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DeAsa Nichols: The Business Side of Help

“Cincinnati is like the ground zero for opioid addiction,” DeAsa Nichols, the Board Chair at UMADAOP in Cincinnati, explained. Her interest in UMADAOP was first piqued by the substantial help she’d heard the organization continuously brought to her city, but DeAsa’s career did not begin in the field of addiction recovery and rehabilitation. She became involved only three years ago; before this, DeAsa came from a career in business. DeAsa earned her Business and Marketing undergraduate degree as well as her MBA from Xavier University in Cincinnati. Even now, as she serves as Board Chair for UMADAOP, she is also the Supplier Diversity Manager for Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. Her role is to oversee, receive, and maintain the hospital’s contracts. Prior to this, she was the CEO at the Chamber of Commerce in Cincinnati, where she was involved for years in the respective operations of hundreds of diverse corporations. UMADAOP was soon to open a new world for DeAsa. Experiences began to raise DeAsa’s awareness for the overwhelming drug threats that took place in her community.These conglomerated through what DeAsa remembers as three distinct events: The first and most crucial of these came in the form of struggles she witnessed some of her family members endure which involved both legal and illegal drug abuses.

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“Cincinnati is like the ground zero for opioid addiction.” -DeAsa Nichols, Board & Chair UMADAOP in Cincinnati