Lauren Pleydell-Pearce
Chief Creative Officer at PwC
Lauren works with leading global brands to design emotionally intelligent experiences that move people and markets. As Chief Creative Officer at PwC, she blends imagination with innovation, creating moments that move hearts and keep customers coming back. She sits on the leadership team of Customer-Led Transformation, working alongside 300+ strategists, designers, technologists and researchers to build brands people can feel, solve problems in thoughtful ways, and grow businesses people want to return to
Her work moves from brand and creative strategy into digital product design, shaping customer experiences and driving growth – partnering with organisations such as Audi, Coca-Cola, Starling Bank, AMP, McDonald’s, Spotify, and Volvo. From building new digital banks to more recently, creating generative AI content engines, Lauren’s focus is always on emotional intelligence, behavioural insight and business impact.
Outside of client work, Lauren’s energy goes into shifting the systems that shape the industry. She believes creativity should challenge the defaults, question who gets heard, and expand the room for those who’ve been left out. That’s why she judges awards like D&AD, Creative Circle, the DMA and Effies UK, why she mentors through programmes including Megamentor, Mentor Black Business and Who’s Your Momma, and it’s why she co-chairs PwC’s Gender Balance Network. For her, inclusion is how norms shift, how cultures move, and how creativity keeps its power.
Lauren Pleydell-Pearce
Chief Creative Officer at PwC
Lauren works with leading global brands to design emotionally intelligent experiences that move people and markets. As Chief Creative Officer at PwC, she blends imagination with innovation, creating moments that move hearts and keep customers coming back. She sits on the leadership team of Customer-Led Transformation, working alongside 300+ strategists, designers, technologists and researchers to build brands people can feel, solve problems in thoughtful ways, and grow businesses people want to return to
Her work moves from brand and creative strategy into digital product design, shaping customer experiences and driving growth – partnering with organisations such as Audi, Coca-Cola, Starling Bank, AMP, McDonald’s, Spotify, and Volvo. From building new digital banks to more recently, creating generative AI content engines, Lauren’s focus is always on emotional intelligence, behavioural insight and business impact.
Outside of client work, Lauren’s energy goes into shifting the systems that shape the industry. She believes creativity should challenge the defaults, question who gets heard, and expand the room for those who’ve been left out. That’s why she judges awards like D&AD, Creative Circle, the DMA and Effies UK, why she mentors through programmes including Megamentor, Mentor Black Business and Who’s Your Momma, and it’s why she co-chairs PwC’s Gender Balance Network. For her, inclusion is how norms shift, how cultures move, and how creativity keeps its power.
Sessions
From metrics to meaning: decoding the feeling economy
Designers map journeys, but customers live in moments. A distraction on a screen between meetings, a glance at a bank balance on the bus, or a quick scroll while the kettle boils. These fragments don’t unfold neatly or predictably. They arrive layered with emotion, shaped by context, and often carrying pressures that no blueprint or journey can fully anticipate.
To understand this more deeply, we asked 3,400 customers about the interactions that mattered most — the ones they acted on, told others about, trusted, and returned to time and time again. What they revealed were emotional and behavioural signals that lie between the clicks and churn rates on dashboards.
Growth Through Experience 2025 translates those signals into a practical tuning system: a shared language that helps teams design with more intent, and links what customers feel with what businesses value.
This session will show you where to start right now: how to articulate emotion in terms that resonate with leaders, recognise the quiet relationship between feelings and outcomes, and prioritise investments in the moments that matter most.
Because in the end, growth isn’t secured by what is mapped, but by what is felt.
Experience & empathy