Selected work
“Nicki has the ability to communicate the essence of a person, team, or organisation. She has done remarkable work in bringing to life the values of organisations.”
— Mike Pegg, author and strengths mentor
A sample of my work — across journalism, books, brand storytelling, and reports — built over more than thirty years of finding the proof that was already there, and shaping it so people believe, care, and act.
Most of it lives elsewhere. The links take you to it. Journalism opens the page because of how it came about: editors I’d pitched client stories to asked me to write for them directly. The brand work earned the byline.
Journalism
Two decades of reporting, across wireless technology, training and development, and social enterprise — much of it commissioned by editors I’d first met as a client-side writer.
A selection of what’s still readable.
Pioneers Post — Social Enterprise World Forum (2020)
A series of founder profiles for the global news outlet for social entrepreneurs and impact investors, commissioned for the Social Enterprise World Forum 2020. From a Kaytetye changemaker redesigning the future at YLab, to a Colorado recycling pioneer born in a school bus, to a teenage founder training the next generation of African leaders. The commission came on the back of award-winning copy I’d written for Cambridge Social Ventures.
The brief: bring four very different social enterprises to life for funders, peers, and the merely curious — each in its own voice.
Click here to read my founder profiles>>>
Professional Academy — guest columnist (2018–2020)
A regular contributor to Professional Academy, the CIM and CMI training provider, while mentoring its Level 4 marketing apprentices. A run of features on the themes I’d built a practice around years earlier: strengths-based leadership, story as a way of teaching, workplace culture, and persuasion that respects the reader.
Among them, a multi-part content-strategy series co-written with one of the Academy’s tutors, and an argument for home working as a productivity tool made well before the rest of the world caught up.
The brief: turn management research and marketing theory into features a working professional would actually finish — and go on to read the next.
Click the links below to read each blog >>>
- The Uncomfortable Truth: No Such Thing as a Great Leader
- 7 Leadership Fables Every Leader and Manager Should Read: Why Showing Not Telling works
- Converting With Content: Moving Leads Through a Sales Funnel
- HR Advice: How to Change Workplace Culture
- 5 Reasons WFH Pays
WirelessDevNet — European technology correspondent (2000–2003)
A weekly Newsbytes column and a hosted developer forum, “Holding Court,” for the Wireless Developer Network — one of the first online communities for mobile developers, founded in 1999. Reporting the standards, security flaws, and arguments shaping mobile and Wi-Fi as they emerged. One piece — “Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) — Gone in 15 Minutes” — is still cited in academic wireless-security research. Secured off the back of case studies written for Baltimore Technologies.
The brief: report on a fast-moving technical field every week, for developers who take joy in catching any corner cut — and host evolving conversations around it.
Books
Six published books, two in development
Co-author of First Aid for Feelings Manual and developmental editor/ writing partner on five further titles spanning leadership, emotional intelligence, strengths-based psychology, and wellbeing.
Two more titles in development, including a book on growth mindset with India’s leading success coach and a book positioning B2B businesses in the age of AI.
First Aid for Feelings Manual
Co-authored with health activist and social entrepreneur Thor A Rain — a self-care manual that turns a practitioner’s method into something readers can understand and use, especially as they’re struggling in the moment.
Click here to download a free 63-page excerpt from the manual >>>
Brand storytelling
Microsoft UK
Following a values-in-action report in which I identified 30 x one-minute stories showing how the company lived its societal values, I was retained as Microsoft UK’s CSR newshound. Each new story led to more projects with individuals, internal teams, and external contractors I met along the way.
The brief: turn the proof buried across our entire UK business into stories that show our positive societal impact.
Microsoft UK — Succeeding Together
One such project was a book of 19 partner success stories, written for Microsoft UK and published for its Worldwide Partner Conference in 2008. Each took a complex commercial relationship — gold certification, market entry, a new revenue stream, a landmark account win — and shaped it into a story a business reader could follow and act upon.
The brief: turn the proof buried across 19 partnerships into stories that show prospective partners what is possible.
The Communication Practice
A short explainer video, used as the website hero for this drama-based training company specialising in Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI).
The brief: create a short film to show leadership and wider teams why belonging matters — and how it’s built.
Aspuna Group
Branding and messaging guidelines, and every word of the website, for the world’s first social-impact commodities asset management business. I shaped complex value-chain economics into language investors, development agencies, and farming communities could all act on. I now sit on the board as a Non-Executive Director.
The brief: turn a complex new business model into a story three very different audiences can relate to.
BT Lynx
The Collaborative Workplace
Positioning brochure for a BT Group IT services alliance. Deep technical capability — infrastructure, security, service management — shaped into a clear case for the business buyers who decide. One of a series of commissioned whitepapers.
The brief: make two companies’ combined IT capability read as a single, simple proposition.
Waterstone’s
Our People
A book of stories colleagues share about each other, showing how their days are made brighter, and their business goals are met through the people living the Waterstone’s values.
The brief: surface the values that are already alive within an organisation and shape them into stories that aid recruitment and retention.
Reports and case studies
SmithsonHill — Delivering the UK AgriTech Cluster
A whitepaper making the case for a new AgriTech cluster in south Cambridgeshire. Dense economic evidence — industrial strategy, food security, the “Cambridge or overseas” argument for keeping knowledge-intensive business in the region — shaped into a clear, persuasive case for government and investors. Launched at the House of Commons and recognised with a CIPR award.
The brief: turn complex economic evidence into a case government and investors can’t ignore.
Ormiston Families
Brighter Futures Strategic Report
Ormiston Families is a charity that supports families in the East of England to build resilience and make choices that improve the life chances of their children. This book, which includes service user stories, was commissioned to launch a new three-year strategy.
The brief: bring a new strategy to life for funders and supporters using service users’ stories.
FamilyCarersNet — Cambridge Judge Business School venture
FamilyCarersNet was a social-enterprise venture, born out of Cambridge Judge Business School, serving the UK’s unpaid carers. As well as writing features, I built and mentored a team of correspondents who were carers themselves. The stories carried because they came from people who’d been there.
The brief: make one of the least-visible jobs there is visible — and build a team of writers who can sustain it.
Cambridge Social Ventures Impact report
An impact report for Cambridge Judge Business School’s social enterprise programme — five years of work with more than 800 social entrepreneurs, told through the founders whose ventures it helped build.
The brief: turn five years of stats into a handful of stories that prove the human return as clearly as the financial one.
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