Prudential Creates Purpose at Scale with AI Coaching

Key takeaways

• Nadia has supported the rollout of a new leadership model and development of Business Resource Group leadership
• Employees have engaged in over 18,000 coaching conversations
• Prudential is now expanding Nadia to another 14,000 employees

Finding purpose through coaching

Prudential’s talent philosophy is about purpose—helping employees connect their work to the bigger picture and providing resources for success, including individualized leadership coaching.

As Head of Talent at Prudential, Matt Dreyer and his team expanded their in-person coaching program from a few dozen leaders to 400. Yet, for a company with over 40,000 employees, this still meant only about 1% received personalized training.

To effectively scale Prudential’s coaching program, Matt knew face-to-face and traditional digital solutions weren’t enough. Leadership software lacked the individualized context required for genuine personalized value. In April 2024, Matt saw a demo of Nadia. 

“I literally walked away from the demo texting my boss and my CHRO saying, I've solved our coaching problem. Wait ‘til I get back and tell you about this tool called Nadia.”
—Matt Dreyer, Head of Talent, Prudential

Nadia arrived at just the right time for Prudential. 

Matt’s talent calendar was packed with initiatives—the rollout of a new leadership model, the LAUNCH program for high-potential employees, and a new 2+2 performance review framework. Embedding Nadia in these key programs enabled Prudential to scale personalized coaching and turbocharge their impact.

Piloting Nadia with Prudential’s LAUNCH Program and BRGs

Prudential invited 1,500 managers—members of Prudential’s Business Resource Groups or participants in its LAUNCH program for high-potential employees—to pilot Nadia.

These were primarily early-career managers and individual contributors would never have had access to traditional person-to-person development, but who are crucial to Prudential’s future success.

Six weeks into the year-long pilot, 90% of participants engaged regularly with Nadia, awarding an impressive net promoter score of 91. As enthusiasm grew—a phenomenon Dreyer described as a "grassroots surge of support"—the Prudential team expanded Nadia’s availability to more managers.

“One of the most frequent comments I get from people who use Nadia is: ‘She gave me exactly what I needed when I needed it, and she actually coached me.’ So Nadia solved the scale issue for us, and she solved how we help our people when they need it, not when a coach is available.”
—Matt Dreyer

Achieving personalized results at scale

Before arriving at Prudential, Chief Talent & Diversity Officer Robert Gulliver spent nine seasons in the NFL, advising Super Bowl-winning teams develop their coaching talent. So he's seen the difference good coaching can make. 

Now he’s seeing it again with Nadia.

“The really good coaches we've worked with at Prudential have taken steps to learn our business, but that takes time. With Nadia, it was instantaneous. And Nadia then had the ability to deliver bespoke experiences for our employees, which is making a difference.”
—Robert Gulliver, Chief Talent & Diversity Officer, Prudential

To date, more than 4,800 Prudential employees have engaged with Nadia for help with tasks ranging from updating job descriptions to navigating difficult conversations. That’s more than 9X the reach of the coaching program pre-Nadia.

Users say Nadia has helped them handle sensitive or interpersonal issues they might not have felt comfortable discussing with a human coach, and reported turning to the platform to help them tactically work through difficult issues.

Because Nadia can scale in a way human coaches cannot, Prudential can provide guidance to any leader, anytime, in any language. In all, Nadia has facilitated over 18,000 coaching conversations to date, and over 2,300 sessions in July 2025 alone. 

Reinforcing Prudential's leadership model with AI coaching

When Prudential rolled out a new leadership model, they sought to balance behaviors that might seem in tension—like maintaining a laser focus on one's own business while considering the broader company's needs (what Gulliver calls “putting on the Enterprise First hat”), or responding to customers while upholding a long-term strategic vision.

These are complex challenges with no easy answers, because no HR VP has specific knowledge of every single role within the company.

But Nadia does. Because she was specifically trained on Prudential's new leadership model, managers could use the AI coach to understand how these expectations applied to their roles.

This “day in the life”-style coaching translated abstract competencies into actionable behaviors, making the leadership model tangible and easier for employees to internalize.

“In some regards, Nadia is doing what a learning and development team might be doing, in terms of introducing this new model and providing learning content to help our leaders get better at using this new tool. So it's great to be able to unlock those types of new use cases.”
—Robert Gulliver

New use cases: performance reviews and skill-building 

Nadia has also proven valuable in traditional managerial settings, such as performance discussions. Beyond annual reviews, Prudential conducts regular “2+2” goal-setting sessions, where managers help team members pinpoint two strengths and two areas for growth.

“I personally get excited that Nadia is going to be that difference maker, give us that multiplier effect, and ultimately help us drive business results.”
— Robert Gulliver

40% of employees reported using Nadia to prepare for feedback conversations—including both managers structuring feedback and employees processing constructive advice. Because Nadia was trained on Prudential’s 2+2 framework, the guidance received was specifically tailored to the method by which they were being evaluated.

Over 45% of employees also turned to Nadia after performance evaluations for help creating skill-building plans and implementing feedback. These plans form the basis of a continuous feedback loop, providing Prudential's future leaders with a trusted resource to track progress and find greater purpose at work.

After the initial year-one success, Prudential is now rolling out Nadia to 14,000 more employees, beginning with targeted customizations across APAC and Brazil, with tailored engagements by region and division. 

With Nadia, Prudential is transforming their leadership coaching with personalized development that scales across the entire organization—unlocking purpose, multiplying talent impact, and driving sustained business success.

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