Raised in the San Francisco Bay area, Nicole Lennol Normandin had a lifelong love of fashion and design.  Although her education was in Fashion Design and Merchandising, Nicole, like many of her contemporaries, succumbed to the late '90's lure of Silicon Valley and, putting her fashion training on hold, launched a successful career in the world of Internet startups.

Working at several different Internet startups, Nicole was forced to wear multiple hats including Systems Analyst, Product Manager and Marketing Communications Manager. Because many companies had limited budgets, she also needed to develop other Web-based skills - where her design training stood her in good stead as she became a web designer and graphic artist as well as a sales and marketing whiz.  Here Nicole got her real business training as she learned the good, the bad and the ugly about starting new businesses in a wildly competitive environment where creativity and the entrepreneurial spirit ruled the day.

During this period, as Internet companies were first booming, Nicole acquired a roomful of stock options and discovered her love of graphic design, honing her skills on the web and developing her own chic personal style as she helped take her company sky-high. Then, as the Internet industry went bust and Nicole's huge stack of stock options turned into scratch paper, it was clearly time to go back to the drawing board and start over.

Nicole headed to Los Angeles and back into the world of her first love - fashion and design.  Working for various designers - the most prominent of which was Sarah Shaw Handbags, Nicole realized that her real inspiration lay in accessories - as she says, "I think of accessories as objets d'art where the sky is the limit as far as creativity is concerned".

Developing her Nic Norman line of graphics-based specialty products has been, for her, creative and inspiring.