Digital transformation

Why organisations work with Rahaf Harfoush Her work is anthropological, not predictive. It is grounded in fieldwork, behavioural research, and fifteen years of watching what technology does to the people who use it. That matters when leadership teams have already absorbed every version of the AI hype cycle and want something more durable. Her positions on AI move with the research, because the research is hers. What she takes into a boardroom in 2026 is not what she said in 2024, and the next book she is writing on humane productivity in the age of AI is shaping her current thinking in real time. She works across the full institutional range. The same questions she takes into board conversations on AI strategy show up in her policy work at the UN, her research at Oxford and Cambridge, and her teaching at Sciences Po. That range means she can speak credibly to executives, regulators, and creative teams in the same week. The Decoded Company thesis; that organisations should apply the same analytical rigour to understanding their talent as they apply to understanding their customers, gives CHROs and people strategy teams a precise, data-grounded argument for workforce intelligence. She brings an active body of work. The Decoded Company was a New York Times bestseller, Hustle & Float set the structural argument on productivity and creative work, a fourth book on humane productivity in the age of AI is in progress, and her weekly newsletter and original research mean she arrives at every engagement with new material rather than a fixed deck. Biography highlights Executive Director, Red Thread Institute of Digital Culture; former Associate Director, Technology Pioneer Programme, World Economic Forum, Geneva Member, UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Advisory Body on Artificial Intelligence; member, France’s National Digital Council; served on President Macron’s “Enlightenment in the Digital Age” commission on AI and democracy Visiting Policy Fellow, Oxford Internet Institute; Research Affiliate, Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy, University of Cambridge Author of Hustle & Float (2019); co-author of The Decoded Company (New York Times and USA Today bestseller; 2015 Gold Axiom Award for Best Business Technology Book) Named to the Thinkers50 2025 ranking; shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Innovation Award (2021); writing featured in Harvard Business Review, Wired, Financial Times, and Fast Company Faculty at Sciences Po’s School of Management and Innovation, Paris, teaching “Innovation and Emerging Business Models” Biography For the past fifteen years, the same question has run through her work. What happens to human beings when the systems they work and live inside change faster than their ability to absorb the change? That question has taken her into the early Obama campaign, the World Economic Forum, the UN, the Oxford Internet Institute, and the boardrooms of some of the largest companies in the world. The pattern she keeps finding is the same. The technology gets the attention. The behavioural and cultural consequences get ignored until they show up as a problem no one can solve with another tool. Her first book, Yes We Did, documented the digital infrastructure behind the 2008 Obama campaign from inside the war room. Her second, The Decoded Company (co-authored, and a New York Times and USA Today bestseller), argued that organisations apply rigorous analytics to their customers and intuition to their people, and pay for that mismatch in every retention number. Her third, Hustle and Float, made the case that the conflict between productivity culture and creative work is older than any of the tools we blame for it, and cannot be solved by another wellness programme. Her current research focuses on AI’s impact on human cognition and learning. This is the territory where the most urgent questions are being asked, and where the gap between what the technology can do and what organisations actually need is widest. She is writing about it, teaching about it at Sciences Po, advising on it at the UN, and bringing what she finds onto the stage as it develops. She holds research affiliations with the Oxford Internet Institute and Cambridge’s Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy. She served on President Macron’s “Enlightenment in the Digital Age” commission and on France’s National Digital Council. Her work has been featured in the Harvard Business Review, Wired, the Financial Times, and Fast Company. She was named to the Thinkers50 2025 ranking and shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Innovation Award in 2021. Key speaking topics Digital culture and organisational behaviour Artificial intelligence governance and ethics The future of creative and knowledge work Human-centred AI strategy Innovation and emerging business models Leadership in technological disruption Data intelligence and talent strategy Ideal for C-suite leadership teams who want to think clearly about AI before committing to a strategy they will have to defend in eighteen months CHROs and people leaders facing the talent, learning, and creative-performance consequences of AI adoption Government, regulatory, and policy audiences working on AI governance and digital policy Innovation, foresight, and strategy functions in technology-intensive and creative industries Audience outcomes A working framework for understanding what AI is actually doing to the people in your organization, beyond productivity metrics Language for the cultural and cognitive shifts your leaders are already sensing but have not been able to name A clearer position on AI governance, grounded in research and lived policy experience at the UN and national level A sharper read on the gap between what your technology strategy assumes and what your people are experiencing

