Associate Professor Nicole Hartley’s academic career has never been about titles or tradition. For her, education is a lever for real-world impact. Driven by an innate curiosity and desire to empower others, Nicole has the unwavering belief that one conversation, one insight, or one caring gesture can change everything.
A service marketing expert with a keen eye on healthcare and technology, Nicole doesn't just research trends – she educates the next generation of business leaders to think more critically and act more ethically.
Nicole balances many diverse professional responsibilities at UQ. With an academic career in the field of services marketing and digital technology spanning 2 decades, she now holds positions as:
- the Future of Health Research Hub Lead
- Affiliate of Queensland Digital Health Centre, the UQ Centre for Enterprise AI and the Centre for the Business and Economics of Health
- the current Director of UQ’s MBA and Executive Education portfolio, teaching into Executive Education custom programs and co-facilitating the MBA’s research pathway.
Her secret to success? Finding the silver threads that bind her multi-faceted career together and constantly searching for opportunities to connect people to possibility.
Let’s learn more about this inspiring powerhouse and her work.
Why did you decide to become an academic?
I've always been innately curious about how people make decisions in the business realm. Whether that be from how policy is made, through to how leaders and executive teams make decisions, to how consumers make purchasing decisions. Understanding how good decisions are made has always been my passion.
This curiosity underpins pretty much everything I've been involved with in my academic career and is at the crux of my passion for leading our Executive Education and Master of Business Administration (MBA) portfolio. Because, from my perspective, these educational opportunities aren’t just about credentials; they're about empowering leaders to think more critically, act more ethically, make good decisions and create more meaningful impact.
What area of research are you most passionate about?
I'm a service marketer who is passionate about how technology is and can be used to create value in service environments, particularly in healthcare. I’m really interested in the ethics and morals of technology usage for all stakeholders including vulnerable groups.
My latest research explores corporate digital responsibility, focusing in on how organisations need to ensure their data and technology practices are ethical, and ensuring organisations aren’t using technology for technology's sake, but using it purposefully to add value to users. Whether that’s streamlining workflow practices for service workers and healthcare providers within an organisation or addressing how we can provide consumers and patients with greater access to their services or their healthcare needs and are using technology to do that.
"I’m also interested in looking at when technology is harmful, for example the use of GenAI by those who may be less experienced or less informed around technology or the domains in which they are seeking to use this – such as healthcare."
What does your role involve and what's your favourite thing about it?
My role as Director, MBA and Executive Education, involves talking to a lot of amazing, inspiring people every day. I love that I get exposure to a broad range of emerging leaders across different sectors and organisations, whether they’re leaders working in scaleups, not-for-profits, SMEs, large corporations or government agencies.
"Over time, I’ve come to realise a lot of the challenges leaders face in their roles aren’t unique. There are a lot of challenges that sit across the breadth and depth of our industries and sectors."
Having this understanding allows me spot potential opportunities for our leaders to grow their capacity, regardless of their industry and background. I support this capacity development by talking to academics across our School and Faculty about their research and what they’re passionate about, looking for ways to translate their research into impactful educational offerings that uplift capability across industries.
Nicole with the MBA team
How do you juggle this role with teaching and contributing to academia?
Throughout my academic career I’ve always been industry-focused, looking at the impact of my academic work and how we can reimagine, reshape or support business practice in real life.
"I think what’s critical is trying to put a silver thread through everything, making sure the research I'm engaged in is linked to the industry people I'm talking to, which is linked to the education we're providing."
As an example, we've worked with Metro South Health to deliver an Emerging Executive Leadership Program as a custom Executive Education initiative, and my research is in healthcare. Another example is being able to draw on my research to bring my PhD students into opportunities to apply the research they're doing in meaningful ways.
How would you describe your teaching style?
My teaching style has always been applied and experiential.
"I’ve never been one for teaching out of textbooks without allowing students the opportunity to apply their newfound knowledge, frameworks and tools to real business problems and organisations."
That requires teaching students not only how to critically analyse information but, more importantly, teaching them how to apply these new understandings in dynamic and often complex decision-making environments that have people at the core of them.
How do we create both social and economic value and support those who are working for and with us? These are the kinds of teaching scenarios that really result in students forging different ways of thinking and different ways of doing things.
What has been one of your biggest professional achievements?
I'm proud of the capstone project experience we created in the MBA. Over 7 or 8 years, we worked with over 80 industry partners across sectors to forge strategic recommendations that addressed strategically significant problems for organisations from start-ups to large corporations across a multitude of sectors.
These organisations didn’t have the bandwidth to work on these strategic initiatives, particularly the not-for-profits we worked with. Our MBA students came up with some highly impactful recommendations.
"Seeing the organisations implement their recommendations and witnessing the long-term benefits of these projects is really rewarding."
What drives you and what's your secret to success?
What drives me is helping other people succeed by building their confidence and providing connections. When I think about the success I've had throughout my career, it's always been because I’ve had people at the heart of what I do, thinking about who I can connect them to and how I can support them in their own journeys.
What do you want to be remembered for?
When I think about someone who had an impact on me, it was my grade 11 and 12 English teacher. She used to engage in small acts of kindness, sitting down with me and getting to know me personally. She gave me some good advice, and believed in me, and I really respected that she took the time to make me feel seen and heard.
I want to create that for the people I engage with in our MBA and leadership programs. I want people to walk away from their MBA and Executive Education experiences knowing we cared about who they are.
"I hope that we provide new perspectives or ways of thinking about something, and that they feel they are capable of anything they put their minds, hearts and souls into. That's the kind of legacy I want to leave."
What is the value of an MBA and will it maintain value in future?
From my perspective, the enduring value of an MBA is two-fold:
1. The ability to develop, hone and retain the muscle strength around critical thinking and making critical decisions. Yes, new technology like generative AI is fabulous. We can and should use it to help support workflows and decision making in business practice. But without having a critical lens on what good practice is and how to analytically examine and interrogate information, leaders are likely going to make critical errors.
"It’s critical to keep people at the heart of everything. AI can tell you what best practice is, but it can’t read your staff sentiment or your stakeholder perceptions and needs."
Implementing best practice could be the worst thing for your organisation if you don’t also ensure people are at the centre of your decision making.
2. The network. The MBA classroom is one of the few places in the business world where you are exposed to, and have a chance to learn from, others’ perspectives from a broad range of sectors. Typically, we go to conferences that are in our own fields, where we hear similar things from similar-minded people. Rarely do we expose ourselves to other-minded people with different perspectives, but it's those different perspectives that are often the gems of wisdom for us that help us think and behave differently.
"The UQ MBA has a very rare combination of C-suite level executives and emerging leaders, which provides a phenomenal richness of learning and networking opportunities."
You can also create amazing lifelong connections with people you never imagined possible, whose expertise and insights you can draw upon forevermore. I think that's incredibly powerful.
The enduring value of the UQ MBA is in the critical and analytical thinking skills you’ll gain married with the human-centred skills you’ll develop by working in teams and learning to bring different-minded people along on the journey.
You’ll also find value from the calibre of the faculty we have teaching into the program who have worked in and with industry and bring their applied knowledge into the classroom. And as far as I can see, we’re still one of the most flexible MBA options available. We're not forcing people to follow a dedicated learning pathway and there's lots of choices in the program now to suit different career aspirations.
