Nadia obtained a BA in Linguistics from McGill University in Canada. Her interests in carrying out field linguistics on previously undescribed languages led her to complete an MA in Language Documentation and Description at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. Her master's thesis examined the phenomenon of Differential Object Marking (DOM) in Uighur, a Turkic language spoken in Northwestern China.

She is currently working at the Jakarta Field Station on the Semarangan and the West Kalimantan projects. Her interests in linguistics include historical linguistics, linguistic typology, information structure, and Austronesian. She hopes to further study the Chinese languages and non-Malay languages of West Kalimantan.