Why organisations work with Purna Virji At Microsoft and LinkedIn she worked the commercialization layer for emerging AI, shaping the strategy and market narratives that decide whether a new capability reaches and convinces a market. She speaks to the gap between what a product can do and what customers adopt from direct operating experience, not observation. She gives executive teams a way to measure AI by business outcomes rather than activity, replacing “time saved” and tokens used with quality lift, scope growth, and capability unlock, the language finance and boards will fund. Her Agent-Led Growth work maps a shift most leaders have not yet priced in: customers delegating discovery and purchase decisions to AI agents, and what that does to how brands get found and trusted. She wrote the award-winning High-Impact Content Marketing (Kogan Page), recognised as a Choice Outstanding Academic Title, which grounds her credibility in published, peer-recognised work rather than conference reputation alone. Biography highlights More than a decade across Microsoft and LinkedIn in AI commercialization, go-to-market, and customer engagement, including Senior Manager of Global Engagement at Microsoft and Principal Consultant, Content Solutions at LinkedIn. Author of High-Impact Content Marketing (Kogan Page, 2023), a Choice Reviews Outstanding Academic Title (2024) and Goody Business Book Award winner. Creator of the Agent-Led Growth newsletter, publishing original frameworks on agentic commerce, AI adoption, and trust as a ranking factor. Named the #1 Most Influential PPC Expert in the World (PPC Hero, 2016), an Adweek Young Influential (2018), and Search Personality of the Year (US Search Awards). Honoured Listee, Marquis Who’s Who in America (2023). Has keynoted in more than 20 countries; work featured in Adweek, The Drum, TNW, Search Engine Land, and Search Engine Journal. Biography Most AI initiatives do not fail in the lab. They fail in the gap between a working model and a customer who changes nothing about how they work. Purna Virji has spent her career inside that gap, at the point where AI commercialization, go-to-market strategy, and customer behaviour meet. That vantage point is unusual. She spent more than a decade at Microsoft and LinkedIn in commercialization and go-to-market work, latterly focused on emerging AI, where she shaped the strategy and market narratives that decide whether a new capability earns trust and gets adopted. She has seen the failure modes up close, from unclear value to a customer journey that asks too much too soon. Her published work carries the same argument. High-Impact Content Marketing (Kogan Page) was named a Choice Reviews Outstanding Academic Title, and her Agent-Led Growth newsletter tracks the next shift: customers handing discovery, comparison, and purchase decisions to AI agents acting on their behalf. The implication for brands is direct. Influence moves from catching a person’s eye to earning an agent’s confidence. What she brings to a leadership audience is a way to argue about AI in board language. She reframes success away from time saved and tasks completed toward quality lift, scope growth, and capability unlock, the outcomes that survive a finance review. Her Agent-Led Growth research names the real blocker directly: the Delegation Gap, the distance between what AI can technically do and what people are ready to hand over. For executives funding AI and seeing experimentation rather than impact, closing that gap is the work. Key speaking topics AI commercialization and adoption Agentic commerce and AI-led customer journeys Measuring AI business impact and ROI Go-to-market strategy for AI products Trust, discovery, and brand visibility in the AI era AI-driven sameness and competitive differentiation Ideal for Executive teams and boards funding AI initiatives and asking what return they are getting AI transformation leads, CTOs, and product leaders moving from pilot to deployment CMOs and revenue leaders facing the shift to agent-led discovery and commerce Enterprise B2B and SaaS organisations whose growth depends on AI adoption by customers Audience outcomes A framework for tying AI initiatives to outcomes a board will fund: quality lift, scope growth, capability unlock, rather than activity metrics. A clear picture of how agent-led customer journeys change discovery, trust, and where buying influence sits. A diagnosis of why specific AI initiatives stall at the pilot stage, and where the product-to-market handoff breaks. A way to spot where AI-driven sameness enters content and customer experience, and how to design for differentiation from the start.

