Meet Hilary Nichols | Clinic Based Community Organizer and Street Artist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Hilary Nichols and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Hilary, what’s the most important lesson your business/career has taught you?
One of the most important lessons my career has taught me has been the power of vulnerability. In my career as a clinic-based community organizer, it’s my job to build relationships with people to build a base of folks who can act together for health justice. When I’m meeting with patients or healthcare professionals, I’m always amazed at how other people will open up and tell their story to me when I take the first opportunity to share something vulnerable about myself. The nature of my work means that I am engaged in conversations that can be challenging, including experiences with illness, injustice, racism, and discrimination, so being able to share my own experiences with those things is something that I have found to be very powerful.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I work at a Community Health Center in southeast Portland, OR. My role is called Health Equity Organizer, which means that I am a clinic-based community organizer. I work with both patients and staff at my clinic to organize around issues of injustice and health equity in the civic arena.

I often like to talk about why I care about organizing for health equity in the first place. My motivation to do the work of community organizing comes a lot from my 6-year career working in city government up in Seattle, where I got to witness firsthand how decisions get made and policies get written that impact thousands of people but fail to actually meet those people’s needs, or worse cause active damage. I saw how institutions with their roots in white supremacy and colonialism continually fail our BIPOC communities, and perpetuate all the inequities we see today. I saw all these structural level things (like policies, laws, regulations) being created and I saw how they impacted so many people who never got a chance to say “we don’t want this.”

But organizing for health, which is what I do at my clinic, comes from a much more personal place for me and I like to tell that story too. I organize for health because of my cousin Vanessa, who died by suicide about 8 years ago. I think about my cousin when I organize because I know that her decision to end her life was hugely impacted by the many injustices that she experienced and that worsened her health.

As a 1st generation kid of Cuban immigrants, she faced racism and discrimination. As a woman I know she experienced sexual violence that forever left her traumatized. As a queer person, she experienced homophobia and hate that she turned inward. As a person growing up in a low-income neighborhood, she never had the privileges that come with a well-resourced neighborhood. I really believe that injustice was what truly caused my cousin to get so sick , sick enough that she would end her own life. Vanessa was a brilliant filmmaker of what she called “melodramody” (aka melodramatic comedy). She my favorite cousin, and I really wish she were still here.

When I think about all the injustices that led to her death, I get angry, and that’s why I organize, and that’s why I care about health equity.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
I love Portland so I am always super happy to show people around. If I had a week with my best friend here, I would take them to this place called The Pied Cow, which is a coffeehouse that totally embodies “Keep Portland Weird,” with eclectic decorations and amazing food and coffee. I would also take them to this amazing park near my house, which is actually an extinct volcano, and maybe watch the bike race that happens every Wednesday up there. Finally, I would take them on many walks across the city, focusing on all of Portland’s cool bridges.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
There are so many people that I have to thank for the beauty and success in my life. The first would be my parents, who were my first teachers in justice, equity, public health, hard work, and compassion. I have also been deeply influenced by all of the artists and art that has touched my life, and I especially aspire to the many street artists that create amazing work where I live in Portland, OR. I would also be remiss if I didn’t mention Meagan Kimberly Smith and Jazmine Jarvis who are the founders of the organization Mixed in America. I did a 6-week healing program with them, and without their healing support I would not have been able to make peace with my existence as a mixed race and multicultural person. They helped me find more confidence in my identity in such a way that I feel so positive about being a mentor to the next generation of mixed kids.

Instagram: @Hodge91 (for my street art)