Alumni Profiles

B.A., double major in Psychology and Women’s Studies, 2002

Master of Public Administration — Program on Domestic Violence, University of Colorado Denver, 2008

Associate Director of The Colby Fund, Director of Parent Giving,

Colby College, Waterville, Maine

“When I graduated from Guilford College,” says Nicky Blanchard, “I had three main areas of interest for my life — wilderness therapy, higher education and ending domestic violence.” As we spoke with her in downtown Bangor, Maine, Nicky announced that she had just accepted a position in higher education and had given notice that she was leaving the Maine Coalition to End Domestic Violence after almost six years of service.

“I feel deeply about the problems of domestic violence,” she says, “and I’m fortunate to have been able to learn and contribute in that arena. But my overall goal is to help create better leaders for the nonprofit world in general, and this new job will help me become one of those leaders.”

Nicky credits Guilford College with helping her receive the offer for her new job. “My [work-study] experiences in the Admissions Office at Guilford really helped me get this new job,” she says, “as did the specific experience I received in events planning. But maybe the most helpful was my enthusiasm for Guilford. I just loved it there, and the Colby people said that enthusiasm showed them I would flourish in academic administration.”

Nicky feels that her time at Guilford College, her graduate studies at the University of Colorado Denver and her time working to end domestic violence all go hand-in-glove: “They all call on skills in relationship building, in establishing rapport and, really, they all aim to make the world a little better.”

She adds that the Quaker values and traditions at Guilford College played a big role in her development. “I went to Guilford because of the very attributes that the Quaker tradition holds dear — human rights, integrity, a quest for social change, a feeling of community.”

She says that all of those things gave her the framework within which she can think and talk about her own core values and how they affect her decisions: “Guilford College gave me the lens to view things through and the commitment to work for change.”

Nicky says that when she was in high school, she knew that Guilford offered the values that she sought, along with a reputation for social change. She knew also that she wanted to avoid a college that placed an emphasis on fraternities and sororities. Finally, she even knew that Maine was cold and icy when Greensboro was not. But, she adds, “All it took was a visit to the campus. I immediately fell in love with Guilford College.”

She applied to and was accepted by nine other colleges, but it was an easy choice … and she never regretted it. “I loved my classes at Guilford,” she says, “because they connected reality with theory. That is, the classroom topics directly related to real life, not just to academic study. There were real connections to our lives outside the classroom, and because of that, we all tended to talk about the classroom work everywhere — in the cafeteria, the dorms, all around the campus. It was tremendous — we had these long, ongoing intellectual discussions about things that really matter.”

She adds that high school students who are considering going to Guilford should know that the college offers small classes, and that the feeling of community infuses your life: “The scholarly discussions never stopped, the critical thinking process was constantly encouraged. Your professors — whom you call by their first names, by the way — engage your thoughts and discussions inside AND outside the classroom. Some of them even had us over for breakfast at their homes!”

Growing up in Maine, Nicky found the diversity of Guilford College to be “just tremendous, extremely rewarding in so many ways.” In fact, when it came time for graduate school, she was a little reluctant: “It was hard leaving Guilford College. I had loved my classes and the feelings of community. I had really benefited from my volunteer services, and my independent studies had helped me grow as a scholar and a person. The Academic Skills Center had been a great help to me for four years. Leaving all that was hard.”

She decided on the University of Colorado Denver graduate school because, she says, “It was the only school in the nation with a program on Domestic Violence.” She says that thanks to her undergraduate preparation at Guilford, she “had no doubts about whether I could do the work.” As it turned out, the most challenging part was learning not to call her graduate professors by their first names!

Now at Colby College — her mother’s alma mater in cold, icy and beautiful Maine — Nicky starts a new chapter in her professional life. We send her warm wishes from Greensboro.