Tracy Abraham

…who has pioneered in two spells at Channel 4, where the nature of her version was to have a very clear understanding of their customer and then challenge, provoke, make trouble and inspire change in ways that resonate. Her second stint involved overseeing the launch of Channel 4’s video-on-demand offer, 4OD, ahead of BBC and the iPlayer. It wasn’t as clear as it looks now – they had seen what Napster had done to music and wanted to find a positive way to pre-empt the issue. But would that be by putting content on other platforms or by creating their own? Customers can’t help you because they don’t know yet. So Channel 4 went with the fuller experience, one where they could grow value for their customers over time in clearer ways, and it worked very well indeed. She has also pioneered from the earliest days at Monzo, again building an offer and experience that would come to define a new market segment, helping the engineers turn their innate customer obsession into something with features and benefits customers would understand and enjoy.