30Under30 Nominee: Isla Lees
Great to hear from Global 30 Under 30 Nominee, Isla Lees, who is an Associate Consultant in Simulation Studio at Verve. Isla has worked at Verve since joining at 21 as a graduate of Social Anthropology from the University of Manchester. A little over a year later and still loving life in Manchester, Isla is very proud about how much her confidence has grown around making creative decisions and communicating the nuance of building a simulation to clients and at conferences. Isla also feels very grateful to have found a role that allows the freedom to experiment, apply her anthropological thinking and have a voice. These are all happy coincidences of finding herself in a role that didn’t exist a year ago, giving her and her team the opportunity to play and find out what is possible.
How did you find your way into research, data and insights?
I did not have a set ‘plan’ to get into the industry and I think the best way to explain it is I fell in by ‘following my nose’. The role description and name, which initially has no clear link to market research at all, just really interested me on a different level. It was all about human truth, ambiguity, realism and holism which speaks to all the things I love about Anthropology. Throughout my studies, I was always interested in ‘mediums’ and ‘technologies’ from the scale of work tools to computers and how we blend with these as a sort of symbiosis that makes new things possible. AI felt like the next big thought experiment to play with and see what was possible. I liked that the role explored the big questions like ‘if you are creating a persona simulation, how do you make it feel real without leaning on stereotypes that aren’t true to the data set you are building with?’, addressing one’s own biases.
So far, my journey has been fun. I quickly got the opportunity to own projects and design builds, have been to lots of in-person client sessions, spoke at a conference and have been able to see and hear how the simulations I have built have made real differences within teams. I always enjoy launches which are the first chance I get to translate the complexity and nuance of a build to a client and to demo the simulation and show how easy and intuitive it is to access this.
What part of your work are you most proud of and why?
My brain is split into two parts here. There’s a specific project, LBS, and a collaborative way I designed a new type of simulation.
LBS is a project I am really proud of. I built a comms expert to support with comms for vulnerable customers by embedding empathetic vulnerability frameworks, designing scripts that can reconstruct the context and draw insights from transcripts and comms testing documents, and creating a comms playbook to ensure responses are filtered through regulatory expectations and guardrails. Beyond supporting increased comms testing capacities, testing more comms and faster, what I am proud of here is the impact and almost ethos of this build. Bringing the voice of vulnerable customers into more decision for communication to support more empathetic comms with all customers. This project recently won an ESOMAR Innovation Award!
The second thing that springs to mind when I think of what I am proud of is my involvement in designing a simulation flow and system prompt for Innovation Simulations. I loved the challenge of bringing big ideas from cultures and futures team members, client context and needs and category expert thinking together to bring a simulation to life that could produce disruptive, fresh ideas. I am proud of how in my building of a simulation, a typically individual task, I was able to break big ideas and source value down to collaborate really strongly and stretch possibilities further to produce something not just for the client, but also a template for the team to take to other projects for innovation simulations.
What have you learned so far that you wish you’d known when you started your career?
If I could go back a year and tell myself one thing before I started at Verve, I would say to keep being creative and keep being opinionated. Trying to find a ‘right’ way to do something is limiting but staying critical, creative, collaborative and opinionated gets you further to the interesting questions that make your work better.
What excites you most about the future of insights and what would you like to help change?
What excites me most is how critical and creative the conversations I have had and hear are. Researchers seem to be challenging the way things are done and, in this challenge, are being creative to think of better, more interesting ways to do things that aren’t just about efficiency and speed but are about nuance. I especially like how AI is helping us break things down, take them apart and examine them. I think as a Gen Z, we are sort of predisposed to think this way, to challenge, create our own paths and make things fun and I hope this is the type of momentum I can help to keep up.
What advice would you give someone just starting out in the industry today?
Honestly, the same advice I would have given myself in the question, ‘What have you learned so far that you wish you’d known when you started your career?’ I would say worry less about the technical skills you have not got yet; they are the easy bit!
Who has helped you along the way?
My whole team is great. I can’t seem to single out one person. They have really given me a platform to experiment and have a voice and I am very grateful for that. My previous line manager, Sam, has been especially part of that, teaching me that the technical skills really aren’t that hard and always encouraging me to keep asking the deep questions that never take ‘looks right’ as the final output. Kylie has also been amazing in helping me build up confidence on the client side of things, trusting me to speak in front of clients, attend in-person sessions and be on panels at conferences. I also would love to thank Joe who started at Verve at the same time as me. Being able to brain storm and bounce ideas off each other has been a core part of me being able to make decisions and think about what is possible for my own projects.