Nicola has served as a Senior R&D Programme Manager for over 20 years within the Health and Social Care Research & Development Division (HSC R&D Division), where she leads on the secondary use of health and social care data alongside a wider portfolio of strategic responsibilities. Her work spans a number of major initiatives, including the Northern Ireland Trusted Research Environment (NITRE), the Northern Ireland Longitudinal Study (NILS), the Honest Broker Service, the Administrative Data Research Centre (ADRC), the Northern Ireland Cohort for the Longitudinal Study of Ageing (NICOLA), the Northern Ireland Cancer Registry, and Health Data Research UK (HDR UK). She is also a member of the 4 Nations PPIE Working Group.

Nicola holds a degree in Nursing and a PhD in Biomedical Sciences. Prior to moving into research management within HSCNI, she spent eight years in postdoctoral research, contributing to longitudinal cohort studies, population-based registries, and clinical and prevention research at UCL, the University of Exeter, and Ulster University.