Noopur Julka is a strategic business leader and trusted advisor to FTSE 250 and Fortune 500 boards and executives, with a track record in guiding complex digital transformations, cultural change, and strategic growth across the UK, US, and India. She partners with boards and C-suites to shape vision, influence high-stakes decisions, and strengthen leadership capability to deliver sustainable shareholder value. She also advises on AI governance frameworks and identifying new market segments, helping organizations navigate and capitalize on opportunities in the age of AI. A passionate advocate for diversity and inclusion, Noopur mentors emerging leaders and champions initiatives that embed agility, innovation, and resilience into organizational DNA.
Recently, in an exclusive interview with CIO Magazine, Noopur shared insights into how her journey began with lessons from her mother’s grit and determination, which shaped her approach to leading complex change. From advising FTSE 250 and Fortune 500 boards across the UK, US, and India, she now partners with C-suites at UST to drive digital transformation and strategic growth. On AI, she believes leadership is shifting from planning with certainty to “exploit and explore” with courage, making continuous governance and ethical data audits non-negotiable. Her advice to leaders: use AI to empower people, not replace them, by consciously designing pathways for young talent and leaving every project, strategy, or conversation better than you found it. The following excerpts are taken from the interview.
Hi Noopur. Every career has a starting spark. Growing up and in your early professional years, what was the first experience that made you realize you wanted to lead complex change and strategy?
My mother had been a primary school teacher in India, Maharashtra, but Marathi wasn’t her first language. It wasn’t even her second. She chose to learn it, master it, and then teach it in an entirely new environment, simply because that was what the system required and she was determined to make it work.
She was raising two children, my sister and I, while building a career at a time when a woman working at all was optional and quietly defied the norm. She taught for nearly three decades before retiring. The real complexity started post-retirement. For ten long years, she fought a battle for her pension through the system for what she was rightfully owed with grace, conviction, and persistence.
That’s where I first saw what leading through ambiguity actually looks like. Not in a boardroom. Not in a business school case study. In my mother’s grit with very limited resources, I watched her hold our home together and stay calm through a long, exhausting battle.
She never had a roadmap, but she created one- pivoting, taking risks and learning along the way. She had clarity of purpose and the patience to keep moving forward. Today, she is a role model across the state, and honestly, everything I know about leading complex change, I learned from her first.
My mother gave me the real foundation to understand the frameworks I later learned at Harvard.
What do you love the most about your current role?
It’s the empowerment, the ability to make a real impact on businesses and people’s lives. My role requires me to understand the complementary and often conflicting priorities of C-suite members across the board and to translate them into a single, well-rounded solution. It is the business side that excites me, especially now, when technology is reimagining business processes and challenging the very logic of how businesses operate.
What I value about UST is the freedom to be the CEO of your own portfolio and to embrace new challenges. It’s a place where I feel expanded rather than restricted. I’ve heard ‘go for it, and we will enable you’ a lot more than ‘let’s park it for now,’ and that has made all the difference in how big I’m able to think and how far I can expand horizons for my clients, my company, and my teams.
You’ve seen transformation waves come and go. As we look to 2030, what’s the biggest shift in how boards approach strategy that most executives aren’t prepared for yet?
I believe the knowledge gap between boards and executives will narrow significantly, giving rise to a continual, “just in time” governance framework. Insights, benchmarking and “what if” scenarios will be far more accessible, and agility will emerge as a real differentiator in the boardroom. Boardrooms will be more empowered with AI, from strategy dashboards to risk scores.
Right now, AI governance stands as a deficit, as statistics indicate that less than 40% of F100 companies have formal board oversight of AI. As AI governance and strategy mature, we’ll see a shift from quarterly reviews to active, continuous strategic governance.
Board composition will change too – driven by a younger demographic and greater tech savviness, and will produce more diverse board structures.
AI is reshaping every boardroom conversation. In today’s AI era, what does “strategic leadership” mean that it didn’t mean 5 years ago?
I keep coming back to the idea of “exploit and explore,” which Professor Tushman taught us at Harvard Business School- classic organizational dilemma. It is a delicate balance between exploration, reimagining, innovation, market expansion, new categories and exploitation, efficiency, cost optimization, changing talent mix and more. Five years ago, the balance was the goal, but with the pace of change today, the weight has shifted decisively toward exploration. First, leading without a stable planning horizon has become critical. Strategic leadership now means making the decision without that comfort because the world is changing faster than ever.
