Massachusetts Women of Color Coalition
Dr. Joyce McNickles is a social justice educator and consultant with over 25 years of experience developing and executing
comprehensive cultural competency, racial equity, and inclusion initiatives in academic, corporate, and non- profit
settings. She is the founder of McNickles & Associates, a consulting practice which provides individualized coaching
and mentoring for executive leadership, conducts staff trainings, and helps organizations facilitate difficult dialogues
related to race, gender, sexual orientation, and other aspects of diversity.
She was a Professor of Human Development and Human Services at Anna Maria College where she taught courses on diversity
in the workplace, social inequality, racial equity and social work, multicultural education, and sociology. She
has also been visiting faculty at Worcester State University, Westfield State University, and Emmanuel College.
Prior to teaching in higher education, she served as Program Director for the National Conference for Community
and Justice where she created and facilitated workplace diversity training programs for corporations, public school
districts, colleges and universities, and state and local government agencies. Dr. McNickles has authored chapters
in several editions of the widely-used business management textbook Understanding Diversity: Readings, Cases, and
Exercises, published by Prentice Hall. She has also presented papers on black identity development and its intersections
with other identities.
Community Service
Dr. McNickles is strongly committed to social justice and equity, which is reflected in her community activism.
She is a founding member of the Massachusetts Women of Color Coalition and serves as the statewide secretary and
an appointee to Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey’s Council on Racial Justice and Equity. She was the 2016
recipient of the City of Worcester’s Eleanor Hawley Award for Human Rights.
Dr. McNickles currently serves as a board member of the YWCA of Central Massachusetts where she co-founded and co-chairs
the Racial Justice Task Force. She previously served as a board member and secretary for the American Civil Liberties
Union (Worcester County Chapter), and she was a member of the Massachusetts Commission on Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual,
and Transgender Youth. For the past few years, Dr. McNickles has been an invited community lecturer on Implicit Bias
in Health Care for first-year medical students in The Social Determinants of Health course at the University of Massachusetts
Medical School and is an active member of the Worcester Partnership for Racial and Ethnic Health Equity, where she
is Chair of the Capacity Building and Training Sub-Committee.
She holds a master’s degree in social justice from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and a doctorate degree
in adult education (focusing on social justice) from National-Louis University.