A real “Lady of the Community” Nicole Clark-Sommerville is the co-founder and managing director of the non-profit organization Higher Education and Responsibility Through Overseas Exchange (HEROS). The organization is dedicated to the development of leadership skills in Greater Bridgeport area high school students through community service in their local neighborhoods and school building projects in Africa.
Nicole Clark-Sommerville is just as inspiring as the program she co-founded. At 22 she has participated in a youth pilgrimage to France and Spain where she volunteered at a Hospice for the terminally ill and climbed the Pyrennes Mountains in 1998. She works full time cultivating employment opportunities for the unemployed, disabled and high school transition student population and a ballet instructor for a local community center and acts as a counselor and mentor to local at-risk youth programs. Nicole started off college at Hampton University in Virginia, but after her first two semesters she realized she’d like to go to school without paying. So, believing that a degree is just a piece of paper society says you have to have in order to be accepted in a certain arena, and a certificate is just an opportunity. She transferred to Housatonic Community College, to study business management.
When she returned to Bridgeport she received a job at Goodwill Industries as a employment specialist training people to go out into the workforce. For two years she juggled a full time job and school. Midway through she had an opportunity to work with the program Strive in Norwalk for disengaged youth and young adults who haven’t successfully made the transition from high school to a career. Still, she thought that she was not fulfilled enough for herself. She thought to herself “I just continuing to do this kind of work because I need a check and going to school hoping to do something else, but not knowing what I want to do next…” While working and preparing to graduate, she met a co-worker, who was newly hired, and from Africa. He was a well traveled man and he opened her eyes to a world she didn’t know existed. “A world of excellence, a world of living for the higher standard of life that everything that is physical and material is just that, living for something so much greater than that, which transcends yourself.” So, while driving down East Main Street she was looking around and pulled over to watch the people go back and forth for 15 minutes and she thought “you know these people also had dreams at one point, dreams of becoming something, if they had a choice or could look back on their lives and make different decisions they would. How am I going to use my life so I don’t become subject to the same system that raised me? This is my environment, am I not to much different from these people what am I going to do at this time to make my life different?” After that soul opening experience she felt that she needed to get out of Bridgeport. She went to the book store and got a book on the only African country she really knew about, the country her co-worker was from, Ghana. Then went online bought a plane ticket to Ghana, called up her co-worker and he helped her get in contact with his family and found a western African dance studio in Ghana. She left four days after her graduation and spent two months there. While there she traveled to Togo and Benin and lived not in a hotel but with a family. There she met a girl in the village named Abel who finally shared her experience with her. Abel was taken out of school because her mother had died and her dad fell sick. Her school was eight miles away and she had to walk 16 miles a day in flip flops in 90-95 degree weather. The story of Abel’s life touched her heart and she didn’t want to see Abel’s life become what it didn’t have to become either pregnant or married off. When asked her dream she replied “I want to be a diplomat because I want to help people in areas like this and people like me who can’t do other wise.”
On returning to Bridgeport Nicole and some friends had a tag sale to raise the $32 to pay Adel’s school fees. The realization of how small an amount 32 dollars is, was “when the whole idea of what you want to be when you grow up and that’s when the thought really dissipated that you don’t have to wait until you become this or that right now (you) could do something, someone in high school could give this girl 32 dollars. I don’t have to wait but there’s something I can do now. Combined with energy and my friend saying let’s build a school. Whoa yeah lets build a school.” That idea lead to the beginning of the organization HEROS. Nicole is an inspiration to us all and her experiences something we can all learn from. From helping the terminally ill, and climbing the Pyrennes mountains to going to Africa and co-founding a non-profit organization. She is a person whose eyes were opened to the world around her and did something to help. She believes that it only takes a spark to get a fire going and will drop everything to capture a window of learning for a child, and with her famous advice to the youth “always seek the best and never settle for less” and her famous advise to adults “children are also great teachers.” She is a person that we can all look up to and learn from.
University of Bridgeport
Saturday, July 12, 2025