Her early career was spent as an account executive for marketing consultancy firm, Francis Killingbeck Bain (FKB) before pursuing a degree in social psychology at the London School of Economics.
She completed her DPhil in clinical medicine at the University of Oxford in 1997 under the supervision of Susan Iversen and Tim Crow.
Recognising the potential applicability of this new brain imaging technology for understanding the subconscious biases and influences that characterise consumer behaviour, in 1999 she co-founded Neurosense Limited – a company specialising in the application of fMRI and psychological tools to marketing – with Professor Michael Brammer and Dr Peter Hansen.
In 2008 she was appointed as a fellow of the Royal College for Arts and Business and in 2012, elected to the Global Agenda Council for Neuroscience and Behaviour at the World Economic Forum.
She published her first academic paper, on how silent lip-reading activates the auditory cortex, in Science, while she was a doctoral student.