Sarah Nicolls is an excitable force of nature who gets stuff done. In her 20s & 30s, Sarah toured internationally as a concert pianist doing a lot of interesting gigs crossing into dance music, electronics, wearables, as well as some complex classical ‘new’ music. The Guardian called her an “edgy Brit” and she’s been featured by every major TV channel and broadsheet in the UK. In 2007, she asked, why don’t pianos get updated?

She’s award-winning in the innovation/entrepreneur space, one of Innovate UK’s Women in Innovation and has won £375k total funding for concept development and prototyping. She’s also a respected academic – currently a Visiting Senior Resarch Fellow at King’s College London, her alma mater – and she ran the first ever UK edition of the New Interfaces for Music Expression conference.

On her self-build farm in Stroud she hosts an immersive sound space and runs artist residencies, gigs and exhibitions, and she’s planted 3,500 trees to play a small part in giving back to nature. She also enjoys a dance around the kitchen with her family, walking and taking pictures of trees.