Nathalie Nahai

Why organisations work with Nathalie Nahai

• Her psychological model for how digital persuasion builds or erodes consumer trust is grounded in a decade of published research, not reactions to recent AI headlines, which gives marketing and strategy teams a diagnostic framework rather than a new concern to manage.
• Business Unusual directly addresses the commercial consequences of values misalignment, applying the frameworks of self-determination theory and eudaimonic consumerism to the question of why consumers switch, stay and trust: with practical implications for brand, marketing and leadership strategy.
• She co-created TheValuesMap.com with Dr Kiki Leutner of Goldsmiths University, a scientifically grounded instrument that organisations can use to measure and communicate the values they actually hold, converting a strategic abstraction into a usable tool that survives the board conversation.
• She translates the ethics of AI and persuasive technology into a commercially legible argument that boards can act on, rather than a compliance burden that legal teams manage.
• Webs of Influence, published by Pearson and translated into seven languages, is used by universities and Fortune 500 companies as a foundational text on digital consumer behaviour, meaning her frameworks are often already the shared language of the audiences she addresses.

Biography highlights

• Author of Webs of Influence: The Psychology of Online Persuasion (Pearson), translated into seven languages and adopted by universities and Fortune 500 companies as a standard text on digital consumer behaviour
• Author of Business Unusual: Values, Uncertainty and the Psychology of Brand Resilience, with named contributors including Dan Pink, Cindy Gallop and Amy C. Edmondson
• Co-created TheValuesMap.com (2021) with Dr Kiki Leutner of Goldsmiths University, a scientific values-assessment instrument available to organisations
• Guest faculty at ELISAVA’s Masters programme in Human Interaction and AI, teaching “Transversal Vision of Artificial Intelligence”
• Member of the BIMA Human Insights Council, the representative body for digital and tech in the UK
• Covered in and contributed to the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, The Atlantic, Forbes, The Guardian and The Telegraph; hosted the Guardian Changing Media Summit

Biography

Nathalie Nahai coined the term web psychology in 2011, defining it as the empirical study of how online environments influence human attitudes and behaviours. At the time, most organisations had powerful digital tools and no psychological framework for understanding what those tools were doing to the people using them.

Her book Webs of Influence (Pearson), translated into seven languages, built that framework into a practical text adopted by universities and Fortune 500 companies as a standard reference on digital consumer behaviour. Her follow-up, Business Unusual: Values, Uncertainty and the Psychology of Brand Resilience, extended the argument into harder commercial territory – specifically, how organisations sustain consumer trust when digital markets, values and expectations all shift at once. The book drew contributions from Dan Pink, Cindy Gallop and Amy C. Edmondson, and applies self-determination theory and eudaimonic consumerism to the practical question of what makes brands resilient rather than brittle.

In 2021 she co-created TheValuesMap.com with Dr Kiki Leutner of Goldsmiths University, a scientifically grounded instrument that organisations can use to measure and communicate their actual values. The ability to deploy psychology as a practical tool – not just a conceptual frame – distinguishes her approach from most advisory work in this space.

Her analysis has been covered in the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, The Atlantic, Forbes, The Guardian and The Telegraph. She has lectured at Cambridge, UCL, Lund and Hult business schools and addressed major platforms including SXSW, the Web Summit and the Guardian Changing Media Summit. She serves as guest faculty at ELISAVA’s Masters programme in Human Interaction and AI and is a member of the BIMA Human Insights Council.

Key speaking topics

• Consumer psychology and digital influence
• Ethics of AI and persuasive technology
• Values-led brand resilience
• Human behaviour and digital trust
• Eudaimonic consumerism and shifting consumer expectations
• Web psychology and online decision-making
• Behavioural science applied to marketing and product design

Ideal for

• CMOs and marketing leadership teams navigating the ethics and commercial implications of AI-driven personalisation
• Boards and senior leadership teams seeking a psychological framework for brand resilience and consumer trust strategy
• Digital product and technology teams applying persuasive design with ethical accountability
• Transformation and strategy leads working to align organisational values with commercial outcomes

Audience outcomes

• A working model for understanding how AI and persuasive technology affect consumer trust and decision-making, grounded in published research rather than trend observation
• Practical application of self-determination theory and eudaimonic consumerism frameworks to brand, marketing and customer experience strategy
• A diagnostic approach to identifying where persuasive technology is eroding rather than building customer relationships
• Clarity on the commercial case for values-led strategy, with evidence from consumer behaviour research
• A set of questions to carry back into product, marketing and leadership conversations about how technology is actually affecting the people it is designed to serve