Do we like Michelle Dickinson?
Our score: 8 out of 10. Nothing harmful turned up and plenty of real good, held back by a failed company that left a tax bill behind.
Michelle Dickinson grew up working-class, with a Hong Kong Chinese mother who wanted her to be a doctor and a father who told her to do what she loved. She taught herself to code on the family computer. She invented the Nanogirl stage persona to cope with a fear of public speaking, which is a very relatable origin story for a superhero.
Her rise was quick. In 2014 she won the Prime Minister's Science Media Communication Prize, worth $100,000, and she was already doing TV, a TEDx talk and a project of 100 simple experiments in 100 days with kids. She even opened one acceptance speech with “I hate science!” to tell a story about a girl who felt the same.
On the harm test, we found nothing harmful in her own words or in the company she keeps. She has spoken about biases that get handed down from parents to kids, and about wanting everyone able to make informed scientific decisions. In 2015 she told the NZ Herald she had blogged against a tech magazine's use of promotional models at events, and that organisers told her they were horrified.
To be straight about the gaps: we found nothing from her on trans or LGBTQ+ issues, good or bad. Her public stance is on women, girls and access to science. A thin record there is not a red flag, but we can't tell you more than that.
The one real stain is commercial, not personal. Nanogirl Labs went into liquidation in late 2024, and in July 2025 RNZ reported that liquidators said Inland Revenue was owed more than $267,000 and unsecured creditors were unlikely to see anything. Dickinson blamed cut government funding, including the $1.6 million Curious Minds programme. A Global Women announcement said she and co-founder Joe Davis took no salary for the final year.
Nothing new on her lately beyond that. The liquidation coverage is the most recent reporting we could open, and it is more than three months old. Our searches turned up no court case, accusation or controversy about her conduct.