Why organisations work with Itai Green He runs the operator’s playbook for open innovation, built on programmes delivered for named multinationals including Toyota, Teva Pharmaceuticals, Maccabi Healthcare, and Electra. He owns the access point to two of Israel’s largest vertical startup communities, ITTS (around 350 traveltech founders) and IITS for insurtech, which gives corporate audiences a direct route into live deal flow. His book with Business Expert Press, Innovation or Elimination: Winning in a World of Constant Change. An Executive Playbook (2026), codifies a two-decade framework for collaboration between corporates and startups, so the keynote carries a published thesis rather than a deck. He has briefed senior commercial audiences at repeat Economist summits, UNWTO, and Amcham Brazil’s CEO Forum, which means he calibrates to board-level decision makers, not technology enthusiasts. He was inside corporate innovation at Amadeus IT Group before building the consultancy, so he speaks to the internal politics of innovation programmes from the same side of the table as the buyer. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, Innovate Israel (2017 to present). Former Head of Business Development and Innovation, Amadeus IT Group Israel. Former CEO, Maxtech Technologies; former VP Business Development, Techtium; prior roles at Elbit. Co-founder, JerusalemOnline. Author, Innovation or Elimination: Winning in a World of Constant Change. An Executive Playbook (Business Expert Press, 2026). Founder of the ITTS and IITS startup communities covering traveltech and insurtech in Israel. Keynote speaker at Economist summits (2018 to 2022), UNWTO Tourism Startup Competition, and Amcham Brazil CEO Forum. Biography Most corporate innovation programmes fail quietly. They produce pilots, demo days, and scouting reports, but very little that reaches a P&L. The gap is not talent or budget; it is the wiring between the corporate and the outside ecosystem it claims to work with. Itai Green has spent two decades inside that wiring. As Head of Business Development and Innovation at Amadeus IT Group in Israel, and before that as a CEO and operator across Maxtech, Techtium, and Elbit, he built the internal muscle that most large organisations are still trying to grow. In 2017 he founded Innovate Israel to run that playbook for global corporates, connecting them to Israeli startups across IT, pharma, finance, travel, retail, banking, insurance, energy, and construction tech. Client work has included Toyota, Teva Pharmaceuticals, Maccabi Healthcare, and Electra. Alongside the consulting practice, he built two of the largest sector communities in Israel’s ecosystem. ITTS (Israel Travel Tech Startups) now covers around 350 founders. IITS does the same job for insurance technology. For a corporate buyer, those communities are the live deal flow behind the keynote. His book Innovation or Elimination: Winning in a World of Constant Change. An Executive Playbook (Business Expert Press, 2026) sets out the framework he has been using with clients: how leadership teams structure open innovation, how they absorb external technology without breaking their core business, and how they stop confusing pilots with outcomes. Key speaking topics Open innovation and corporate-startup collaboration Generative AI in corporate strategy Israeli innovation ecosystem and ecosystem engagement Traveltech and insurtech Corporate venturing and scouting models Innovation leadership and organisational readiness Business model innovation under geopolitical and tariff pressure Ideal for Chief Innovation Officers, Heads of Corporate Venturing, and Chief Strategy Officers building or resetting an open innovation function. Executive committees in travel, insurance, pharma, retail, energy, and banking evaluating engagement with Israel’s startup ecosystem. Business development and R&D leaders who have active scouting but no reliable path from pilot to deployment. Boards and CEO forums looking for an operator’s view on turning innovation spend into commercial growth. Audience outcomes A working definition of what separates a functioning open innovation programme from a scouting theatre. A clear map of how to engage with Israel’s startup ecosystem without burning internal credibility on dead-end pilots. A perspective on where generative AI shifts the corporate-startup dynamic, grounded in live client work rather than forecasts. Specific internal structures and incentives that leaders can use to move a pilot from proof of concept to a line of business. A candid read on where open innovation tends to fail inside large corporates, from someone who has sat on both sides.

