Nikaya Smith, LCSW

Licensed Clinical Social Worker, NY · Psychotherapist

  • Autism

  • ADHD

  • AuDHD

  • Complex Trauma

  • LGBTQIA+

  1. English

Nikaya is a licensed clinical social worker with over a decade of clinical experience working across a wide range of settings — including foster care, juvenile justice, medical social work, and community mental health agencies. She brings deep knowledge of complex systems and an equally deep commitment to the people navigating them.

She brings a warm, authentic approach to therapy — one shaped by both her professional training and her own lived experience with neurodivergence, parenting, and trauma.

Specialties and Areas of Focus

PopulationsAutistic, ADHD, and AuDHD adults, and other neuro-minorities · LGBTQIA+ individuals · immigrants · parents · young adults · adults of mixed race and ethnicityClinical AreasComplex trauma · Anxiety · Depression · Relationship and interpersonal issuesSpecial InterestsIntersection of neurodivergence and complex trauma

Therapeutic Approach and Modalities

Nikaya brings a warm, authentic approach to therapy. Her sessions are collaborative, affirming, and deeply supportive — creating space for patients to uncover patterns and heal at their own pace.

Unique to her work: Nikaya is depth-oriented and comes to this work with a passion and understanding shaped by extensive lived experience — with neurodivergence, parenting, and navigating complex systems.

  • Psychodynamic-relational

  • Person-centered

  • Neurodiversity-affirming

Training and Credentials

Degrees & InstitutionsMSW, Social Work — Columbia UniversityCertifications & Specialized TrainingTrained in Brief Strategic Family TherapyRelevant Past Experience & PublicationsExtensive clinical experience across the foster care system, juvenile justice system, medical social work, and therapy within community agencies and organizations

Personal Note

I identify as neurodivergent and came to that understanding later in life. That journey — the gradual piecing together of why the world felt the way it did — is part of what drives me in this work.

I am also the parent of a neurodivergent child. This has given me a deeply personal understanding of what it means to support a developing mind that the world was not built for.

Work with Nikaya. Free 20-minute call