Nora was born and raised in New Orleans in the 1980s and 90s. Nora's mother, Alice Jacobs (of blessed memory) was a civil rights attorney working to make sure that every citizen -- especially Black citizens -- had the right to vote across the state of Louisiana. Alice used to strap baby Nora into the car seat and drive out to the little towns of Louisiana to investigate their election procedures and various ways they disenfranchised Black voters. Nora's earliest memories of political campaigns reach back to 1984 when she was all of 4 years old. 

 

By the age of 7, Nora was volunteering independently for forward-thinking candidates in campaigns of every size. By the age of 11, Nora was working as an assistant in her mother's law office. At the age of 14, Nora began working after school at the Orleans Parish juvenile court to break the school to prison pipeline and agitate for justice reform. By the age of 16, Nora was the student coordinator of a city-wide peer mentoring program for children moving through the juvenile justice system.

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At the age of 17, Nora secured a summer internship in the office of US Senator Mary Landrieu (D-La). During her six weeks there, she helped a group of environmental activists in Convent, LA stop a factory from polluting their town with dangerous carcinogens.  

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After graduating magna cum laude from Columbia University, Nora began her career at the United Nations, serving in the Secretariat for the Millennium Project Hunger Task Force under the auspices of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).  

 

In 2004, She left the UN to join the Policy and Research Team of The Hunger Project (THP), an NGO that empowers women and men living on less than $1/day to end their own hunger and poverty in Africa, Latin America and South Asia.  Today, The Hunger Project works with 28 million people in 13 countries on a budget of $12 million per year. Highlights from Nora's time on The Hunger Project's Senior Policy and Research Team include: delivering the keynote speech for the UN Youth Conference in NYC, shaping NGO policy for the UN as a leader of NGO representatives, and drafting a constitution for a new level of government in Bangladesh.

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Nora left The Hunger Project in late 2005 in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and its impact on her hometown and her sanity.

 

When she rejoined the work world, she took a rapid path into the HR Consulting and Retained Executive Search industry, rising from entry-level researcher to full partner in less than three years.  During this time, she interviewed and assessed thousands of executives from a wide range of industries.  She also founded and led her firm’s Private Equity practice and Sustainability practice from 2008 to 2010. 

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Using both the research she conducted on thousands of successful executives globally as well as the principles behind the transformation of the poorest villages in the world into
self-sufficient, thriving communities, Nora has worked with individuals and businesses across the globe to unleash their maximum potential. 

Throughout her career, Nora has worked toward her vision to end global poverty, strengthen business and restore the environment by continuously developing breakthrough methodologies designed to transform individual and organizational relationships to resources.  She has created and led anti-poverty empowerment trainings, business-owner breakthrough workshops and environmental transformation programs across the world. 

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In 2008, she co-founded a free Action Group focused on training members to achieve financial success and personal fulfillment.  Since 2008, the group has served hundreds of individuals across the U.S., Canada, Europe and Israel.  One of the highlights of Nora’s career was turning leadership of the Action Group over to the participants she trained.

Nora is the author of the book Get Ahead and Stay Ahead: Use the Secrets of Your Own Brain to Unleash Your Success at Work. She has given hundreds of keynote speeches and workshops for elite organizations, including the Centers for Disease Control, Nasdaq, General Electric, Keller Williams Real Estate, Planned Parenthood, the CEO Trust, the CEO Club of America, the Executive Forum, Merrill Lynch, Amtrust Bank, Guardian Life, Tiger 21, and Columbia Business School. She has been interviewed by Investor’s Business Daily, My Business Chronicle, NHK Japan Broadcasting Corporation and the Oxygen Network.