Bio

Once described as “human caffeine” on Twitter, Dr Nicola Millard injects a positive, people-centred expresso shot to innovation & future strategy. Half social scientist, half technologist, all academic, she uses techniques from disciplines such as design thinking, psychology, anthropology, computing, & business consulting to generate data, provocations and stories which can engage & create conversations from the board room, to the front line. No frothy coffee; just solid research. In her long & varied career at BT – mostly based at Adastral Park in Ipswich, Suffolk – Nicola has done many jobs, including futurology, research, usability, customer service, marketing, & business consulting. She was involved with a number of BT firsts, including the first application of artificial intelligence into BT's call centres, BT's initial experiments with home working, & helping to develop BT’s “net easy” score, a new way of measuring customer experience. She currently looks at innovation in both employee and customer experience for BT’s large corporate and public sector customers. Nicola got her PhD from Lancaster University in 2005 & has authored over 50 publications – including 1 book and numerous book chapters. She is a mentor at Cambridge Judge and an external examiner at Cranfield Business School. Nicola is an award winning presenter, with 2 TED talks & hundreds of conference panel, chair & keynote sessions under her belt. She occasionally pops up on radio & TV around the world, including appearances on 'Woman's Hour', 'Tech Tent', 'The Media Show', 'The Genius of Invention' & 'Back in Time for the Weekend' for the BBC. She is a judge on numerous award panels, including the European Contact Centre & Customer Service, Institute of Customer Service, the CCMA & the Association of Business Psychology awards. In both 2020 & 2021 she was listed as one of the top 20 UK CX Influencers by Customer Experience Magazine. In her spare time, Nicola sings with various cabaret, country, jazz & blues combos, plays the ukulele & bodhrán (not at the same time), & lurks in darkened rooms watching both movies & theatre. She is also a qualified judo coach & a keen swimmer.