It Was March 2020
Nicole Wallace was sitting in her living room when the news broke. Schools were closing because of COVID-19. It was March 2020, and she had just made the decision to finally launch her own counseling practice.
Now she was staring at the television, doing the math. Four kids, college, high school, middle school, and elementary school. All of them about to be home, all day, every day, for the foreseeable future. The dining room table became a classroom. The kitchen became a cafeteria running three shifts. The house echoed with the chaos of it all.
Then her husband fell off the roof.
He broke both his legs. Both of them. And suddenly everything got even harder.
And somewhere in the middle of all that chaos, Nicole was supposed to be figuring out how to register a business, build a website, and find clients during a pandemic that had just shuttered nearly 30 percent of small businesses across the country.
But if her time in the Army taught her anything, it was how to adapt and overcome. No matter how many curveballs got thrown at her, she had a dream of opening her own practice and helping people, and she was determined to make it work.
By the end of 2020, over 4.4 million Americans had filed applications to start new businesses, a 24 percent increase over the year before, the largest surge on record. When the pandemic hit, it made some people’s dreams and goals clearer. For many, that meant controlling their own destiny with entrepreneurship.
Nicole's Military Service
Entrepreneurial Spirit
Connecticut offered free tuition to returning veterans, which she took advantage of alongside her Montgomery GI Bill education benefits. She earned dual bachelor’s degrees in Elementary Education and Psychology from Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU). She and Mark married the same year she graduated from SCSU and moved to North Carolina to start their life together. She became a teacher, working with kids and giving back to her community.
She was encouraged to study educational leadership at NCSU. While studying, Nicole discovered counseling, and its role in education captivated her. The one-on-one work, the deeper conversations, and the chance to help people make sense of and come to peace with their traumatic experiences—that felt like where she could do the most good. Nicole earned her Master’s in Counselor Education from North Carolina State University (NCSU).
In 2001, Nicole was entering the third trimester of pregnancy, ready to have her first child. Pregnancy complications put Nicole in the ICU for a week. Her daughter was born two months early, spending a month in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). Everyone got home okay eventually, but Nicole remembers the isolation of being a new mom, feeling depressed and alone.
Of course, she wasn’t as alone as she felt. Many women go through similar experiences, and Black women experience these mental health symptoms at double the rate of other moms due to chronic stress, misdiagnosis and systemic issues in our healthcare system. Worse, Black women are three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than any other group of women in the United States, and mental health conditions, including depression, anxiety, and suicide are leading causes of maternal mortality.
Nicole knew then just how profound a gap there is in specialized care for women navigating the delicate, often overwhelming journey of motherhood. By the time the pandemic arrived, she was determined to do something about it. Nicole held her PMH-C certification in perinatal mental health, making her a specialist in supporting women and their partners through the entire reproductive journey, from preconception through pregnancy to postpartum. She’s also qualified to counsel women through the traumatic loss of a child.
Connecting With IVMF
In January 2021, Nicole officially launched Transformation Counseling & Consulting (TC&C) in Raleigh, North Carolina, hoping to serve a broad variety of patients. Unfortunately, she didn’t know much about running a business. She searched online for resources for veteran entrepreneurs, which led her to the D’Aniello Institute for Veterans and Military Families at Syracuse University (IVMF). A friend who had served with her in the Army connected her to IVMF alumni Latisha Clifton Proctor, who talked up her experience.
Convinced, Nicole applied to Veteran Women Igniting the Spirit of Entrepreneurship (V-wise) and was accepted into the 25th cohort in April 2023, held in San Antonio. Over the three-day capstone conference, she connected with fellow women veterans and military spouses building their own ventures.
The program gave her more than business fundamentals. It gave her a network. She went on to complete EBV-Accelerate and attend Veteran EDGE, each program building on the last, each one expanding her circle of fellow veteran entrepreneurs who understood the unique challenges and advantages of veteran business owners.
For Nicole, in addition to closing the knowledge gap on hundreds of little things before she had to learn them all the hard way, the programs gave her a community of peers and mentors. Research from IVMF shows that 22% of female veteran entrepreneurs cite lack of mentors as a top barrier to achieving their business goals.
A Mission for Women's Wellness
The education and networking at IVMF and all Nicole’s hard work have translated into business growth. By April 2024, Nicole had grown her practice to five counselors and two administrative staffers. Each member of her clinical staff shares Nicole’s commitment to meeting women where they are, and takes additional trauma-informed training and perinatal mental health training. In 2024 Nicole received the Seven Starlings Advocacy Award for her work in maternal healthcare.
By 2025, Nicole scaled her business by expanding into South Carolina. She was recognized in November 2025 as one of the ‘CUSE50, an annual list of the 50 fastest growing companies among Syracuse University and IVMF alumni.
But Nicole is on a mission to ensure no woman feels as alone as she did during the most vulnerable moment of her life, and that doesn’t start and stop at the office. Nicole volunteers as a support group leader for Postpartum Support International (PSI), and in April 2025, she was awarded the Perinatal Action Fund (PAF) scholarship to attend the PSI conference.
She’s also begun sharing her expertise with public speaking engagements and specialized workshops nationwide about women’s mental health, anxiety, and depression. This past summer she was a breakout session speaker covering perinatal grief and loss at the 2025 American Mental Health Counseling Association Conference.
Today, Transformation Counseling & Consulting has grown from a one-woman operation into a thriving multi-state practice with several offices. She’s currently expanding her practice into sunny Florida, where TC&C offers virtual therapy. However, she’s looking to secure office space to better serve the community in person in Miami-Dade County.
It's Your Time
There are many amazing women-led companies participating in our entrepreneurship programming at IVMF. While women are welcome in all of our programs (and military spouses are eligible for most), those looking for more women-only spaces should check out V-WISE.
Do you own an established business that’s ready to grow, scale, or dive into procurement? Veteran EDGE may be more your speed. Join the veteran and military spouse business leaders poised for explosive growth in Dallas this March for three days of strategy, networking, and partnering.