With a combination of theory, practice and personal story, she offers a holistic and well-rounded approach that is unique and one of its kind.

Apart from her counselling and consulting business “Unconditionally Adopted”, Nicole worked in different agencies as a Trauma Therapist with adoptive and foster children and adolescents. She was also an instructor at a private Counselling College and taught the advanced ‘Trauma Course’ to counselling students. Last but not least, she volunteered twice as a Child & Youth Therapist at an orphanage in her home country Peru for 6 months. 

On the weekend, you can find her playing tennis in Vancouver, BC.