Before starting her company, Straus worked as an account supervisor on public relations campaigns for a number of high profile art/culture clients at Ruder Finn Arts & Communications Counselors in New York City. Her clients included the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain; the Newseum, a museum of news in Arlington, VA; a sculpture park at the North Carolina Museum; the Brooklyn Children’s Museum and The Art Show presented by the Art Dealers Association of America.
Prior to Ruder Finn, she was a vice president at L.V. Power & Associates where her art/design clients included Forum Gallery, DC Moore Gallery and F. Schumacher & Co. In the early ‘90s as a vice president at GCI Group, a division of Grey Advertising, she co-managed the award-winning Mexico, A Work of Art, a major arts program with the government of Mexico in conjunction with The Metropolitan Museum of Art. She also assisted on the re-opening of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; and directed Vineland Revisited, a cultural program with the governments of Iceland and Norway. Other clients included the American Museum of Natural History and Marlborough Gallery.
Nicole Straus was included in the January 2002 special issue of Art & Auction entitled The Insiders: The Annual Survey of the Art World’s Most Powerful People. She is the co-chair of the Marketing & Public Relations Committee of the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton and lectures frequently in New York City on public relations issues.