Nicole Haley

Nicole Haley has been a driving force in the early childhood education space in Vermont for the past five years. Nicole is currently the Director of Marketing and Communications at United Way of Northwest Vermont, but they got their start with Let's Grow Kids, where they served as the Senior Manager of Public Relations from April 2016 to November 2021.

During their time at Let's Grow Kids, Nicole was responsible for developing and leading earned media and storytelling strategies that enhanced the brand, messaging, and public image of both Let's Grow Kids and Vermont's Child Care Campaign. Nicole managed all media relations, including responding to press inquiries, pitching stories to Vermont and national media, prepping leadership, staff, and supporters for media interviews, and tracking and reporting on media coverage. Nicole also created and oversaw PR messaging campaigns that used storytelling to bring the child care crisis to life, ensuring that staff, supporters, and key partners had the messaging tools they needed to communicate with key audiences. In addition, Nicole wrote speeches and op-eds for policymakers, volunteers, and community leaders, and they managed crisis communications.

Some of Nicole's key contributions during their time at Let's Grow Kids include cultivating strong relationships with Vermont media that enabled Let's Grow Kids to gain statewide recognition and appeal (yielding 100+ positive earned media hits annually from 2019-2021), securing positive national media coverage that highlighted both Let's Grow Kids and Vermont as national leaders on child care policy during the COVID-19 pandemic (from outlets such as Vox and Early Learning Nation), crafting messaging for op-eds, press conference scripts, legislative testimony, and other content aimed at lawmakers to advance policy change (such as H.171, landmark child care legislation passed in 2021), playing an instrumental role in identifying and developing Let's Grow Kids' brand voice through written communications and support of leadership, staff, and community leaders as spokespeople, helping develop and execute creative and highly effective marketing campaigns that increased public support for Let's Grow Kids' policy goals, and developing powerful stories and storytellers to bring the child care crisis to life while also supporting reluctant or inexperienced storytellers to find and express their authentic truth.

Nicole Haley has a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism from Northeastern University and a Certification from Cultural and Linguistic Competence Training from June 2015. Nicole also has Grant Writing USA 2-day Workshop Completion from December 2013.

Their manager is Jesse Bridges, CEO. They are on a team with Elizabeth Gamache - Chief Business Development & Donor Relations Officer (CBDO), Cary Kelley - Workplace Donor Relations Manager, and Morgan Webster - Common Good VT Director.