Nicole DuBois
People leaders are being asked to deliver wellbeing, retention and inclusion outcomes against a workforce that is more vocal, more diverse and more visibly under strain than at any point in the last decade. The hardest part is not the strategy. It is finding senior voices who have lived the tensions employees are now naming out loud, and can speak about them without reaching for slogans.
Nicole DuBois is a sitting Chief Human Resources Officer and memoirist who helps organisations talk about wellbeing, authentic leadership and chronic illness with the honesty those subjects actually require.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Nicole DuBois
- A practising CHRO of a 600-person child welfare nonprofit, not a former operator. The HR strategy advice is current, not retrospective.
- A first-person account of an MS diagnosis, divorce and reinvention published as Unparalyzed, brought into corporate rooms by someone whose day job is running people strategy.
- Repeated recognition as a Top 100 HR Professional by OnConferences across multiple years, alongside membership of Chief and the OnCon Senior Council.
- A specific point of view on what authentic leadership costs women in senior roles, anchored in her own decision to publish under her real name after using a pseudonym.
- Useful to organisations whose own internal HR conversations on illness, caregiving and identity have outgrown the standard wellbeing vendor script.
Biography highlights
- Chief Human Resources Officer, Graham Windham (NYC), responsible for HR strategy across talent, learning, compensation, benefits, employee relations and engagement for around 600 employees.
- Author of Unparalyzed: Beating an Invisible Pre-Midlife Crisis, originally published as Danielle M. Bryan and later reclaimed under her own name.
- Named a Top 100 HR Professional in 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2025.
- Connector Award, New Jersey Human Resources Council (2024); Joint Legislative Commendation, State of New Jersey.
- Bachelor’s in Psychology and Urban Studies from Fordham, Master’s in Mental Health Counselling from NYU, Executive Education for Nonprofit Professionals at Columbia Business School.
- Member of Chief and the OnCon Senior Council.
Biography
Most organisations now talk openly about wellbeing, inclusion and authentic leadership. Fewer have senior people who can speak about those subjects in the first person without breaking the corporate register. Nicole DuBois sits in that smaller group.
Her day job is running people strategy at Graham Windham, a New York child welfare nonprofit with around 600 employees. As Chief Human Resources Officer she leads talent, learning, compensation, benefits, employee relations and engagement, and she has done so since 2006. The work is operational and current, not a retired executive’s view of how HR used to function.
The second layer is her memoir, Unparalyzed: Beating an Invisible Pre-Midlife Crisis. It tracks an MS diagnosis, a divorce after seventeen years of marriage, and a deliberate reinvention. The book was first published under a pseudonym at her publisher’s legal advice, and she has since chosen to reclaim it under her own name. That choice is the spine of her keynote on what authentic leadership actually costs women in senior roles.
Repeated recognition as a Top 100 HR Professional, the Connector Award from the New Jersey Human Resources Council, and membership of Chief and the OnCon Senior Council place her inside the professional HR community her audiences are typically drawn from. Her education runs from Fordham and NYU through executive nonprofit work at Columbia Business School. The combination gives organisations a speaker who can hold an HR strategy conversation in the morning and a wellbeing keynote in the afternoon without either feeling rehearsed.
Key speaking topics
- Authentic leadership for women in senior roles
- Employee wellbeing and the corporate response to chronic illness
- Engagement and retention in mission-driven organisations
- Multigenerational workforces
- Non-linear career paths and personal reinvention
- Coaching, mentoring and sponsorship inside HR-led talent strategies
Ideal for
- CHROs, CPOs and heads of HR shaping wellbeing, engagement and DEI strategies
- ERG leaders and women’s networks looking for a senior voice on authentic leadership
- Nonprofit and mission-driven employers managing retention in lean workforces
- Internal leadership development programmes for high-potential women
Audience outcomes
- A clearer sense of what authentic leadership looks like in practice when the leader is also living through chronic illness, caregiving or major personal change
- A current CHRO view on what employee wellbeing programmes get right and where they still miss the people they are aimed at
- Language and confidence to raise invisible health conditions inside leadership conversations
- A reframing of non-linear careers as a credibility asset rather than a gap to be explained
Talks
A first-person account of stepping into authentic leadership by refusing roles, relationships and expectations that no longer fit.
Key takeaways:
- Where self-doubt and societal expectation distort senior women’s career decisions
- How vulnerability and self-honesty become operational leadership tools, not soft skills
- Practical ways to reclaim voice, set boundaries and lead with integrity under pressure
A senior HR leader’s account of leading through an MS diagnosis and personal upheaval, and what it changes about how organisations should treat invisible illness.
Key takeaways:
- How invisible health conditions sit inside performance, presence and progression conversations
- What managers and HR functions tend to get wrong about chronic illness at work
- How personal disruption can sharpen, rather than dilute, leadership judgement
A CHRO’s view on the friction and the opportunity in leading five generations of employees with very different expectations of work.
Key takeaways:
- Where generational assumptions show up in engagement, retention and culture data
- How authentic leadership translates across age groups without becoming performative
- The HR practices that hold up across a mixed-age workforce