Thomas Cook is appointing Kathryn Parsons, Jo Hickson and Dr Nicola Millard to its Digital Advisory Board which forms part of the Company’s ongoing digital transformation and omni-channel approach.

The Digital Advisory Board (DAB) has been instrumental in the development of Thomas Cook’s digital capability. Its members advise and inform the Group’s Board on leading-edge trends for online businesses and their digital transformations as well as being the conduit to identify and attract the brightest and best digital talent to the Group.

The DAB brings together Thomas Cook’s own internal digital experts with specialist insight from gurus such as Nicola, Jo and Kathryn to give Thomas Cook the best possible knowledge to underpin its digital transformation. The DAB is chaired by Harriet Green, Group CEO and John Straw, Entrepreneur in Residence at Thomas Cook.

Kathryn Parsons, Co-founder and Co-CEO for Decoded, founded the company in 2001 with the ambition to empower everyone and anyone through an understanding of the world of code and technologies behind the screen. She has taught thousands of professionals from FTSE100 CEOs to start-ups, through their accelerated learning experience ‘Code_in a Day’. Kathryn is passionate about encouraging women to own their digital futures and won the Veuve Clicquot New Generation award in 2013.

Jo Hickson is the Group Head of Innovation at Home Retail Group plc. Jo has held a variety of roles in planning, marketing, and new product development, before finding her real vocation in innovation management. Jo’s last three and half years have been with Home Retail Group, heading-up Innovation for Home Retail Group (Argos, Homebase and Habitat). A year ago, Argos embarked on a wholesale transformation to become a ‘Digital Retail leader’ and Jo has been involved in or is leading key projects with that goal.

Dr Nicola Millard, Customer Experience Futurologist with BT, has worked for BT for 23 years. Despite working for a technology company, Nicola isn’t actually a technologist and combines psychology with trends research to anticipate what might be lying around the corner for both customers and organisations. She has done a number of jobs around the BT business, including user interface design, customer service and business consulting. She was involved with a number of BT ‘firsts’ including the first application of intelligent systems into BT’s call centres and BT’s initial experimentation with home working.

“Harnessing digital technology as part of ongoing transformation and developing applications like Holiday’s to go! – @TCOffers, and Destination Discovery is central to helping our customers get information about our latest holiday destinations and offers within seconds, wherever, whenever, and however they choose,” said Harriet Green , CEO of Thomas Cook Group plc @harrietgreen1 . “A strong Digital Advisory Board is instrumental in driving innovation at Thomas Cook.  We are delighted to have three such powerful digital gurus join our DAB; Kathryn Parsons, Jo Hickson and Nicola Millard. Their knowledge and experience will complement our existing team of experts and help accelerate our digital progress – adding new ideas to our business that will ultimately make our holiday experience second to none for our 20 million customers world-wide.”