Maria Santacaterina
Boards have approved AI strategies they cannot fully explain, govern, or defend. Pilots multiply, ethical frameworks lag, and the human side of the operating model erodes faster than anyone planned. The question is no longer whether to deploy AI, but how to do it without losing the judgement, trust, and accountability that hold the enterprise together.
Maria Santacaterina is a board advisor, author of Adaptive Resilience (Wiley), and ForHumanity Fellow who helps senior leaders deploy AI without surrendering the human judgement, ethics, and oversight their organisations depend on.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Maria Santacaterina
- A published Wiley thesis (Adaptive Resilience) that gives boards a structured way to integrate AI and frontier technology without dismantling the human capability the enterprise still runs on.
- A formal AI ethics and risk role at ForHumanity, which means her view on governance is grounded in audit standards, not opinion.
- A humanities-and-international-relations frame that translates directly into how regulators, customers, and employees actually experience AI decisions, useful in rooms where the technology team cannot read the political weather.
- Recognised in Computer Weekly’s Most Influential Women in UK Tech longlist, with a profile across HBR-adjacent and AI research podcasts (MLST, Love & Philosophy) that signals credibility to technical audiences as well as commercial ones.
- Working language fluency in English, French, Italian, and Spanish, which matters for European boards running AI programmes across jurisdictions with diverging regulatory regimes.
Biography highlights
- Author of Adaptive Resilience: How to Thrive in a Digital Era, Wiley, 2023.
- ForHumanity Fellow, Ethics and Risk, contributing to AI audit and governance standards.
- Founder and CEO of Santacaterina, a UK board advisory firm focused on strategic leadership and digital transformation.
- Named in Computer Weekly’s Most Influential Women in UK Tech longlist.
- Featured on Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST) and Love & Philosophy on the human-AI relationship.
- M.A. in International Relations, with prior study in modern languages, philosophy, and political sociology.
Biography
AI deployment has run ahead of AI governance. Boards have signed off on programmes whose failure modes, regulatory exposure, and human consequences they would struggle to articulate under questioning. Santacaterina’s argument starts there: technology is a means, the operating model is the constraint, and human judgement is the asset most easily eroded in the rush to automate.
Her book Adaptive Resilience: How to Thrive in a Digital Era (Wiley, 2023) sets out how to integrate frontier technology into the enterprise without hollowing out the people, ethics, and oversight that make it defensible. The argument draws on her humanities training, an M.A. in International Relations, and twenty-five years advising senior leaders through digital transformation programmes.
That position is reinforced institutionally. As a ForHumanity Fellow in Ethics and Risk, she works on the audit standards that AI systems are now being assessed against. As founder and CEO of Santacaterina, she advises boards on strategy, transformation, and the governance posture that follows. Computer Weekly has named her among the most influential women in UK tech.
What she brings into a room is the connection most AI conversations miss: between the technical decision, the governance frame, and the human cost of getting either wrong. She has been a featured voice on Machine Learning Street Talk, where the audience is technical, and on board-facing platforms, where it is not. The same argument holds in both rooms.
Key speaking topics
- AI strategy, ethics, and board oversight
- Adaptive resilience in the digital enterprise
- Human-AI complementarity and the future of work
- Responsible innovation and AI governance frameworks
- Digital transformation and operating-model redesign
- Sustainable value creation in a frontier-technology era
Ideal for
- Boards and audit committees commissioning AI governance and assurance
- CEOs and CTOs moving AI from pilot to operational deployment
- CHROs and transformation leads redesigning the workforce around AI capability
- Risk, ethics, and compliance leaders building defensible AI policy
Audience outcomes
- A board-level vocabulary for governing AI decisions that stand up to regulatory and stakeholder scrutiny
- A clearer view of where human judgement remains the binding constraint on AI deployment, and where it does not
- Specific reference points from Adaptive Resilience for stress-testing the organisation’s digital strategy
- A grounded sense of how European AI regulation and ethics standards translate into operating choices
Talks
A board-oriented session on integrating AI and frontier technology without losing the human, ethical, and governance foundations the enterprise depends on.
Key takeaways:
- Where AI delivers operating advantage, and where it introduces hidden fragility
- A working definition of adaptive resilience as a board capability, not a slogan
- Practical tests for the human-AI boundary in critical decision processes
A focused talk on AI risk, oversight, and the governance posture senior leaders need to defend their decisions.
Key takeaways:
- The questions a board should be asking before approving an AI deployment
- How emerging audit and assurance standards (including ForHumanity’s frame) reshape accountability
- Where ethical considerations create commercial advantage rather than friction
A strategic session for executives rebuilding the operating model around responsible technology and long-term value creation.
Key takeaways:
- Why sustainable digital strategy is an operating decision, not a communications one
- How to align innovation, ethics, and stakeholder trust in the same programme
- Signals that a transformation is creating durable value, not technical debt
Videos
Books
Fees
| EUR | GBP | USD | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Home Country | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| Asia Pacific | €40000 to €90000 | £35,001 - £75,000 | $50000 - $100000 |
| Europe | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| Middle East & Africa | €40000 to €90000 | £35,001 - £75,000 | $50000 - $100000 |
| South America | €40000 to €90000 | £35,001 - £75,000 | $50000 - $100000 |
| United Kingdom | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| US East Coast | €40000 to €90000 | £35,001 - £75,000 | $50000 - $100000 |
| US West Coast | €40000 to €90000 | £35,001 - £75,000 | $50000 - $100000 |
| Virtual | Under €12000 | Under £10,000 | Under $15000 |