Second, it takes courage to kill your own model and to recognise that the real measure of success is the business outcome. I’ve met executives whose balance sheets look reasonably healthy, yet who are rightly questioning their business model as consumer habits shift beneath them. There’s also a growing trend of “less is more” and divestitures becoming a clear trend.
For me, the strategic leader is a self-disruptor: someone who can exploit what works today while aggressively preparing for whatever replaces it tomorrow.
Diversity and inclusion take on new dimensions with AI. What responsibility do leaders have to ensure AI systems reflect equitable values?
When it comes to building diverse and equitable AI systems, I see it as a moral responsibility, not just a corporate one. Who gets a job or a loan is a serious question, and when those decisions are derived from an algorithm, they need to be audited. They impact real lives, often through invisible data sets whose gaps fall hardest on people who aren’t represented in them. Our responsibility is not the algorithm itself, but the training data around it and the sections that do not exist.
There is also a question of accountability. I feel data audits need to be tagged at the board level.
We all need inspiration outside work. Which book, film, or creator has influenced how you think about people, resilience, or innovation the most?
I am a big believer in the compounding effect – the idea that a 1% improvement each day, across every aspect of life (health, learning, finances, meditation), can dramatically stretch and even exceed your goals. Atomic Habits by James Clear is a book I refer to time and again. I try to consistently do one small thing and trust the process. Over my career, I have deliberately chosen a diverse experience of working across multiple countries, in different verticals, across a large breadth of transformation to widen my perspective. The discipline of being consistent and stretching yourself is simple but remarkable.
I also revisit the Stay Hungry Stay Foolish commencement address at Stanford time and again. What makes it so encouraging, especially in today’s age of AI, is the courage to move forward during uncertainty and trust the direction. That willingness to believe the dots in your life will connect, even when they don’t make sense in the present, is a conviction worth carrying forward.
You champion agility and innovation. What’s one non-business practice you’ve adopted that helps you stay agile in your own thinking?
There was a time when I decided to learn golf because I saw that was where deals got made. No one told me to; I just observed, showed up, and it helped that I picked it up quickly. I was one of the very few women on the court, but I wanted to be there because that was where influence lived.
The same logic applies to AI now. The action has simply shifted to the algorithm – so once again, I show up. We need to bring an authentic point of view to the data we’re training. Every time my name appears next to words like AI, strategy, transformation or leadership, I’m training the machine that belongs in those conversations. That’s why amplifying diverse voices matters too – we are, in effect, shaping the thought leadership data. I also challenge my own thinking by keeping close to a group of critical thinkers I brainstorm with regularly. My network is something I truly cherish, and the beauty of a network is that the more you offer, the more you learn.
For you, what does “leading with purpose” mean in practice, not just theory?
It means, making an impact where it matters even if it is commercially inconvenient.
I am often told that I politely push back on the brief and I do that because it is quite easy to lead with purpose when it is commercially aligned for the win (short term or long term), difficult when it isn’t. It is often okay to be the person in the room opposing the idea or challenging the transformation project. For me it is a consistent personal choice grounded in my values of integrity and sincerity. Leading with purpose is having your non negotiables even if the cost of keeping them is very high.
I do feel that the aspect of humanity should be integrated more at work. If you touch anything, a project, a strategy, a human interaction, it is important to leave it better than you found it driven by sincerity and good intent. Purpose compounds with micro steps.
What is your biggest goal? Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
My biggest goal is to be a self-disruptor.
Someone who opens up new markets for my clients and at the same time creates real opportunities for young people entering the workforce.
In five years, I want to be someone who has helped shape the conversation at the intersection of technology, strategy, human potential and the harder questions about what AI should do and for whom. For me, market creation is inseparable from building pathways for young talent.
Looking ahead, what’s one message you’d share with today’s leaders about using AI to empower people rather than replace them?
I recently spoke with a young person entering the workforce. When I asked him about resilience, he said the first line of his CV had probably been replaced by an AI bot in a company and that for him, resilience meant building his resume.
Roles that once needed a degree now ask for two years of experience. Those with experience now ask for a portfolio. Entry-level job seekers are suffering the most. The way I see the talent problem is that AI is automating the first job and, with it, the pathway into the system.
This is a problem for the companies, too. What happens when the workforce retires? Where does the next generation come from?
Our responsibility as leaders is to ensure we open doors for talent and create greater value for the economy. We have to make conscious decisions about which roles should not be automated. And every time AI takes over a role, we need to deliberately design a pathway for what that person can do next to create more value. The talent strategy for the younger generation is a real concern but also an opportunity to unlock untapped potential, if we frame it right.