Once described as “human caffeine” on Twitter, Dr Nicola Millard injects a people-centred expresso shot to innovation and future strategy. Half social scientist, half technologist, all academic, she uses techniques from disciplines such as design thinking, psychology, anthropology, computing, and business consulting to generate data, provocations and stories to engage and create conversations from the board room, to the front line. In her long and varied career at BT, Nicola has done many jobs, including futurology, research, usability, customer service, marketing, and business consulting. She was involved with some BT firsts, including the application of artificial intelligence into BT’s call centres, BT’s experiments with home working, and helping to develop BT’s “net easy” customer score. Nicola got her PhD from Lancaster University in 2005 and has authored over 50 publications – including 1 book and numerous book chapters. She is an award-winning presenter, with 2 TEDx talks and hundreds of conference panel, chair and keynote sessions under her belt. She occasionally pops up on radio and TV around the world, including appearances on ‘Woman’s Hour’, ‘Tech Tent’, ‘The Media Show’, ‘The Genius of Invention’ and ‘Back in Time for the Weekend’ for the BBC.
