Nicola Williams has lived in Cambridge for 34 years and is a cultural strategist, arts advocate, environmentalist, and business mentor. Nicola has a loving partner Thomas Morris, three beautiful step daughters and five amazing grandchildren. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Nicola, a passionate gardener launched the Let’s Grow Something Together initiative, a Cambridge/Somerville project to encourage hundreds of neighbors to plant a sunflower sow sunflower and sow seeds of love and healing for our community in a time of great angst and racial unrest nationally.
Nicola is founder and owner of The Williams Agency, an award-winning marketing and business consulting firm with a focus on social and progressive causes and issues. She works with sustainable food, culture, the environment, the arts, and health. Nicola has over 20 years of experience in cultural strategy, marketing strategy, grassroots marketing, public relations, community outreach, organizing event planning, and production. Nicola’s business is built upon the values she cares deeply about: sustainable food, diversity, localism, and respect for the environment. Nicola has organized some of Boston’s premier sustainable food and cultural events, including the Boston Local Food Festival and Boston JerkFest. These cultural assets have ranked among Boston’s top 10 food events by Zagat. She has provided strategic marketing consulting for cultural assets such as the annual Black Nativity. The Williams Agency developed the City of Cambridge’s award winning, Express Yourself-Cambridge alternative to driving campaign that featured Cambridge luminaries, including the late Julia Childs and Robert Parker as well as Florence Ladd, Jimmy Tingle, Wanetta Jackson, and Harvy Cox. For campaigns such as the nationally acclaimed Anti-Smoking Campaign of Massachusetts, Nicola led on the public relations for the campaign targeted to women and girls– our work led to a successful movement of removing ads targeting young girls by Big Tobacco companies.
Nicola serves on five Cambridge nonprofit boards as Vice President of the Harvard Square Neighborhood Association; Chair of the Local Food Committee by Sustainable Business Network of Massachusetts; board member of Community Arts Center; President of Cambridge Carnival International and Founder and President of Sustainable Food and Culture, Inc. She recently joined the board of directors of Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance, a national organization whose mission is to advocate for the livelihood of local fishermen and women, and their families. Nicola has received numerous community awards and accolades, including a 2015 Cambridge Food Hero award recipient for her work in sustainable food, and she holds a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Wells College and has taken graduate courses in finance at Harvard University.