Rebecca Nichols

Rebecca Nichols is a results-driven program/project manager at Harvard’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science (IQSS), where she helps advance interdisciplinary research and innovation to tackle some of society’s most complex challenges. With extensive experience managing technical, research, and administrative projects across academic, nonprofit, and Fortune 500 environments, Rebecca specializes in building bridges between diverse teams and transforming ambitious ideas into operational success.

At IQSS, Rebecca leads diverse initiatives encompassing program development, research facilitation, and process optimization. She is proficient in both agile and waterfall project management and excels at coordinating university resources, launching new programs, and supporting ongoing tools and services that promote collaborative, data-driven social science. Rebecca is acknowledged for her collaborative approach—aligning faculty, administrators, developers, and researchers to cultivate community, create efficiencies, and enhance the impact of IQSS initiatives both within Harvard and beyond.

With a Bachelor's degree in Psychology from Endicott College, Rebecca brings strengths in instructional design, stakeholder engagement, and workflow improvement, continuously focusing on leveraging the latest tools and technologies to support learning, research, and organizational goals.

Outside of work, Rebecca is passionate about hiking, kayaking, and photography. She loves immersing herself in new cultures through travel and is particularly dedicated to mission work, which enables her to give back and build lasting relationships in the communities she visits. She has a special fondness for Peru, having visited three times and developed meaningful connections through her mission experiences there.