Kate Nicoll, LCSW, RPT & Emmett, Pet Partner therapy dog – Founder
Kate Nicoll, LCSW, RPT is the Founder Emeritus of Soul Friends, Inc., a nationally recognized nonprofit organization that has provided innovative animal-assisted mental health and humane education services to more than 10,000 children, adults, families, veterans, and first responders over the past two decades. A licensed clinical social worker, Registered Play Therapist, educator, and international presenter, Kate has more than 40 years of experience in trauma treatment, attachment, interpersonal neurobiology, and the human-animal bond.
Kate is recognized for advancing evidence-informed models of animal-assisted psychotherapy that integrate attachment theory, interpersonal neurobiology, somatic psychology, and contemporary animal welfare science. She developed the Nicoll Model of Embodied and Relational Integraion in Animal Assisted Services, a developmental framework grounded in One Health and One Welfare that conceptualizes healing as a reciprocal process between humans and animals. Her research has focused on advancing ethical, trauma-responsive practice while examining the mutual benefits of human-animal relationships for participants and therapy animals alike.
A central focus of Kate’s recent scholarship has been the integration of diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, and belonging (DEIAB) into animal-assisted services. She advocates for culturally responsive, anti-oppressive, and disability-informed approaches that recognize how culture, race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, neurodiversity, and lived experience shape relationships with animals, experiences of trauma, access to care, and pathways to healing. Her work encourages practitioners to move beyond one-size-fits-all interventions by centering participant choice, agency, cultural humility, accessibility, and ethical partnership with therapy animals.
Kate has been a national leader in the assessment and treatment of animal abuse and neglect. She has collaborated with interdisciplinary professionals in veterinary medicine, social work, psychology, criminal justice, and child welfare to strengthen responses to animal maltreatment and its intersection with family violence, trauma, and community well-being.
In addition to her clinical work, Kate serves as an Adjunct Professor of Social Work at Quinnipiac University, where she teaches graduate courses in adult trauma and resilience. She has presented nationally and internationally on trauma-informed animal-assisted psychotherapy, equine-assisted services, animal welfare, One Health, and interdisciplinary approaches to human and animal well-being. She is committed to mentoring the next generation of clinicians, researchers, and nonprofit leaders while promoting scientific rigor, ethical practice, and inclusive excellence throughout the field of animal-assisted services.
Through her clinical leadership, research, advocacy, and mentorship, Kate continues to champion a vision of animal-assisted practice that is relational, evidence-informed, ethically grounded, culturally responsive, and accessible to all communities. Her work seeks to ensure that healing is understood not only as an individual process but as one that emerges through compassionate relationships among people, animals, and the broader communities in which they live.
She has specialized in working with children with severe trauma and grief – and has partnered with community agencies and the state in adding the comfort of an animal partner to specific treatment plans. Over the past 16 years, Kate has created five group curriculum based programs for children that has consistently demonstrated through outcome measures and research positive benefits for children including : increased eye contact for children with autism and ADHD; increased hopefulness for children living with trauma and improved peer relationships for teens.
As the principal investigator of a year long humane education study, Kate and her partners demonstrated the benefits of adding therapy animals in a classroom setting in a published journal article in Society and Animals. Kate is the author of Soul Friends: Finding Healing with Animals and A Therapy Dog at Work and Play; Teaching Children about Body Clues. Kate is a member of EAGALA, and a certified Level 2 Practitioner. In the year 2008-2009, she was selected to be a Annie E. Casey Foundation Nonprofit Leadership Foundation to assist in her vision to bring Soul Friends, Inc to all the children in need of Connecticut.
