Nicole Branca

Executive Director

Nicole has 20 years of experience working in housing and homelessness. Since becoming Executive Director of New Destiny in 2020, New Destiny has tripled its budget, staff size, and housing portfolio by developing new supportive housing buildings, expanding its program that helps domestic violence survivors access subsidies and find apartments across the city, building out an innovative new program focused on housing retention and creating an advocacy department. Before New Destiny, Nicole was Associate Commissioner at the NYC Department of Veterans’ Services, where she helped lead the city’s successful effort to end chronic veteran homelessness, created the agency’s housing department, and launched all its initial programs, including a peer-to-peer model, aftercare, and a new rental subsidy program. Nicole spent 10 years leading city, state and federal policy and advocacy efforts at the Supportive Housing Network of New York, while co-chairing the NYC Continuum of Care. She is a proud AmeriCorps alumna with degrees from Babson College and Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. If she’s not at work she’s likely playing with her pup, out for a run, or in the summer, out in her big yellow kayak.