How this organiser went from corporate DEI to planning music festivals
Nikki Davies tells PostMag about finding her niche in DEI in the corporate world before transferring her skill set to live music events
Growing up in Glasgow, Scotland, in the 1970s, I was aware of accessibility and inclusion issues. My dad’s best friend had been in a wheelchair since an accident on his 18th birthday. He and his wife, who was also in a wheelchair, were around a lot and dad, an engineer at Rolls-Royce, built a ramp so they could get into our house.
I have a younger brother, Gareth. We lived in a racially diverse area where everyone, including the Indian and Chinese communities, spoke with a Scottish accent. On my first trip to London, when I was 12, I remember my surprise that people were speaking with different accents.
Chance encounter
The biggest fight I ever had with my dad was when I left school in 1991 to study IT. He told me there would never be a need for computers. I went to Paisley College, where it was mostly guys in the class. I graduated in 1996 and travelled around Southeast Asia, then came to Hong Kong and got a job at Delaney’s in Wan Chai. One of my university professors came into the bar. He said the university was working with a start-up called Online Education. They wanted to set up a team to move their platform from Microsoft DOS to HTML. I called a bunch of people from university and they came out. We programmed this internet platform to deliver university courses, starting with a nursing degree and eventually working with Charles Sturt University (in Australia).
Ups and downers
