A native of Ohio, Nancy began her college career in design at The University of Cincinnati in industrial design. After two years of study, she was accepted as one of a few undergraduate students at Cranbrook Academy of Art where she completed her BFA in interdisciplinary design, and then went directly to Yale and received an MFA in graphic design. Within a year of graduation, she started a practice with her husband, Tom Wedell whom she met at Cranbrook. Their early projects developed a visual vocabulary with a complexity of structure and color that reflected the high-technology and consumer electronics clients they had in Boston such as Digital Equipment Corporation, and Boston Acoustics. Over the years they have worked at the boundaries of graphic design and photography, creating collaged, illusory images influenced by modern painting and architecture. In 1983 Nancy won an Award in Progressive Architecture's Conceptual Furniture Competition and in the late 1980s Skolos-Wedell's work was featured in the book, New American Design. Nancy began teaching at RISD in the late'80s. She was appointed to the full-time faculty in 1999. In 1998 she became an elected member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale and in 2003 she was named an AIGA Fellow. Skolos has won many awards with her husband including Silver Prize in Toyama and Bronze Prize in Lahti Poster Biennials.