Nicole Manapol joined RCAP in 2022 to take on the organization’s newly created Community & Economic Development Specialist position. In this role, she will be helping implement RCAP’s community and economic development strategy, as well as managing its grants and programs related to assisting rural entrepreneurs across the country.

For nearly 20 years, Nicole has worked at the intersection of international development, entrepreneurship and education designing and leading a variety of programs from small community-based projects to large-scale global initiatives. Working on behalf of the US State Department, Microsoft, USAID, and the higher education sector, Nicole has lived and worked in 14 countries across Latin America, the Middle East and North Africa, and the Asia-Pacific. What she loves most about her line of work is creating opportunities for people, organizations, and communities to realize their potential.

In 2017 Nicole returned to her roots in rural western New York to lead Letchworth Gateway Villages, an alliance of municipalities committed to fostering long-term economic and environmental vitality through growing the region’s outdoor recreation economy. In her four years leading the initiative, Nicole grew the collaboration from three municipalities to four counties and generated $1.2 million in new private, state, and federal resources to advance the alliance’s rural development priorities.

Nicole is a Peace Corps Fellow with a Master’s degree in Public Administration (MPA) from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies and holds a BS in International Affairs from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.

Session One:
Track: TAP Skills: CED
Title: CED Practice in Action
Day/Time: Tuesday, 8/16 | 3:30 pm – 5:00 pm
Description: Although community and economic development has been an important part of RCAP’s work building thriving rural communities, it remains an area of practice that not all TAPs are familiar with, or know how to integrate into their environmental and water work. In this session TAPs will have the opportunity to hear from a panel of their peers who have made the pivot to community and economic development work and discuss practical strategies for integrating CED into their existing training and technical assistance work with communities for greater impact.

Session Two: 
Title: World Cafe – Why Community Economic Development is So Important
Day/Time: Thursday, 8/18 | 10:00 am – 12:00 pm
Description: Pathways to Prosperity: Why CED is so important to RCAP’s Mission