Executive Coach · Speaker · Comedian · Clinical Psychologist
Thirty years studying
what makes people tick.
And about seven years making audiences laugh about it.
Nicola is a clinical psychologist, award‑winning comedian, executive coach, speaker, writer, MC, and producer.
This is not a career pivot so much as a long‑running experiment in what happens when you take the things nobody wants to talk about and put them in front of a room full of people.
It turns out they laugh. And then they have the conversations they’ve been avoiding for years.
Since 1997
The clinical foundation
Nicola trained at the University of Otago and has been a practising clinical psychologist since 1997. She holds a PhD in medical education and has spent three decades specialising in the places where health, identity, and working life get complicated — fertility, perimenopause, burnout, leadership under pressure, and the gap between how capable people appear and how capable they feel.
Award‑winning
The comedian
Along the way she became a comedian. Not as a hobby, and not by accident — as a deliberate extension of the same impulse that drives her clinical work: the conviction that humour is one of the most effective tools we have for approaching the things that matter most. Her debut solo show Space Invaders has toured Aotearoa extensively, played Adelaide Fringe Festival, and won four festival awards. She has been described as having “a whimsical sense of depressive irony.” She is irreverent, deadpan, and wields a PowerPoint slide deck like her life depends on it.
Tour-Ready Award
Auckland Fringe 2024
Outstanding Comedy
Auckland Fringe 2024
TAHI Festival Outstanding Solo Performance
Auckland Fringe 2024
Breathtaking Performance
Dunedin Comedy Awards 2024
Best Storyteller
Dunedin Comedy Awards 2021
NominatedNZ Fringe Tour-Ready AwardDunedin Fringe 2024Best Comedian, Best MC, Best Show, Best GreenroomerDunedin Comedy Awards 2025
Keynotes & Show + Tell
The speaker
This combination — clinical authority, comedic instinct, and a genuine willingness to go to the uncomfortable places — is what she brings to keynote speaking and workshop delivery. Her talks are not motivational in the conventional sense. They are honest, evidence‑based, funny, and they leave people with something they can actually use.
Her signature offering, Show + Tell, combines live performance with professional development — an experience that is genuinely unlike anything else on the speaking circuit.
Ōtepoti Dunedin
Life outside the stage
Nicola is based in Ōtepoti Dunedin, where she lives with her wife and son, an opinionated miniature schnauzer, and a cat who specializes in rodent relocation. She has adopted far too many plants.
