The work
And how one thing leads to another
Brand storytelling, reports and case studies, books, and journalism — built over thirty-plus years of finding the proof that was already there, and shaping it so people believe, care, and act.
Every project here led to another one. That wasn’t the plan. It’s what tends to happen when the story turns out to be true.
Brand storytelling
“We overhauled our therapy platform, booking system, AI integration, and database in parallel — while caring for patients in vulnerable moments. Nicki built the communications backbone that held it together. Staff onboarding dropped from four months to three weeks, training completion rose from 47% to 98%, and patient referral times dropped from 25 days to four. NPS held throughout. Transformation projects fail when nobody explains what’s happening in language people understand. This one didn’t.”
– Beth Aplin, Head of Transformation, ieso Digital Health
ieso Digital Health
Four contracts. $56m raised. Training completion 47% → 98%
Four separate briefs over several years, each one a different problem.
Positioning for their first digital product — an online version of GAD-7 and PHQ-9, the NHS screening questionnaires for anxiety and depression, with CBT worksheets that adapt to the results. The science was sound. The explanation wasn’t, because “AI in mental healthcare” reads as a threat to exactly the people who have to trust it. I wrote the positioning, then the words inside the product itself: onboarding, guidance, and the screens where someone finds out how they scored.
That led to six months as interim head of marketing, then editorial direction on a second product, then comms across a full platform transformation — therapy platform, booking system, AI integration and database, overhauled in parallel while patients were still being treated.
The UK business has since been acquired by Mindler.
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
Nineteen partnerships, one book, launched at their global conference
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
Belonging, explained by people who build it for a living
Created brand guidelines and wrote every word of the website for an experiential learning company that uses lived-experience research and drama-based learning to build cultures of genuine belonging — plus the script for the short film that became their homepage hero.
The brief: show leadership and wider teams why belonging matters, and how it’s built.
“Retaining Nicki as our communications partner was a wise move… This has led to us winning new contracts with non-governmental and governmental organisations in the global west and sub-Saharan Africa. She is strategic, creative and someone who you can absolutely trust to help you nail your messaging and make sure it holds true.”
— Maria-Yassin Jah, Aspuna Group
Aspuna Group
It started with a profile. It became a partnership
I first met Aspuna’s founder when Judge Business School asked me to write a profile of her business for its Cambridge Social Ventures directory. She was building what would become the world’s first social-impact commodities asset management business, working with smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa.
That first interview led to rather more than a profile: brand guidelines, every word of the website, and the repositioning that carried them through a pivot. Complex value-chain economics, shaped into language investors, development agencies and farming communities could all act on.
The brief: turn a complex new business model into a story three very different audiences can relate to.
I became their communications partner, then a non-executive director. I’m now writing the positioning for the founder’s next venture.
BT Lynx
The Collaborative Workplace
Two companies’ IT capability, read as one proposition
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.
Waterstones
Our People
Corporate values brought to life
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 Waterstones values.
The brief: surface the values that are already alive within an organisation and shape them into stories that aid recruitment and retention.
Books
Six published. Two in development
Co-author of the First Aid for Feelings Manual, and developmental editor or writing partner on five further titles — among them Stretch: Leading Beyond Boundaries with Dr Paul Brewerton and James Brook, and Leader iD: Discover Your Leadership Profile with Glenn Wallia and David Pilbeam. Subjects span leadership, emotional intelligence, strengths-based psychology, and wellbeing.
Two more in development: a book on growth mindset with India’s leading success coach, and one on 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 >>>
Reports and case studies
SmithsonHill
Delivering the UK AgriTech Cluster
Launched at the House of Commons. CIPR award-winning
A white paper 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
A three-year strategy, told through the families living it
Ormiston Families is a charity that supports families in the East of England to build resilience and make choices that improve their children’s life chances. This pamphlet, 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
Mentoring lived-experience writers
FamilyCarersNet was a social-enterprise venture, born out of Cambridge Judge Business School, serving the UK’s unpaid carers. Alongside 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
Five years, 800 founders, one story everyone could see
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 work grew from previous profiles. As did commissions from the entrepreneurs I profiled, and from Pioneers Post.
The brief: turn five years of stats into a handful of stories that prove the human return as clearly as the financial one.
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 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.
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.
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