Olesia Nikulina

Feature article written by Olesia Nikulina

RapSIG is proud to introduce Dr. Olesia Nikulina, Assistant Professor of Marketing at ESCP Business School, as one of the VPs of Communications (website development).

Olesia is an Assistant Professor of Marketing with a strong foundation in both the visual arts, from her fine arts high school education, and quantitative economics, from her undergraduate studies. She began her career as a strategy consultant at EY and later joined a large IT company as an Overseas Marketing Manager, where she firsthand observed the crucial role of visual communications in consumer decision-making.

Always trying to apply academic findings to her work, Olesia realized a disconnect between data-driven real-world practices and marketing theories, often developed in controlled environments. This motivated her to pursue a Master’s in Marketing and, ultimately, a PhD in the field. In her work, Olesia uses unstructured field data to identify predictors of visual communications’ impact. Her research interests focus on visual marketing, unstructured data analysis, and social media marketing.

Olesia advises scholars to know their end goal and not sacrifice throughout the process; be flexible and open to new ideas, but always know your worth and clearly set boundaries—this balance is key to thriving, not just surviving, in academia.

Some of Olesia’s non-academic interests are:

• Teaching and practicing yoga
• Enjoying the outdoors with her cocker spaniel, Hazel
• Reading fiction every night before bed

Olesia can be reached at onikulina@escp.eu.