In a sunlit office in Redmond, Washington, surrounded by whiteboards scrawled with equations and innovation plans, sits Lauret Kambili Maduka — a rising star in the world of business strategy, financial innovation, and artificial intelligence.
As the Business Planning and Strategy Manager at Microsoft, Maduka is not just witnessing the AI revolution, she’s helping to architect it.
Her journey from the classrooms of the University of Nigeria to the cutting-edge labs of Microsoft is a story of resilience, vision, and purpose-driven leadership. I had the pleasure of sitting down with her to discuss her work, her philosophy, and the future of business in an AI-powered world.
IMAGE: UNSPLASH
From Nigeria To The World: Foundations Of A Strategist
Born and raised in Nigeria, Lauret’s intellectual roots lie in economics, a field she pursued with distinction at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. “Economics taught me systems thinking — how variables interact across layers of society and markets,” she reflects. That early fascination with structure and strategy laid the groundwork for her transition into business and technology.
She later earned her MBA from Arizona State University’s W. P. Carey School of Business, where she received a full scholarship and multiple honors, including the prestigious National Black MBA Association Scholarship.
As President of the Accelerated Leadership for Underrepresented Minorities (ALUM), she championed diversity in executive leadership and cultivated collaborative environments where innovation thrives.
A Voice For AI-Powered Transformation
At Microsoft, Lauret leads strategic planning for Edge, Microsoft’s AI-powered browser, shaping how Microsoft’s Edge Browser is reinvented in the age of AI agents and operators. Prior to that, she worked on Copilot, Microsoft’s AI offering, developing AI use case frameworks that guide product roadmap across consumer and commercial segments. “My role is to ask the right questions — what problems are we solving with AI, and who benefits?” she explains.
Her framework for AI use case prioritization, grounded in both qualitative and quantitative metrics, has driven measurable outcomes across both consumer and commercial segments.
Notably, her experimentation with “Hero” AI use cases for Microsoft Copilot across Spotlight, Bing, and Edge Copilot surfaces led to a 25% uplift in click-through rates, with image creation use cases alone accounting for ~60% of total clicks and driving an 85% increase in downstream chat trials.
On the enterprise front, she spearheaded research with 20 industry leaders to surface actionable insights that now shape Copilot’s onboarding, GPT and Frontier AI Agent prioritization, and go-to-market efforts—accelerating adoption among information workers and informing product roadmap decisions for consumers.
These initiatives complement earlier results like a 24% increase in product trials and a 10% rise in daily click-through rates for similar use cases, signaling stronger user engagement and productivity.
Enabling the prioritization of use cases like content summarization, image creation, research & insight generation and career coaching assistant which can now be seen as suggested prompts on Copilot, has significantly enhanced AI tool familiarity, helping users understand what’s possible with generative AI and boosting both productivity and confidence.
Yet these figures only scratch the surface of her broader mission—building systems that scale intelligently, ethically, and inclusively for over one billion Windows users.
More recently, she led Microsoft’s strategic response to the rise of AI-native browsers like Perplexity’s Comet and OpenAI’s Operator. Recognizing their potential to disrupt traditional browser-based engagement, she led a multi-phase strategic analysis to quantify their impact on Edge’s Browser Share of Minutes (BSoM).
Her work has laid the foundation for Microsoft’s future strategy on AI browser competition, monetization shifts, and retention playbooks—positioning the Company to stay ahead of the curve.
She also pioneered a new approach for Microsoft Copilot, curating over 100 high-value chat prompts informed by user telemetry, market trends, and enterprise needs. This prompt repository, now in use across Edge and Bing entry points, is actively improving user education, boosting engagement, and increasing daily active usage.
Lauret is the lead author of several key publications on AI in business, including:
- “Generative AI in Strategic Business Planning: Boosting Efficiency and Competitive Advantage in Business Organizations”
- “Advancing Financial Inclusion for Small and Medium Enterprises through Generative AI Frameworks in the United States”
These papers have been cited for their forward-thinking analyses of how AI can empower organizations, democratize financial tools, and catalyze innovation across sectors.
Empowering Small Businesses Through Fintech
Before joining Microsoft, Lauret’s work at Sterling Bank in Nigeria demonstrated her deep commitment to financial inclusion. She co-developed Gazelle.ng, a digital lending platform tailored to SMEs. The platform doubled assessment efficiency and simplified lending for hundreds of businesses by integrating efficient credit evaluation and sector-specific risk models.
She also played a key role in designing agro-lending products based on electronic warehouse receipts. This novel approach increased agricultural lending by 40% and significantly improved smallholder farmers’ access to capital.
“These aren’t just systems,” Lauret emphasizes. “They’re bridges — to credit, opportunity, dignity.”
Leadership Anchored In Impact
Lauret’s voice is calm but unwavering when she speaks about leadership. “To lead in the AI space today, you need clarity, courage, and conscience,” she says. Whether steering strategic decisions at a Fortune 500 company or advocating for ethical AI practices in public forums, her message is consistent: innovation must be inclusive, and technology must serve humanity.
She is an active member of several professional organizations, including the Strategic Management Society and the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. In her free time, she mentors aspiring professionals from underrepresented communities.
She has served as a panel judge for several national and international entrepreneurial competitions, including Technovation—a global nonprofit that empowers girls to become leaders, technology innovators, and problem solvers in their communities through STEM—and the Ohio Science, Technology, and Entrepreneurship Program (Ohio STEP), an innovation and entrepreneurship program run by
She has served as a panel judge for several national and international entrepreneurial competitions, including Technovation—a global nonprofit that empowers girls to become leaders, technology innovators, and problem solvers in their communities through STEM—and the Ohio Science, Technology, and Entrepreneurship Program (Ohio STEP), an innovation and entrepreneurship program run by the Ohio Academy of Science.
The Road Ahead: AI With Purpose
As our conversation draws to a close, I ask her what excites her most about the future. Her eyes light up.
“The convergence of AI and purpose,” she says. “We have the tools now to solve systemic problems, from credit access in rural communities to climate-smart agriculture. What we need is the will to apply them wisely.”
Indeed, Lauret Kambili Maduka stands at the intersection of technology and humanity—a strategist with a heart who builds intelligent systems to improve businesses and make the world more just, inclusive, and resilient.
If the future of business strategy is AI-powered, then it will also be, in no small part, Lauret-shaped.
IMAGE: UNSPLASH
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