Nikki DuBose

Nikki DuBose, Psy.D. Student, CEDRC, is a Cuban-American, French and Irish model. She is the founder of Live ED Free(TM), an EDIT(TM) Certified Eating Disorder Recovery Coaching Service specializing in helping individuals find peace with their bodies and food through the intuitive eating method. She is a Psy.D. student in Clinical Psychology at Meridian University and holds a B.A. in psychology from California Southern University with honors. She received her training as an Eating Disorder Recovery Coach Specialist through the EDIT (TM) Certified Program under Dr. Dorie McCubbrey, PhD, MSEd, LPC, LAC, CEDS . In 2022, she accepted her role as Ambassador for Darkness to Light, a 501c3 charity dedicated to child sexual abuse prevention, advocacy, education, training, and research. Tara Nicole DuBose was born in 1985 in Charleston, South Carolina to Sandra Pierce and Wayne DuBose. She is Cuban, Irish, and French. Her biological grandmother immigrated from Cuba and gave her mother up for adoption. Her Cuban mother was an artist and her father was a delivery salesman for local food companies. Sandra named her "Tara" after the fictional plantation in the film, Gone with the Wind, directed by Victor Fleming. Despite Sandra's love for the name, she and Wayne often referred to Tara as "Nikki," short for Nicole, and so the name stuck. After her parents divorced when Nikki was two, she and her younger brother were raised by their mother and stepfather. Her upbringing was filled with problems; Nikki suffered abuse of all kinds and was a witness to domestic violence. Her mother, Sandra, was afflicted with severe mental health conditions and drank heavily. As a result, Nikki suffered for over seventeen years from a wide range of mental health conditions (Source: Washed Away: From Darkness to Light). Nikki wrote her first short story in the third grade and was a staff writer for the Odyssey in her senior year of high school. Her mental health conditions, however, hindered her from writing for many periods of her life. Although the ability to write was taken from Nikki for many years, through the gift of recovery, writing is what helped Nikki to heal and gave her her voice back. Her debut memoir, Washed Away: From Darkness to Light (fall 2016 - US & 2017 - Editions Du Rocher), explores her life from the ages of two to twenty-seven, and her recovery from the mental torments that threatened to kill her. Nikki lives in Los Angeles, California and is an avid reader of Stephen King. She worked alongside Assemblymember Marc Levine on AB 2539, which addressed the need for workplace protections and health standards in the modeling industry. She speaks about her recovery at universities and treatment centers, and her advocacy work and recovery story have been profiled on CBS Los Angeles, People, Vogue UK, Esquire, India Times, Inquisitr, and many others. She writes extensively on mental health, political issues, and exposes the truth about the modeling industry on The Huffington Post, the National Eating Disorders Association, Eating Disorder Hope, Clinical Recovery Institute, and Recovery Warriors. She also contributed as an expert reviewer for Harvard University's Striped program (Strategic Training Initiative for the Prevention of Eating Disorders), helping craft their student and teaching lesson for the fall 2016 semester.