Meet Nikki Diaz of Nikabilities in Highland Park

Nikki, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I am Nikki Diaz, I disabled woman born with Spinal Muscular Atrophy, and I live out my life in a powered wheelchair. My story is a creative variety of songwriting, writing, modeling & advocacy. My heart’s desire is to establish a brand of inclusion in our society, a successful vision of an independent disabled woman while setting a positive standard to help the world around us feel inspired to engage and participate in all aspects of the lives of disabled people without the stigmas.

My journey started in 1996 when I attended ‘Seminar in the Rockies’, a seminar for Christian music artists. There I met my first producer, Jeff Nelson who’s based in Nashville. Jeff was a very heartening producer, always guiding me as a novice. At one point during the production phase we faced the challenge of whether or not traveling to Nashville was going to be too challenging for me but I had to cut my vocals so Jeff set out to locate a recording engineer for me here in LA. That’s when I was introduced to producer/recording engineer Dan Garcia. The two came together and collaborated with Steve Dady from Nashville to record my first album which I’m happy to say gave me my first opportunity at creative freedom in writing all the lyrics to.

For a few years, I took my chances at gigging but discovered that writing was where my passion was. So I took a step back and married my late husband and became a housewife and a mother to two stepchildren. In the latter years of that marriage, my husband became very encouraging and supportive about me re-entering the music world as a songwriter. I reached out to my past network and made some connections and discovered a wonderful and caring circle of indie artists in the singer-songwriter/Americana genre that were blowing up the L.A. music scene. These precious people quickly became my friends, they embraced my life, and I begin rebuilding my music career.

In the midst of all this I started hearing about a modeling campaign that was circling the nation. I came across the Raw Beauty Project online. It was a modeling project campaign celebrating the lives of empowering disabled women. I was eager to see them come to Los Angeles and in the late spring of 2015, they’d announced that they were looking for disabled women models for the L.A. area. I was over the moon! So my husband and a mentor I had at that time encouraged me to submit my essay and my photos.

Just a few months after submitting that my husband fell ill and became confined to a vegetative state and he was placed in a nursing facility. We never got to celebrate together that I was chosen to be one of the 29 models to join this campaign. To this day that experience, getting the chance to be a model in such an influential way, changed my life forever. I have since been working with well-known disabled model Angela Rockwood as a modeling/career coach in order to pursue a career in modeling.

Advocacy work is a story that I hold very dear to my heart. Around the time I was preparing for the modeling campaign, I reached out to a friend who is the executive director of an independent living center in downtown LA asking her what would be the best route for me to  become an advocate for disabled people. She invited me to come and sit on a board of directors meeting, and I just fell in love with the power of these people. I’m very proud to say that after the first two meetings I had inquired if I could join, and I applied. From the moment I was voted in I knew it was a passion of mine that I was going to stick with for the rest of my life. After a couple of years I was eager to take advocacy to a different level. I reached out to the Muscular Dystrophy Association and found that they were looking for a national advocacy team and was very happy when my application was accepted. So I serve on a board of directors locally here, and I’m on an advocacy team nationally.

Writing has been a passion of mine since I was a young girl. I kept journals and wrote poetry all the time. I’d always dreamt of writing my own book or several. I came across the Greenhouse Productions when I met Shun Lee Fong (founder, director and author) at a songwriters workshop. It was extremely inspiring to listen to him speak. Since then I’ve been to quite a few meetings, and I’m a proud member of Greenhouse. Shun has assisted me a few times as my editor while I worked on several writing projects. I’m currently working on my autobiography and a few other books I’d like to keep a surprise.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
In 2015 I lost my husband’s presence to a heart attack that put him in a vegatative state for 17 months until he passed in 2017. This crisis thrust me into complete independence and finding a way to sustain myself. With zealous I took on this challenge giving it my all. I discovered that the word challenge is a lifestyle set in stone for me. When I see a challenge in front of me, in some cases it’s like my inner power wakes up and says “there’s a solution in this somewhere, let’s figure it out and find it.” Sometimes solution finding is exciting for me.

Nikabilities – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
Nikabilities is a name that exemplifies the Abilities I have amidst my physical responsibilities of being disabled. It enterprises all of my gifts and talents into one name while encompassing the energy of my aspirations and the steps I take to achieve.

As for what I specialize in and what sets me apart is one in the same. I think simply enough it’s the gift to inspire. It’s my right to share with this world just how human I really am and hope that they see my humanness first and foremost before they see my disability. My desires, my passions my dreams, my failures, and my glories are my identity. My disability is just my circumstance.

As a company, I’d say I’m most proud that I have been lucky to be handed multi-talented gifts. It truly humbles me every time I get a chance like this to share with the world my life as an example, my words, my story. I have the same needs as everyone else. But when I need to eat someone needs to feed me, when I need to get out of bed someone needs to dress me.

I’m at the mercy at strangers every day all day long. And yet still I’m given the chance with helping hands and my talents to give back to my world. Bottom line, I may not be able to brush my hair out of my eyes by myself but set me in front of a computer, and I can definitely do my part to change the world.

What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
Currently I’m 2 songs in with recording and pre-production of my 2nd album with producer/co-writer Ted Russell Kamp. This album is my Rebirth. New sound, new friends who contributed their magic, it’s a true symbol of my new life. I’ve gone through mountains and valleys to get to this point and getting here was my first priority focus. I would say it’s what kept my foot on the gas. My proudest moment thus far had to be in September 2018. It was a long day recording my first two songs for my album project. I remember coming out of the Station House studio into the sun and just feeling showered by a sense of gratitude. I felt beyond accomplished, I felt reborn. A feeling that I had needed for a long time.