Why organisations work with Limor Ziv She closes the gap between AI governance theory and AI commercial performance, with named client work at Google, KPMG, Bright Data, SolarEdge, and Medison Pharma. Humane AI was selected by Meta among 2025’s most promising AI startups; she sits on the Scientific Council of the Israeli Association for Ethics in AI. Her peer-reviewed research with 74 senior AI and data professionals (MDPI, 2025) gives boards a working diagnostic for the breakdowns that destroy AI value, from data and governance to context and business alignment. She works the practitioner seam between academic credibility and commercial deployment, the same person teaches the lecture and runs the workshop afterwards. Operator credibility on the women-in-AI question, with public roles in Israel’s data and ethics communities, without converting that into a separate keynote category. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, Humane AI, selected by Meta among 2025’s most promising AI startups. Postdoctoral fellowship in Human-AI Interaction; Ph.D., Tel Aviv University, where she was named to the “100 Outstanding Lecturers” list. Co-author, “Behind the Algorithm: International Insights into Data-Driven AI Model Development” (MDPI, 2025), based on interviews with 74 senior AI and data professionals. Scientific Council member, Israeli Association for Ethics in AI (IAEAI). Named keynote and consulting work for Google, KPMG, Bright Data, SolarEdge, Medison Pharma, government ministries, and municipalities including Tel Aviv. Biography AI investments are returning less than executive committees expected, and regulatory scrutiny is rising in parallel. The two pressures meet at the same operational layer, where most AI deployments quietly fail. Dr. Limor Ziv built Humane AI to work at that seam. The company was selected by Meta among 2025’s most promising AI startups. In a keynote, she takes apart the hidden risks built into everyday algorithms and gives senior audiences practical ways to govern AI systems and to lower the exposure they create. She works with organisations to capture the upside of AI and avoid the failure modes that come with deploying it. The research underwrites the consulting. Her 2025 paper with Maayan Nakash in MDPI’s Machine Learning and Knowledge Extraction draws on interviews with 74 senior AI and data professionals across countries and sectors. The recurring breakdowns it surfaces are the same ones that destroy commercial performance: weak data quality, missing context, governance gaps, and business misalignment. Her client base spans government ministries and municipalities, universities, and technology companies, including Google, KPMG, Bright Data, SolarEdge, and Medison Pharma. She lectures in graduate programmes at universities and was named to Tel Aviv University’s list of 100 Outstanding Lecturers. The brief is consistent across them: make AI deployments that earn their investment and hold up when someone audits the decisions. Key speaking topics Responsible AI and AI ethics AI risk management and compliance AI governance and regulatory readiness Data quality and data-centric AI Human-AI interaction and human-centred design Realising value from AI investment AI in regulated sectors, including healthcare and finance Operationalising responsible AI in the enterprise Ideal for Boards and executive committees accountable for both the return on AI investment and the defensibility of the AI systems they sign off. Chief AI officers, chief data officers, and CISOs operationalising responsible AI policy while showing it earns its cost. Regulated-industry leadership in healthcare, financial services, and public sector wrestling with AI deployment under compliance pressure. Heads of AI, innovation, and transformation under pressure to show a return on AI spend without creating regulatory exposure. Audience outcomes A working definition of AI risk that distinguishes data risk, model risk, and decision risk, and a sense of where each lives in the organisation. A view of what AI deployment actually demands of operating teams, drawn from her empirical research with 74 senior practitioners across countries and sectors. A grounded read on the live regulatory and ethical debates, from a Scientific Council member of the Israeli Association for Ethics in AI. An honest read on the gap between what AI investments cost and what they return, and on the operating work that decides whether the gap closes.

Why organisations work with Tom Goodwin His 2015 observation that Uber owns no vehicles and Airbnb no real estate became the standard way executives describe asset-light competition. He gives a leadership team the same lens on its own business: where value is moving, and who is positioned to own the customer. He has made technology bets inside two of the world’s largest advertising and media groups, as EVP and Head of Innovation at Publicis-owned Zenith Media and before that as SVP of strategy and innovation at Havas Media. He advises others now on calls he has had to make himself. His read on AI cuts against both the hype and the gloom. Under the banner he calls “nowism,” he argues the technology to grow already exists and the constraint is nerve and imagination. Boards leave with something to act on, not another warning about the future. He has spent two decades translating technology for commercial audiences, as a columnist for The Guardian, TechCrunch, and Forbes and as host of the Euronews series The Edge. Operators follow the argument and can repeat it, without needing a specialist to decode it. Biography highlights Author of Digital Darwinism: Survival of the Fittest in the Age of Business Disruption, published by Kogan Page and