Meet NHF's Chapter Development Specialist, Nick Kallinicou! Nick took his passion for meaningful and impactful work and joined NHF. He continues to be a vital part of the NHF community and assisting families and patients. Learn more about his role at NHF!
Tell us a little bit about yourself and your role at NHF.
My name is Nick Kallinicou, and I am the Chapter Development Specialist on the Chapter Services team.
How long have you been a part of our team?
I started in August of 2018, so almost four years. But I've been with my current team since February of 2021. So just over a year!
Before joining your current team, what department did you work in?
I started on the medical programs and information team and, specifically, the major part of my job was NHF’s information resource center HANDI. So, I think that experience alone, like navigating all those requests from community members, both, you know, globally and locally, I think honestly helped transition to the chapter services team. We deal with a lot of those one-off requests from chapters. Every chapter is so different. Every community has different needs. So, I think that definitely helped prepare me for chapter services.
What drew you to this type of work?
I kind of did the, you know, the usual thing of you go to college for four years, and then what you got your major in, you don't do anything related to that. NHF was actually my first job out of undergrad. My senior year of college, I worked at the local library and that kind of like opened my mind up to the nonprofit world.
But also, what I realized is really important for me in a career, and what I wanted to pursue, is just finding work that's meaningful, impactful, and really helping those in need. So that's kind of why I stumbled upon NHF when I was applying for jobs. Once I graduated and the mission was super exciting, individuals with rare diseases. often inherited, helping those people really, really drew me to the organization.
Specifically, like I mentioned earlier, I worked in the information resource center. So, I was often the first point of contact into NHF. And often when someone was diagnosed with a bleeding disorder, they were content contacting NHF first, and it was coming directly to me. That was super meaningful to me and kind of what drew me initially to NHF.
What is one highlight from your time here?
I feel like there's been a lot. So, this was a tough question for me because I feel like it's, it's like a weekly thing where I'm impacted by something great. There were a couple that really stood out for me. When I was working in HANDI, we would get requests from anyone, including globally as well.
And there was one request that really stood out to me. There was someone who had inherited bleeding disorder who contacted NHF from Brazil and they wanted to come to the US to study for graduate school specifically. That request was pretty eye opening to just navigating the US insurance system.
An international student coming to the US is already so much work, and having a bleeding disorder as well, navigating the HTC, what those are like in the US treatment. There were just so many aspects that you had to consider. And it was probably like a six month period where I was communicating with him, directing him to resources.
NHF had reaching out to external resources in the area he was going to school and just, it was pretty comprehensive. We really got into the weeds into a lot of things. And then probably it had been about six months since I heard anything from him, he reached out and was like, “Hey, I made it to the US! I started my first day of class!” It was just amazing to see he made it and like just the small role that I played in that process. It was really exciting to see why I got drawn in to work at NHF, like having meaningful impact on people's lives. I think that specific story really speaks to that.
Watch Nick's Q&A video below. To learn more about joining the NHF team, visit our careers page.
