Dr Nicola Hodson, British businesswoman and Chair of IBM UK & Ireland, has a career that has spanned the nuclear, consulting, and technology sectors. She has had significant roles at CSC, Microsoft and IBM.
Nicola was born in Widnes, Cheshire to a sporty family. Her father was a semi-professional player in Rugby league. Her family and teachers at her all-girls school piqued her interest in Science and Technology. After A-Levels, she read Chemistry with Material Science at the University of Liverpool. Nicola developed a keen interest in laser engineering. She then transitioned to an MBA at Lancaster University, driven by her commercial mindset and practical approach. After this, she studied for a PhD at the University of Liverpool.
I had a brief foray with dentistry, which lasted all of three days! I went on to study Chemistry and Material Science. Loved it … particularly loved the material science because it was very practical, and then stayed on to do a research degree in that space, as well as more materials engineering. We’d had incoming a new professor who was into laser engineering, which was quite new at the time, and I managed to get a PhD sponsored by industry.
Nicola’s first job was in the Nuclear industry with BNFL where she worked on large change management programmes. As a result of this experience, she went into consulting in the energy and utility sectors. She came across the big IT sourcing firms and decided she would like to work in the IT industry.
I realised during the course of my research that I’m pretty commercial in my thinking. And so I was very clear. I started work in the nuclear industry in a new research lab, and quite quickly established partnerships with industry and looking at … make-or-buy for R&D funding. So we did sponsored PhDs with universities. We did partnerships.
Nicola started work in tech at CSC, a large IT outsourcing company (it later became DXC). She moved on to roles at Siemens and then Microsoft to lead their public sector business.
I was at CSC for five years. I learned some incredible commercial skills. It was fantastic. Big American corporation. Got to do a lot across Europe – outsourcing, systems integration, apps management and so brilliant experience. And then I moved to Siemens. Siemens was much smaller as a tech business at the time. Its tech business sat in a product conglomerate, and I went there to head up sales, marketing and sort of merge a couple of sales teams, rebuild their go-to market, decide which sectors to be in, hire a team and get them back into growth mode, which we did really successfully over three years.
When Nicola joined Microsoft, it was when they were developing Office 365 and were transitioning from a product business to a service business. Nicola also worked on the launch of the Surface range of products:
There were some really gnarly challenges… bringing in a new hardware business was one, changing a business to a cloud-based business was another one. We were a real front runner in that. And then, you know, building out an ecosystem of ISVs, building out an ecosystem of partners that could implement Azure when skills were very nascent in the market, and sort of scaling the business from super small to something very big and vibrant.
After 15 years with Microsoft, Nicola moved to IBM to become CEO of IBM, UK and Ireland, and the first woman to hold that role.
I think tech is a great industry to be in. It moves fast. You have to be curious. You have to approach it with a learning mindset. And so I’m a little bit of a polymath. I think that’s really important. I don’t think it matters that much where you start your career, if you embody those behaviours.
Nicola believes that in tech leadership, practical experience is paramount and she emphasizes the value of a curious mindset, energy for new challenges, and the ability to adapt to different roles and problems. Nicola advises young women and others entering the tech industry to stay up-to-date, use AI models, and learn from experienced leaders. She encourages following an internal compass to achieve personal and professional goals, regardless of external signals.