translated into several languages Author of the 2015 TechCrunch essay “The Battle Is For The Customer Interface,” one of the most widely cited descriptions of platform business models Former EVP and Head of Innovation at Zenith Media, part of Publicis Groupe; earlier SVP, Strategy and Innovation at Havas Media Founder of the innovation consultancy All We Have Is Now, advising Fortune 500 companies and startups Named LinkedIn’s #1 Voice in Marketing Host of The Edge, a technology series for Euronews; columnist for The Guardian, TechCrunch, Forbes, Adweek, and Marketing Week Biography In 2015, a single paragraph in TechCrunch changed how executives talk about competition. It pointed out that Uber owned no vehicles, Airbnb no real estate, Alibaba no inventory, and Facebook made no content. The author was Tom Goodwin, then senior vice-president of strategy and innovation at Havas Media. The line stuck because it named something leaders could feel but had not put into words: value was moving from owning assets to owning the customer relationship. Goodwin had spent his career inside that shift, later running innovation at Publicis-owned Zenith Media and advising large companies on where to place their bets. His argument now centres on artificial intelligence, and it runs against the prevailing mood. Most organisations, he contends, use new technology to make the old business run more smoothly, when the real opportunity is to rebuild what the business does. He calls the practical version of this “nowism”: the tools to grow already exist, and the limit is nerve and imagination. That case reaches a wide audience. Goodwin hosts The Edge, a technology series for Euronews, and has been named LinkedIn’s #1 Voice in Marketing. He set out the full argument in his book Digital Darwinism, published by Kogan Page. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and business strategy Digital transformation Platform and asset-light business models The future of business Technology and consumer behaviour Marketing and the customer interface Ideal for CEOs and boards setting the direction of a digital or AI strategy Chief Marketing and Chief Digital Officers deciding where technology changes the customer relationship Innovation, strategy, and transformation leads under pressure to show a return on technology investment Senior leadership teams at large incumbents facing platform-native competitors Audience outcomes A way to judge which technologies change their business and which are noise A concrete test for their own model: what the company would look like if it were built today Language to explain asset-light and platform competition to their own teams and boards A more pragmatic read on AI that stays on what is usable today

Why organisations work with Trabucchi and Buganza The Platform Thinking Matrix gives strategy and transformation teams a structured instrument for identifying precisely where platform mechanisms can be applied to existing business models, built from a decade of research on established companies, not borrowed from startup literature. The Digital Phoenix Effect draws on analysis of 140 platform initiatives across S&P 500 companies, with detailed cases from Siemens, AXA, Eni, and Domino’s – the organisations their research is built around look like most audiences, not like Silicon Valley startups. With 100+ peer-reviewed publications in journals including the Journal of Product Innovation Management and Technovation, their frameworks can be tested against sustained evidence – not just a practitioner’s conviction codified into a model. As Scientific Directors of the Platform Thinking HUB within Politecnico’s Digital Innovation Observatories, they give organisations access to live, connected research, not a fixed set of frameworks. Shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Distinguished Achievement Award in Digital Thinking: the body that the Financial Times has described as producing the Oscars of management thinking. Biography highlights Associate Professor of Platform Thinking (Trabucchi) and Full Professor of Leadership & Innovation (Buganza), School of Management, Politecnico di Milano Co-founders and Scientific Directors of the Platform Thinking HUB within Politecnico’s Digital Innovation Observatories, and of LEADIN’Lab; Buganza chairs the EIASM International Product Development Management Conference Thinkers50 Radar Class of 2024; shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Distinguished Achievement Award, Digital Thinking category Co-authors of Platform Thinking: Read the Past. Write the Future (Business Expert Press, 2023) – shortlisted for the Business Book Awards 2024 and translated into Italian and Chinese – and The Digital Phoenix Effect (Platform Thinking Publishing, 2025) 100+ peer-reviewed articles in journals including the Journal of Product Innovation Management, Technovation, and Information Systems Journal Co-founders of Symplatform (2018), the annual international conference on digital platforms connecting researchers and practitioners Biography Most digital transformation advice is written for companies that do not yet exist. Trabucchi and Buganza study the ones that do: established firms with legacy assets, existing customer relationships, and infrastructure they cannot simply abandon. Over more than a decade at Politecnico di Milano’s School of Management, they developed Platform Thinking as a named strategic framework. It is not a description of what Uber or Airbnb do. It is a method for how any established organisation can activate its existing assets to generate the multi-sided value that platform businesses create. The Platform Thinking Matrix formalises this as a practical instrument for strategy