CX on the Frontier:
Breaking the Rules of Human and AI Engagement
Debate II: The Machine Mind
This session explores how AI is increasingly shaping the decisions we make, the content we consume, and the systems that run around us, often without us noticing. We’ll debate what it means to live alongside “machine minds” that don’t just respond to human behaviour, but actively anticipate it, influence it, and automate it at scale.
Meet our panel:
Elaine Lee
Vulnerability and Inclusive Customer Experience Specialist
Elaine Lee is Managing Director at Reynolds Busby Lee, where she advises organisations on customer experience and responsible marketing. She brings strategic insight and a practical, people-first approach to help brands improve communications, loyalty, and support for vulnerable customers. She also works with contact centre teams to effectively deliver those communications in personalised and engaging ways that ensure brand engagement and loyalty.
Nerys Corfield
Independant Contact Centre Consultant, Injection Consulting
With over a quarter-century of hands-on experience in the world of contact centres – whether it’s running them, scrutinising their operations, or judging their performance – I’ve developed a keen understanding of what truly drives their success. This experience coupled with an obsession into the world of contact centre technology means that when I conduct my proven contact centre discovery framework the practical and actionable recommendations cut across People, Processes, and Technology.
My approach is tenacious, creative, pragmatic and unapologetically direct. I look to provide businesses with the clarity and conviction needed to bring about transformation helping them embrace meaningful enhancements and navigate a path to:
✔️ Heightened Operational Performance
✔️ Cost Reduction
✔️ Elevated Customer Experience
Nicola Collister
CEO & Founder, Custerian
Nicola Collister is the CEO and Co-Founder of Custerian, a people-powered change agency that challenges conventional thinking about customer experience. With over 25 years at senior executive level across FTSE 100 companies and global organisations, Nicola has built a reputation as one of the industry’s most commercially minded disruptors — someone who delivers transformation, not just talks about it.
Her career has been defined by firsts: pioneering homeworking solutions at the RAC before remote work was mainstream, building one of the UK’s first self-employed home agent networks, scaling a home courier operation to over 3,500 people at Yodel, and delivering the UK’s largest customer experience transformation programme as Group CX Director at Shop Direct (now Very Group).
Today, through Custerian, Nicola works with organisations navigating the forces reshaping CX — from AI and automation to the fundamental rethink of how businesses create value through people. Her firm’s “People Experience” framework directly confronts the industry’s declining customer satisfaction scores, arguing that technology alone won’t fix what’s broken. Real transformation demands a commercially grounded approach that connects customer outcomes, colleague experience, and bottom-line returns.
Nicola is also a business mentor, investor in scale-up businesses, and a vocal critic of CX that prioritises buzzwords over business impact. She brings sharp, experience-backed views on where the outsourcing and CX sectors are heading in 2027 and beyond — and what leaders need to do now to stay ahead.
Paula Brockwell
Founder & Lead Psychologist, The Employee Experience Project
Paula Brockwell is a Chartered Psychologist and Founder of The Employee Experience Project. She works with HR leaders, executive teams and boards to make culture a strategic lever for performance.
Paula brings deep insight into human behaviour, motivation and organisational dynamics. She helps senior leaders understand what is really driving experience and performance in their organisations, and supports them to turn that insight into focused, practical action. Her work is grounded, evidence-based and commercially aware, helping organisations create workplaces where people can do their best work and deliver meaningful impact.
Meet our trilogy chair:
Marianne Withers
Business Partner, Atombit
Marianne Withers is a recognised force in customer experience, operational transformation, and human-centred innovation. As Founder & CEO of The Verity Centre, and now leading Atombit’s CX, People, and Technology Transformation portfolio in the UK, she is shaping a new era of intelligent, emotionally attuned business performance. Marianne combines deep operational expertise with emerging technology to deliver data driven, design led solutions that redefine how organisations serve, support, and connect with their customers.
With over 30 years’ experience across financial services, healthcare, energy, and the retail sector, Marianne is renowned for transforming cultures, elevating performance, and unlocking sustainable growth. Her work bridges commercial impact with human insight, creating environments where people thrive, technology amplifies capability, and customers feel genuinely understood.
As an Entrepreneur in Residence at the University of Portsmouth, she mentors founders with strategic guidance, innovation support, and ecosystem building, championing inclusive entrepreneurship and advancing women in enterprise. Marianne also serves as a Non-Executive Director for The Road from Karachi, providing strategic counsel to its founder and driving the organisation’s long-term vision, operational maturity, and community impact.
Bold, authentic, and instinctively future-focused, Marianne is a catalyst for meaningful change, empowering people, accelerating innovation, and redefining what modern leadership looks like.