For Nicole Presley, UCLA is a family affair. Her father, who attended UCLA in the 1950s, was one of the first African Americans to play in the marching band as a saxophonist. He and his sister are also bronze. After receiving a bachelor’s degree in psychology from UCLA in 1997, Presley earned a master’s degree in education from Harvard with an emphasis on risk and resilience in human development.
Presley’s love of psychology and education—a deep interest in mental health—led her to pursue a doctorate in counseling psychology at the University of Southern California. There, she examined issues of flexibility, equity, access and retention for undergraduate students of color, topics that were not discussed at the time.
In 2004, Presley found her niche at the intersection of mental health and education when she joined UCLA’s Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) as an intern. In 2007, she became a clinician at CAPS. She assumed a leadership role in 2010, creating the Campus Assault and Resource Program (CARE), a sexual violence prevention and advocacy program. Presley became interim director of both programs in 2015. As the demand for student mental health and resilience services continued, interest in the Center for Your Student Experience (RISE) grew.
Now senior executive director of Student Resilience and Mental Health Services, Presley oversees all three programs, which fall under UCLA Student Affairs, and manages the Mental Health Crisis Response Team. As co-director of UCLA: Campus Community Conversations with David Myers, UCLA’s Sadie and Ludwig Kahn Professor of Jewish History and director of the Awakening Kindness Institute, Presley is now focused on bringing her passion for connection and well-being to even more Bruins.
The Newsroom sat down with Presley to talk about her work supporting One UCLA.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Tell us about your early role here at UCLA and how it fits into being at UCLA.
I’m a psychologist by training, so my primary role—my biggest role—is at CAPS. Under this umbrella, we have a number of programs aimed at improving the ecosystem around student mental health. This means clinical services, prevention and education with the primary question: How do we educate our students to improve their mental health so they can stay healthy? Throughout our lives, we are told to eat healthy and exercise to maintain optimal physical health, but we don’t get much education about improving our mental health.
At the RISE Center, we help students build resilience and good mental health hygiene through a few techniques such as positive affirmations, observing the ways we communicate with each other, and considering how we think about our basic mental health needs as part of our overall health strategy. We’re also considering how we can encourage students to access resources like RISE and reduce the stigma of help-seeking. We constantly ask questions, as we increase relevance? How do we have safe suicide education? How do we train faculty and staff? We are constantly building.
My job involves thinking critically about the big vision or strategic plan which addresses and identifies where we need resources. In terms of mental health education and prevention, I think about our campus ecosystem through the lens of the Public Health Framework, which guides three levels of prevention at UCLA:
- Primary prevention It means educating everyone, so that everyone, including students, knows where to go and what to do in a crisis. We train resident advisors, share information when students are interested and direct students to our Be Well Bruin website for accessible resources.
- Secondary prevention Making at-risk students easier to identify and then making it simpler for people to refer them to where to get help. That’s where case managers, faculty and our students come in on the crisis website as a place to say, “I’m worried about someone; let me tell someone and get help.”
- Third grade For treatment, recovery and referral services through CAPS, UCLA Health or the Ashe Center.
Our programs are created according to the needs of the students. One of the most recent programs to emerge from this thinking framework is the Compassionate Response Team (CORE) Mobile Crisis Unit, launched in October 2025, with mental health clinicians at the forefront who also collaborate with UCPD officers during on-campus crises.
Can you share a little about the work you do in Campus Community Conversations? Why is this so important to UCLA?
I am really excited about this initiative. I think it’s been needed for a long time, even before George Floyd, immigration issues or unrest in the Middle East. There is always a climate on campus where things happen. A good example of this is after the death of Trayvon Martin.
Students would have reactions – but there was no one to call or lean on for conversation. They were also in a difficult position if there was conflict between groups or between groups. They could call CAPS, but there was a greater need for clinicians in the field. I will see students have feelings or reactions to current events, public figures or even the actions of the federal government.
We began hosting healing spaces at RISE as concerns arose, which led to the creation of UCLA Connections and campus community conversations. People from across our campus who conduct dialogue have come together in this effort, including my colleague David Myers. With Campus Community Conversations, we draw from many frameworks, including the basics of group discussion, structured listening, and more, that we can use to help the community.
What are the desired outcomes of these initiatives?
We have two main goals for campus community conversations. First, we want to hear about the conversations happening on campus so we can build relationships and get involved. We want to make sure people know they can get in touch.
The second goal is to give people new opportunities to connect within the Bruin community and in meaningful ways, so they can engage in tough conversations. We monitor conversations across campus and build community through early “connecting” conversations. Then, we move on to strategically tougher and tougher conversations.
A big campus conversation is centered on the current mental health crisis – we’ve lost a number of students to mental health crises in the last 18 months, which is not normal for our campus, and we live in the midst of an epidemic of loneliness and isolation. In response, we’re launching a mental health and suicide prevention initiative called “Hope Connects Us.”
We need people to understand what is happening in our current ecosystem so we can identify the gaps. Hope is a good message on suicide prevention initiatives, and evidence-based approaches suggest exposing people to hope and letting them know that resources are available to them that work instead of simply saying, “You’re going to get better.”
The main message is that there is hope, there are resources for you, we support you, and you have access to care. We want them to feel as though there is a mental health care ecosystem to support them.
What do you like about working at UCLA?
I think it’s a dynamic, interesting community – there’s always a lot going on! Everyone is so talented all the time. I love people. I enjoy helping people reach their mental health goals so they can go out into the world and affect change. Many members of this society will become doctors, lawyers, businessmen and scientists, so if they are not good, the society is not good. I can help them be better and influence the course of their lives – and their communities.
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