Hello, I'm Nicole
The real thing. No script.
"I bring the framework and the tools. You bring the willingness. Together we turn insight into real, lasting change."
I'm a Mental Performance Coach with 26 years of one-on-one client work. I'm also a former LPGA Tour professional and PGA caddy — which means I understand high-pressure performance, perfectionism, and the cost of pushing through, from the inside out.
I wasn't diagnosed with ADHD until I was 27. By then I'd already played on the LPGA Tour — pushing through on sheer determination and not understanding why everything cost me twice as much as it seemed to cost everyone else. When I got the right support, something shifted I didn't expect. I could see the golf ball differently in the sky. I went on to earn straight A's in my master's program. That's not a medication story. That's a clarity story. And it's exactly what I help you find.
Chess Performance Lab is named intentionally. The ADHD brain is not a checkers brain — it's a Chess brain. It sees the whole board at once. It makes connections others miss. It hyperfocuses on what matters and struggles with what doesn't. The lab is where you stop fighting that brain and start playing your own game — with structure, strategy, and someone in your corner who has studied the board for twenty-six years.
My training is deep: I hold an MA in Sport Psychology from John F. Kennedy University (1999), am a Certified Performance Hypnotherapist (CCHt, 1999), and hold an ADHD Coaching Certification from Evergreen Coaching — with over two decades of one-on-one performance coaching. My background also includes licensure as an LMFT — that clinical depth informs my coaching framework, but the work at Chess Performance Lab is coaching only.
My approach is direct because I respect your time, compassionate because I know how hard it is to ask for help, and honest because that's the only kind of coaching worth doing.
And yes — we laugh in here. A lot. I'm not a “how does that make you feel?” kind of coach. Sessions with me are real conversations — sharp, warm, sometimes funny, occasionally interrupted by something I just have to say before I forget it. People often tell me they leave a session feeling lighter than when they walked in. That's the point.
- ADHD Coaching Certification · Evergreen Coaching
- LMFT · Clinical background informs coaching framework
- Certified Performance Hypnotherapist (CCHt, 1999)
- MA Sport Psychology · JFK University, 1999
- MA Marriage & Family Therapy · Informs coaching framework
- BS Management Information Systems · SJSU
- Former LPGA Tour Pro & PGA Caddy
- Verified on Psychology Today
