The Founder
Connection is built, not broadcast.
It Starts With Me! is a woman-owned, Philadelphia-based strategic communications and innovation firm focused on one of today’s most pressing challenges: disconnection.
We partner with mission-driven, values-led organizations to strengthen how they communicate in complex environments, where trust, accountability, and alignment are essential. Our work helps organizations move beyond surface-level messaging to build communication systems, strategies, and experiences that reflect real-world context, audience realities, and institutional responsibility.
At the core of our approach is a belief that communication is not just what is said, but how it is experienced. We design messaging strategies, narrative frameworks, training, and innovation solutions that help organizations translate complexity into clarity and intention into impact. This includes work across strategic communications, leadership support, technical assistance, and experiential design, particularly in public-facing and high-trust settings.
What began as a consultancy rooted in community engagement and message strategy has grown into a firm operating at the intersection of communications, innovation, and social impact. Our work integrates audience insight, cultural awareness, and systems thinking to help organizations communicate in ways that build credibility, foster understanding, and support long-term social sustainability.
We are not a traditional PR or advertising agency, nor are we focused on optics or trend-driven visibility. Instead, we prioritize alignment over aesthetics, trust over performance, and depth over volume, supporting organizations committed to communicating with care, integrity, and purpose.
At It Starts With Me!, we help organizations build what’s true and communicate it in ways that last.
Meet the Founder
Nicole is an award-winning social impact strategist, speaker, and founder with nearly two decades of experience at the intersection of strategic communications, policy, program design, and community engagement.
She founded It Starts With Me! with a clear mission: to help organizations communicate in ways that foster connection, accountability, and collective care, not just visibility. Her work supports mission-driven organizations in translating complexity into clarity, building messaging systems and narrative frameworks that strengthen trust, deepen alignment, and support long-term social sustainability.
Nicole’s approach is grounded in a deep belief that communication is relational. Drawing on experience across research, policy, and communications, she designs strategies shaped by real-world context, audience insight, and lived experience, helping organizations move beyond surface-level messaging toward work that resonates and endures.
In addition to her consulting work, Nicole is the founder of Hey Auntie!, a nationally recognized intergenerational community supporting Black women across the lifespan. Her leadership has been featured in major national outlets, and she has presented at leading universities and national convenings focused on social impact, innovation, and public trust. She was also named Invention of the Year by Technical.ly for her leadership of Hey Auntie!.
Earlier in her career, Nicole served as an Economic Program Specialist and Senior Communications Associate at the NAACP, where she supported national communications strategy and worked closely with local units nationwide.
A proud West Philadelphia native, Nicole holds a Master of Arts in Public Policy from Johns Hopkins University and a Bachelor of Arts in Government and Psychology from Smith College, where she received the Barbara Jordan Public Policy Award. She is a former Innovation Fellow with CoGenerate and remains deeply rooted in her community, serving as a fitness instructor at her childhood West Philadelphia YMCA and as an active member of the Church of Christian Compassion.
Work featured in national media
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Fast Company: Hey Auntie! is a new social support network for Black women
There’s nothing artificial about the intelligence behind Hey Auntie!, the intergenerational wisdom sharing platform created by social entrepreneur Nicole Kenney.
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Chronicle of Philanthropy: How Burnout Led to a Novel Way to Connect Black Women Across Generations
Amid a loneliness epidemic that affects Black women at high rates, can a network of “aunties” help? Short answer, absolutely!
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TEDx: How Aunties Changed My Life
In this 17-minute talk, I share my personal journey and what inspired me to create Hey Auntie!, a wellness platform tapping the proud history and cultural legacy of Black aunties to support Black women's mental health and well-being.