Nicole Nixon Stumbles Upon Entrepreneurship Through Innovation

Nicole Nixon is a testament that you can accomplish anything with goodwill, tenacity, and a passion for growth. Her quest to entrepreneurship has been one of curiosity, self-discovery, and knowledge.

Nicole Nixon is a local, growing up on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, as the oldest daughter of a single father, ministry, and military professional. Her father taught her a strong work ethic which brought her great success. However, Nicole rebelled as a young adult who grew up with far too many rules for her taste.

She became a single mother of two children and had to drop out of college. Nicole found a position working at Verizon as a customer service representative, where she would find the keys to her future success.

“My objective was to make Verizon my college,” said Nicole.

Excited to have an opportunity to take care of her children and be a good mother, Nicole became thoroughly immersed in the culture of Verizon, soaking up every ounce of knowledge she could. Each day, she processed data records identifying Verizon customers’ public and privacy options.

When Verizon needed volunteers for a special project, Nicole volunteered. The project challenged her to create automation for the wholesale division that would clear over 100,000 system errors.

They gave her the information and set her free to explore. Nicole approached the process systematically. She created an order, broke it, and then figured out how to fix it. Through diligence and curiosity, Nicole was able to clear the errors.

After sharing her discovery with the IT team, she was charged with writing new system requirements based on her findings. The process was excruciating. Nicole dealt with dyslexia, yet she persevered and wrote the system requirements for Verizon’s East Coast wholesale division.

At the age of 23, Nicole was invited to major meetings. She was a subject matter expert before she even understood what a subject matter expert was. Still gaining knowledge of her discovery, Nicole began training others around the region. However, as she taught, she learned more about customer issues and how to address those challenges.

Industry changes created the perfect space and opportunity for Nicole to share her expertise and apply her knowledge across use cases.

As automation was adopted across the industry, telecom carriers turned to Nicole to figure out how to get their data to process beyond all the errors. Five years later, when Time Warner Cable needed someone to manage their data for phone products, Nicole Nixon was the person to call.

As Nicole learned more about the cable industry, she realized that the rules that applied to independent telecom carriers didn’t apply to non-independent telecom carriers. Truly led by her passion, Nicole created system rules to allow consumer data automation for Time Warner Cable’s footprint (now Charter-Spectrum).

The more Nicole discovered, the more she developed a hunger for knowledge. Nicole soon left her work at Time Warner Cable and launched her subscriber data management company in 2010, Listing Central.

Still in concept phase, Nicole launched Listing Central as a trial to see if the phone company could independently manage telecom data. Once her process was proven, Listing Central became the first independent and nationwide data management telecom company in the United States.

She had successfully separated the data management out of limited telecom databases and became the first independent telecom data management provider.

As Nicole moves to socialize this new approach to data management across her industry, she is rediscovering the importance of communication and storytelling. Relationships have played an essential role in her journey to strengthen her momentum by acquiring investors and adopting nationally.

While entrepreneurship may start with the vision of one person, it must expand to include the visions of many to be sustainable and scalable.

Through her relationship with Wacif, she has refined her strategy. As a Wacif Ascend Thrive cohort member, Nicole gained key relationships and opportunities to take her business to the next level, leveraging new perspectives and knowledge.