Today’s Changemaker conversation features Nicole Mignone who can count attorney, photographer and coach among her many specialties.  Please tune in here via video, podcast and/or print to learn how she nurtures her own changemaker light and the lights in those around her.






















Nicole says that it can be complicated to explain what she does because she’s a bit of a “Jane of all trades.”  Among other things, she’s been a yoga instructor, an English as a Second Language Teacher, an Attorney, a Business Consultant and Coach and a Photographer.  She’s also worked in sales and high tech.  Despite her meandering path, you’ll see some themes to her life that resonate with the work of changemaking. 
 
NICOLE’S HOMEGROWN PATCHWORK
 
Nicole’s American father of Italian descent and British mother met in St. Petersburg, Florida, a coastal community where she was born and raised.  Growing up as an only child on the Gulf Coast exposed her to a lot of diversity early on as she was surrounded by refugee communities from Southeast Asia  along with Cuban, Dominican and Caribbean people.  This exposed her to a layering of cultures not often seen elsewhere in the more inland communities of the South at the time.  
As a child she enjoyed hobbies that fed her interest in the wider world like collecting stamps and watching National Geographic specials on TV.  Her British mother who worked in International Education fed her natural curiosity about the world and her family roots in Germany, Romania and Italy. She read voraciously and enjoyed traveling vacations encouraged by her mother who’d had similar opportunities in her own childhood.   These experiences nourished her interests and her ability to question biases with curiosity rather than judgment. 
Like her maternal grandfather, she cultivated, and has maintained, an interest in photography as well.  Looking at the world through the lens of a camera facilitates her ability to see with focus and intention.
Nicole thinks of herself as something of a nomad and something of an “urban anthropologist”.  She studied abroad in Japan during her undergraduate years and has moved at least thirty times in 30 years as an adult – sometimes for work and sometimes for love.  Through it all, she has maintained a love for learning about the local culture in her current surrounds.  From food to spiritual beliefs and cultural customs, she delights in the habits, the myths and the stories of others.
Although she studied foreign languages in school, she has enjoyed opportunities to expand her own learning about communication during her extensive travels.  In addition to expansion of her faculties with spoken language, she has found that her observational skills for body language have greatly enhanced her capacity for communication.
We assume people understand what we’re saying when we really don’t. As I’ve traveled and tried to learn other languages or dialects or when people are trying to learn English, it’s all about (the subtleties) of communication.






















SOLUTION FOCUSED NICOLE
Nicole expresses great appreciation for the River Phoenix Center for Peacebuilding in Gainesville, Florida where she trained in Restorative Justice in Fall 2016 and returned in Fall 2019 for a ten day immersion program....