and transformation teams. Their 2025 book, The Digital Phoenix Effect, draws on 140 platform initiatives analysed across S&P 500 companies, with cases from Siemens, AXA, Eni, and Domino’s. The argument that incumbent firms cannot compete in the platform economy on their own terms is a common one. Trabucchi and Buganza make the opposite case, and back it with sustained empirical research. Both were included in the Thinkers50 Radar Class of 2024 and shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Distinguished Achievement Award in Digital Thinking. As co-founders of Symplatform and Scientific Directors of the Platform Thinking HUB, they connect rigorous academic research to active practitioner communities. Their frameworks emerge from sustained, peer-reviewed inquiry – over 100 published articles across journals including the Journal of Product Innovation Management and Technovation – not from advisory work alone. Key speaking topics Platform thinking and business model transformation Legacy organisations in the platform economy The Platform Thinking Matrix Data as a platform asset GenAI and internal platform development Platform leadership and innovation management Multi-sided platforms and ecosystem strategy Ideal for Chief Strategy Officers and Chief Digital Officers leading platform transformation in established businesses CEOs and boards of legacy organisations facing disruption from platform competitors Innovation and transformation leads in non-digital-native companies Executive MBA and corporate learning audiences focused on digital business model innovation Audience outcomes A working definition of Platform Thinking and how it differs from conventional digital transformation advice The Platform Thinking Matrix as a practical framework for identifying where platform mechanisms apply to existing business models Real cases from established firms – Siemens, AXA, Eni, Domino’s – showing how legacy assets become platform advantages Clarity on the specific leadership conditions that enable platform-based change within established organisations A starting point for assessing their organisation’s platform potential against a research-backed framework

Why organisations work with Jeremy Blain He has published the operating detail behind distributed leadership, including a five-point organisational blueprint and a 90-day implementation roadmap, so the conversation moves past intent into execution. His OpenHR framework, co-authored with Dr. Rochelle Haynes, gives HR and people leaders a working model for designing a workforce that blends employees, contractors, and open talent without losing coherence. Twenty-five years operating as a CEO and board officer across the UK and Asia, including seven years running an international consultancy from Singapore, mean the boardroom register is native, not learned. Recognition from credible third parties, Gold at the 2024 Global Book Awards for Unleash the Inner CEO and ACQ5 International Gamechanger of the Year 2023, confirms the work has been independently judged on substance. He brings frameworks that travel beyond the keynote, with diagnostic tools and culture-building activities organisations can take into their own leadership development programmes. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, Performance Works International, advising boards and executive teams on leadership and digital transformation. Author of The Inner CEO and the second edition Unleash the Inner CEO, both award-winning titles on distributed leadership. Co-author with Dr. Rochelle Haynes of OpenHR: The Human Capital Framework for the Blended Workforce. Fellow of the Institute of Directors, London since 2003; senior board advisor to WDHB and co-founder of the Transformational Leadership Acceleration Institute. Named International Gamechanger of the Year by ACQ5 in 2023. Featured in Forbes, The Times of London, CEO Today, Dialogue by Duke CE, and Business Matters; host of the Rethink Leadership podcast. Biography Distributed leadership has been talked about for two decades. What has been missing is a working model that boards and operating committees can actually run. Jeremy Blain has spent his career building that model, first as a CEO and board officer in the UK and Asia, and now as the founder of Performance Works International. The argument is set out in The Inner CEO and its updated second edition, Unleash the Inner CEO, which won Gold in the Business Leadership category at the 2024 Global Book Awards. The book offers a five-point blueprint for the conditions, structures, and processes that make distributed leadership operational, plus a 90-day roadmap for managers and individual contributors. It is closer to an implementation manual than a thesis. A second strand of the work, OpenHR, co-authored with Dr. Rochelle Haynes, addresses what happens when the workforce itself is no longer a single category. As organisations blend employees, contractors, freelancers, and open talent, traditional human capital systems strain. OpenHR offers a framework, glossary, and templates for designing people strategy across that mix. The credibility behind the frameworks is operational. Seven years running an international consultancy from Singapore. Twenty-five years in corporate learning and human capital. Senior board roles at WDHB and the Intercontinental School of Economics and Applied Sciences. ACQ5 named him International Gamechanger of the Year in 2023, and his commentary appears in Forbes, The Times of London, and Dialogue by Duke CE. Boards work with him because the prescriptions come with the receipts. Key speaking topics Distributed leadership as an operating model Digital and AI transformation for boards and executive teams