Hi! I’m Nicole.

I’m so glad the internet brought us together. Thanks so much for being here.

Here’s the tl;dr: I’m an artist and futurist with a particular interest in designing a more equitable, sustainable, generative, human-centered economic system. I’m also a lifelong musician, and a maker of many other kinds of art.

This site is a space for research, conversation, and sharing my work and experiences working in innovation, art, and the built environment. You can check out my writing here, my past projects here, and my artwork and music here.

ABOUT MY WORK

I’m the founder of a design and innovation studio called Hourglass Collaborative. Hourglass started as a pop-up art project in 2018, and took a lot of experimental forms over the years: big and small pop-up stores, apparel and products, workshops, and more. Now we primarily do consulting, design, writing, and research.

Our focus is on rethinking productivity norms, redefining work culture, and creating spaces and programs that support healthy, equitable, sustainable, and generative communities. Most of our current work involves living by helping large companies, primarily real estate ones, design effective spaces and programs focused on generating equitable economic growth.

We believe in humanity, and our collective power to invent, evolve, and grow. We believe that creativity thrives when people feel safe, supported, and inspired. We believe in riding waves of change, rather than resisting them.

In 2016, I co-founded another consulting business called FWD Partners. We focused on supporting and creating innovative real estate projects, Our work included supporting an international co-living brand on their US market entry, developing partnerships and alumni engagement concepts for Northeastern University’s global campus system, and doing stakeholder engagement and strategic for innovation and arts neighborhoods in the U.S. and Canada. FWD has now become the consulting arm of Hourglass Collaborative.

Before making the leap to full-time entrepreneurship, I was on the launch team for the Autodesk Boston Technology Center (formerly the BUILD Space), a research lab focused on innovation in the building industry. I built partnerships and event programs for the BUILD Space, and designed the application onboarding system for their research residency program.

My career in innovation began when I started designing startup offices at a boutique architecture firm. I fell in love with the energy and scrappy spirit of startups and small businesses. I did a lot of early-stage planning for a major development in the Boston Innovation District, and developed a working understanding of the connection between the built environment and economic growth. That led me to designing the interior of District Hall, a first-of-its kind innovation center and the central gathering space for the Innovation District.

Eventually, I left the architecture firm behind and followed my instincts into the world of innovation. I went to work for Mayor Menino and ran the Boston Innovation District initiative full-time. In that role, I served as the city’s point of contact for the innovation economy, helped startups and accelerators find space and work with landlords, gave hundreds of tours to visiting delegations coming to learn from Boston’s innovation ecosystem.

When District Hall opened, I joined the team there as the founding general manager, where I built the systems, pricing, and the team from scratch over the first four years of operations. When I left to join the team at Autodesk, District Hall was hosting more than 1000 events and meetings per year, and generating enough revenue to pay the team and support other new programs. We also provided more than $1M in donated and discounted space to startups, nonprofits, and community organizations every year.

As described in the quote below, I believe that designers should take more interest in the operations and maintenance of the spaces they design. District Hall was a living case study for me: a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to how our design decisions affected operations and programming in the real world.

I’ve been designing spaces and fixing up old buildings since I was a kid. I grew up living in weird old decaying buildings and learning to steam and scrape old wallpaper and how to paint clean edges at the ceiling. I had an odd childhood, and lost both my parents early. My siblings are everything to me.

recent WRITING