Nicole Elbertson, MEd, BS

Nikki Elbertson is a co-founder of and the director of training and implementation at Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. She translates complex research on emotional and physical health into accessible programs that help children and adults build healthier lives.

In the last 24 years since Nikki joined Yale’s Health, Emotion, and Behavior Laboratory in 2002, Nikki has worked with thousands of educators and educational leaders in the U.S. and internationally, shifting mindsets on the role of emotions and well-being in school communities and teaching emotion skills. She authored the first-generation Feeling Words and RULER high school curricula, as well as developed faculty and staff learning modules and resources for RULER, an evidence-based framework for cultivating emotional intelligence. RULER is now used in more than 5,000 schools worldwide, and research shows it improves academic outcomes, reduces bullying, lowers teacher stress and burnout, and enriches school climate and instructional practice.

With colleagues at Yale, Nikki led the development of Managing Emotions in Times of Uncertainty and Stress on Coursera. The award-winning course, ranked by Class Central among the top 250 online courses of all time, helped hundreds of thousands of learners navigate the emotional toll of the COVID-19 crisis on preK-12 schools and continues to be a top course years later.

Nikki has served as president and vice president of the SEL Providers Association and has led presentations and workshops for the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning; Facebook; Being Well at Yale; Learning and the Brain; the Association of Educational Service Agencies; the Connecticut Education Association, the Rhode Island Department of Education; the Montgomery County Educational Service Center, the Kentucky Behavioral Institute, to name a few. Her academic work has contributed to a growing body of evidence on social and emotional learning theory, practice, implementation, and efficacy.

When she isn’t advancing the field of emotional intelligence, Nikki has been a group fitness instructor for 18 years, helping others become the healthiest versions of themselves through strength, cardio, and community. Each year, she visits Tennessee's Great Smoky Mountains with her husband and son to read, write, and recharge, a tradition that started with summer camping trips there as a child.