Nicole Gillespie

Nicole Gillespie

KPMG Chair in Organizational Trust, Professor of Management, The University of Queensland

Nicole is a leading international authority on trust in organizations, and an International Research Fellow at the Centre for Corporate Reputation at the University of Oxford. Trained as an organizational psychologist, Nicole’s research and consulting over the past 20 years has focused on developing and repairing trust in organizations, leading with trust and developing cultures of trust, and helping organizations understand, measure and benchmark stakeholder trust.

Together with KPMG, Nicole has a program of research underway examining trust in emerging technology, including an international survey of public trust of artificial intelligence systems. Nicole is experienced in developing and validating measures of trust including measures used by the US Army and the National Canadian Trust Survey.

Nicole has written commissioned reports and case studies on building and repairing stakeholder trust for the UK Institute of Business Ethics and a policy note for the UK Parliament on restoring trust in the financial sector after the global financial crisis.

Nicole has worked with clients across the public and private sectors to develop and use evidence-based insights to inform trust building and repair, including in the finance and banking, natural resources, health, defence, higher education, R&D, and not-for-profit industries. In 2019, Nicole was made an Academic Fellow of the Australian and New Zealand School of Government for outstanding contribution to public management. She is a regular speaker at industry, government and academic round-tables and conferences, and her research is regularly featured in international and national media outlets.

  1. Areas of expertise
    • Artificial intelligence
    • Social values and behaviors
    • Technology
    • Trust, integrity and transparency
    • Universities and Colleges, Higher Education
  2. Education & qualification
    • PhD Psychology and Management, University of Melbourne

    • BA (1st Class Honours in Psychology), University of Queensland