About Lori: Lori was the recipient of the prestigious 2019 British Computing Society UK IT Apprentice of the Year Award, as well as two other apprenticeship awards in 2020. Lori is well-known for having developed the Virtual Assistant, a chatbot application that handles over 60,000 messages per week. Former IBM CEO Ginni Rometty called it "one of the most sophisticated, proven applications of Watson on the IBM Cloud." Lori somehow manages to balance her crazy work life at the IBM Hursley R&D lab, with time to finish up her undergraduate degree at Exeter University.

In this chat we hear from Lori about growing up in the English countryside, her love for math and programming, and how she coped with being a bit of a nerd as a young person. We then hear how Lori made her way into IBM, ultimately landing in Research, and how she has found her groove with the support of great managers and mentors.