Nicola Clifford

About Nicola Clifford

Nicola is an established strategy professional with experience developing and deploying projects across the public, nonprofit, and private sectors. She is a seasoned project manager and an effective communicator with a track record of building support through strong change management practices to deliver new programs and policies. Nicola is an analytical thinker, and has deep expertise in program and impact evaluation. She has developed program evaluation processes and programs that have been deployed enterprise-wide that led to an increase in data-driven decision making across teams.Nicola has a background in human centered design, and uses its principles to build and deploy new programs and policies for residents in communities from coast to coast. She\'s experienced in standing up new organizational functions, as well as curating and nurturing high performing teams for measurable results. Nicola’s experience includes- Standing up and staffing two new functions in a fast-growing nonprofit environment- Developing a deploying a project management approach and methodology for over 70 local government projects across the country- Leading a cross-functional team for three system implementations- While working for the Mayor of San Francisco, developing a city-wide scorecard on post-secondary success for local youth, and successfully applying for in grants to fund pathway programs for local high school students in science, technology, and math- Building and managing a consulting team of 20+ staff for a youth workforce development nonprofit client for over four years; supporting the organization in developing their strategic plan, human capital strategy, expansion plan, process improvement recommendations, and fee-for-service business model.

Experience

1. Director

   Guidehouse

   Feb 2025 — Present

Education

• The University of Texas at Austin

  Master of Public Affairs

• University of Michigan

  Bachelor of Arts (B.A.)