De Nichols

De Nichols leads Culture Lab, a horizontal UX research team within Google that fuels YouTube’s product teams with global cultural insights to improve how content creators, platform users, and music artists can thrive through accessibility, fairness, safety, and belonging.

As an expert in inclusive design and universal product development, De harnesses the creative powers of design and storytelling as she inspires global audiences to spark creative social change in the address of spatial injustices, racial division, and cultural inequities.

Across her industry, academic, and community leadership, De has been deemed a national Ideas that Matter recipient, a two-time Clinton Global Initiative innovator, and a St. Louis Visionary recipient for her community impact. She is a Monument Lab Fellow, Loeb Fellow of the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, and Citizen Artist Fellow of the John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts.

Nichols is an alum of the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts and Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis, where she specialized in communication design, social entrepreneurship, and socio-economic development. She is a John B. Ervin Scholar, Brown Scholar, and Enterprise-Rent-a-Car Scholar. Her efforts have been supported by the Clinton Global Initiative, Women’s Caucus for Art, Gephardt Institute for Public Service, Ideas that Matters, Pulitzer Arts Foundation, StartingBloc Fellowship for Social Innovation, Points of Light Civic Accelerator, Microsoft YouthSpark, Generation Progress, and AshokaU Changemakers.

When she is not driving creative change, De enjoys taking adventures and completing DIY home improvement projects with her fiancee, Mai, in Princeton, NJ.