Lara Nikola
Smart Sips Coffee
Corporate Champion

Lara Nikola is the president of Smart Sips Coffee, a woman-owned New Jersey based company with products made in the USA. Smart Sips is an exciting brand of flavored coffees, lattes, cappuccinos and hot chocolates with a mission to create delicious, unique products that add excitement into one’s daily coffee drinking routine.

She has created a niche in the highly competitive industry with guilt-free, dessert-inspired flavored coffees such as Chocolate Peanut Butter, Blueberry Cinnamon Crumble, Banana Cream and many more.

Lara has been featured on Good Morning America, Fox & Friends, Money Magazine, ROI-NJ and the cover of NJBiz.

To support Lara, you can join her team or make a donation here.

Aurora D.
Rheumatoid Arthritis & Psoriatic Arthritis
Teen Honoree

At age 9, Aurora was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis because of Crohn’s disease. At 12, she was diagnosed with psoriatic arthritis.

One of Aurora’s dreams is to become a professional ballerina. She has played Clara, en pointe, in The Nutcracker. She also enjoys riding horses. While it seems, she loves choosing activities that are difficult with arthritis, Aurora believes that it makes her stronger and fight harder.

Some days Aurora can’t walk, chew, sleep, or hold anything because of the pain. She keeps persisting through the pain and doesn’t give up. Aurora says, “We can do it. We are Warriors!”