Lesley Wilkinson on Her Experience with Nadia at Experian

Lesley Wilkinson — Chief Talent Officer, Experian. Lesley leads people strategy for Experian's 22,000 employees across markets including the UK, Australia, and Brazil. Experian is one of the top 25 Great Places to Work in the world and has been among the earliest enterprise adopters of AI coaching — building Nadia into leadership development programs, 360 feedback processes, and performance management cycles at scale.

Experian started with what Lesley calls "vanilla Nadia" — a plug-and-play deployment that still drove the highest adoption rates she had ever seen from leadership content. From there, they built something more. Role-play simulations. Integration with Experian's internal 360 data. A mid-level leadership program with AI at its core, taking leaders from their 360 results through to bespoke development content tailored to their individual needs. In this short clip, Lesley describes what that journey has looked like and where Experian is taking it next.

Key Takeaways

• "Vanilla Nadia" drove the highest adoption Lesley had ever seen from leadership content. Before any customization at all, Experian's plug-and-play deployment produced adoption statistics Lesley describes as unlike anything she had seen from leadership development content. That baseline result validated the core product before Experian began layering in their own data and frameworks.
• Role-play simulations came directly from leader feedback. After the initial rollout, Experian's leaders said the advice was useful — but they wanted to actually practice. Experian responded by adding role-play simulations, letting leaders rehearse the conversations they needed to have rather than just think through them.
• Connecting Nadia to internal 360 data made it genuinely bespoke. Experian integrated Nadia with their own leadership data sets, allowing managers to bring their actual 360 feedback into coaching conversations — asking Nadia not just what to improve, but how to leverage existing strengths even further. The coaching became personalized to each leader's specific results, not generic development content.
• A mid-level leadership program is now being built with AI at its core. Experian's current frontier: a development program for mid-level leaders across their global franchise, designed from the ground up with AI as the central mechanism. Nadia takes leaders from their 360 through tailored development content aligned to their individual need — combining scale with genuine personalization.

Questions This Clip Answers

What does it look like to move from a basic AI coaching deployment to a fully customized enterprise experience?

Experian's journey illustrates the natural maturation path for enterprise AI coaching. They started with a standard deployment — what Lesley calls "vanilla Nadia" — tested it with various leader groups, and observed adoption rates higher than any leadership content they had previously deployed. From there, they responded to what leaders actually asked for: first adding role-play simulations, then integrating Nadia with Experian's own internal 360 leadership data, and now building an entire mid-level leadership development program with AI at its core. Each stage deepened personalization while maintaining scale.

How is Experian integrating AI coaching with its 360 feedback process?

Experian has connected Nadia to its internal leadership data sets so that managers can bring their actual 360 results directly into coaching conversations. This allows a leader to ask Nadia not just how to address a development area, but how to leverage a strength they already have even more effectively. The coaching becomes anchored to the leader's real data rather than generic frameworks — which is what makes it feel genuinely individual even when deployed across thousands of people globally.

What does Experian's new mid-level leadership program look like with AI at its core?

Experian is building a development program for mid-level leaders across its global franchise — covering markets from the UK to Australia to Brazil — with Nadia as the central mechanism. The program takes each leader from their 360 results through to development content tailored to their specific organizational context and their individual areas of need. Rather than AI being one component of a traditional program structure, it is the architecture through which the entire development experience is delivered and personalized.

Full Clip Transcript

What has Experian's journey with Nadia looked like — from first deployment to where you are now?

Lesley: Being a leader is hard. It's always been hard, and it's always been really lonely. But I do think we've come to a place where technology changes are outstripping our ability as human beings to keep up. And as a leader, that means you've got to be able to keep up — and you've got to be able to do the same for your teams.

So we started off with what I'm going to call vanilla Nadia. It was a plug-and-play deployment. We tested with various groups of leaders — and we found incredibly high adoption. I've never seen adoption statistics so high from leadership content. And then quite quickly, on top of that basic version, we added simulations, because leaders said: "This is really useful advice, but I'd love to actually be able to role-play." So we added role-plays.

We started working with Valence and experimenting with attaching Nadia to some of our internal leadership data sets, so that managers could engage with our own data. Things like: "I have this 360, it's telling me I'm fantastic at X — how do I use X even more?" And Nadia can work with that data. So it's bespoke to us, but still incredibly personalized to every single leader.

We're now experimenting with one of our leadership programs for our mid-level leaders — across our franchise, all around the world. We're actually building the program with AI at its core. And what Nadia does is take leaders from their 360 through to tailored development based on our own development content, matched to their bespoke individual need.