Meet Gail Nichols

Gail Nichols is an entrepreneur, innovation strategist, professional speaker, and co-creator of one of the earliest virtual call-center companies—years before working from home became commonplace.

Her professional journey has never followed a predictable path. Gail began her career as a registered nurse and later became a bank manager, stockbroker, and insurance professional. Each transition required her to enter unfamiliar territory, learn quickly, and find the next viable step forward.

That ability became especially important when Gail and her late husband, Richard Cherry, joined a small group of innovators determined to solve a persistent business problem: traditional call centers could not efficiently handle unpredictable surges in customer demand. Their answer was Willow CSN, a pioneering technology and operating model that routed customer calls to trained independent agents working from their homes.

At the time, telephone experts told them that the switching technology they needed did not exist. So the Willow team built it.

The resulting CyberAgent Network helped businesses manage fluctuating call volumes while creating flexible, home-based opportunities for thousands of people—including individuals with disabilities who had previously been excluded from conventional employment. The company's work earned recognition from the Smithsonian Institution's Computerworld program and the President's Task Force on Employment of Adults with Disabilities.

Willow later became Arise Virtual Solutions, and the business was acquired in a multimillion-dollar transaction in 2005. But the path to that outcome was anything but direct. Gail and Richard endured failed ventures, investor betrayal, lawsuits, financial crises, technical obstacles, corporate resistance, and moments when survival depended on taking one practical step at a time.

Those experiences form the foundation of Gail's forthcoming book, The Next Viable Step: From Innovation to Impact When the Path Does Not Yet Exist. The book is both a deeply personal entrepreneurial story and a practical exploration of what it takes to recognize an opportunity, challenge accepted limitations, recover from setbacks, and turn an unproven idea into meaningful impact.

Today, Gail is the founder of Fantastic Products Now LLC and the FPN Strategic Innovation Network. She works with innovators, entrepreneurs, and business leaders as they evaluate ideas, validate genuine market needs, and move from inspiration toward commercialization. Her keynote presentations and advisory work draw upon decades of firsthand experience building businesses where no established roadmap existed.

Gail continues to believe that progress rarely requires seeing the entire journey in advance. It begins by identifying—and having the courage to take—the next viable step.