Nicky Sparshott | UTS Business School Alumni Award

Master of Business (International Marketing), 1998; Bachelor of Business (Marketing), 1995
UTS Business School Award

With great power comes great responsibility. Unilever CEO Nicky Sparshott firmly believes in the power of business to use its global reach to do good – for people and the planet. 

This belief and interest in the intersection of business and activism – being good and doing good – grew in Nicky from an early age where she married her love for trading with her equal passion for advocating with Greenpeace & on Aboriginal land rights. 

Following roles with Procter & Gamble, The Coca-Cola Company and George Patterson Y&R, Nicky joined Unilever in 2006. Since 2020 she’s been the CEO of Unilever Australia & New Zealand. Using this platform, Nicky has played the role of agitator and accelerator, looking to drive a strong triple bottom line imperative locally, driving profitable growth whilst simultaneously having a regenerative impact on the planet and building a more socially inclusive society. She’s proudly helped Unilever ANZ earn Certified B Corp status – something she also did as the former Global CEO of T2. 

Nicky credits the international exposure her two UTS degrees provided for inspiring her curiosity in how overseas businesses operate. Travelling to countries such as China, Hong Kong, South Africa, Brazil and the Czech Republic, Nicky was able to see how the nuances and complexities of politics, religion and environment impact how companies serve people. 

Nicky also benefitted greatly from the real-world experience of UTS professors and guest speakers, who generously shared their time and knowledge with students. Now in a position to do the same, Nicky is a member of the UTS Vice-Chancellor’s Advisory Board and hopes to inspire the curiosity of the next generation of responsible business leaders.

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I feel so incredibly honored and humbled to be here amongst such incredible alumni who are also receiving Awards.

I feel really proud actually to be associated with UTS because it's influenced so much of the choices I've made over the course of my career and we have such shared interest in wanting to make business a Force for good so I am really proud but really delighted to be here tonight.

Human-centric leadership for me is as simple as recognizing that you can have the best strategies in the world or brands or processors but at the end of the day you need remarkable people not only with great capability but with great mindset to realize the potential and the opportunities that exist everywhere.

I'm incredibly passionate about demonstrating that business can be a force for good by truly demonstrating that you can deliver to triple bottom line impact that we can deliver profitable growth which any business needs to do and we shouldn't apologize for that because that fuels the investment to be able to do in equal measure, have a regenerative impact on the planet and contribute to a fairer and more socially inclusive world and when we do that well and consistently and with intention and with impact then we create a new form of capitalism that is much more sustainable for everybody that shares in the good fortune that business can bring.

The secret of my success quite honestly is that I've had the really good fortune of having some incredible people that have supported me along the way you know from my mum and dad who always encouraged me to reach for the moon and you might get the stars support, of my siblings my husband and he's sometimes too honest, but it's given me the courage to do things I wouldn't otherwise do for my children who allow me to see things with new eyes and fresh perspective and for the very very many mentors and coaches along the way.

I love that a commitment to sustainability is a competitive advantage for us, but it shouldn’t be. We want to set an example around business as a true force for good and enable the ceiling to be raised for the industry overall.