Human capital strategy for the blended workforce Empowerment and accountability at scale Leadership development across multinational and multi-generational teams Culture and capability for hybrid, AI-enabled organisations Ideal for CEOs, COOs, and executive committees rewiring decision rights and accountability across the organisation CHROs and chief people officers designing for a workforce that combines full-time, contract, and open talent Boards reviewing the leadership and culture preconditions for digital and AI transformation Transformation, change, and leadership development leads building scalable programmes across regions Audience outcomes A clearer view of where authority and accountability are misaligned in their own organisation A practical reference model for distributing leadership without losing strategic coherence A framework for designing human capital strategy across employees, contractors, and open talent Specific diagnostic questions to take into the next executive committee or board agenda Language for confronting the gap between stated leadership values and observed leadership behaviour

Why organisations work with Sidney Shapiro Argues openly against AI hype. His featured keynote “Stop Believing the AI Hype” treats vendor claims as a leadership evaluation problem, which is the conversation regulated buyers and procurement teams actually need to have. Has published governance work in peer-reviewed venues. A Routledge book chapter on AI governance for higher education institutions, and a forthcoming IGI Global chapter on the governance of generative AI, give him a documented position on what responsible deployment looks like in practice. Brings a decade of operational data science alongside the academic work. A former Data Science Manager at Sofvie building occupational health and safety software, he speaks to the integration and accountability problems that follow a proof of concept. Active in the working practitioner conversation. Hosts the AI in Action podcast and organises the Southern Alberta AI Conference, which together keep his perspective grounded in what organisations across healthcare, agriculture, manufacturing, and public administration are actually trying to ship. Biography highlights Assistant Professor of Business Analytics, Dhillon School of Business, University of Lethbridge Adjunct Assistant Professor of Computer Science, University of Lethbridge Book chapter on AI governance frameworks for higher education published by Routledge (2025); forthcoming chapter on the governance of generative AI with IGI Global Host of the AI in Action podcast and organiser of the Southern Alberta AI Conference Former Data Science Manager at Sofvie Inc., building data systems for occupational health and safety in the mining sector Featured or quoted in The Globe and Mail, CBC News, Lethbridge Herald, and Canadian Family Offices Magazine Biography Most organisations have already run AI pilots. The harder question is what happens after the proof of concept ends. Procurement standards stay unclear, and the governance frameworks people quote in slides do not survive contact with real workflows. This is the gap Sidney Shapiro works in. He is Assistant Professor of Business Analytics at the Dhillon School of Business at the University of Lethbridge, and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Computer Science. Published work includes a Routledge book chapter on AI governance frameworks for higher education and a forthcoming IGI Global chapter on the governance of generative AI. Both set out what responsible deployment actually requires from organisations. His authority on the operational side comes from a decade in data-centric roles before academia. He worked as a Data Science Manager at Sofvie, an occupational health and safety software company in the mining sector, and previously coordinated the Business Analytics graduate program at Cambrian College. That background shapes how he addresses the procurement and integration problems that follow proof of concept, which is where most AI initiatives slow or stall. Public engagement keeps the work current. Shapiro hosts the AI in Action podcast, interviewing practitioners and researchers across healthcare, education, finance, and software development on what AI deployment actually looks like in their organisations. He also organises the Southern Alberta AI Conference. Recent audiences include Indigenous Services Canada, McCain Foods, EY Calgary, CMC Alberta, and the Digital Research Alliance of Canada. These are buyers with low tolerance for vendor language and high tolerance for hard questions. Key speaking topics AI governance and responsible deployment Generative AI in business and society Data privacy and trust in AI systems AI literacy for non-technical leaders Analytics leadership and digital transformation AI in higher education policy Ideal for C-suite leadership teams and boards facing AI governance and accountability decisions CIOs, CTOs, and Chief Data Officers moving AI from pilot to operational deployment Public sector leaders, including municipal and federal government, working under privacy and equity constraints on AI adoption Higher education executives shaping institutional policy on generative AI in teaching and research Audience outcomes A working framework for evaluating vendor AI claims against operational reality, in time to shape procurement decisions Sharper questions to ask of any AI initiative on data governance and where accountability sits when AI is wrong A grounded view of what generative AI does well today and where it still fails, with the implications for organisational adoption Reference points for designing operational AI governance: procurement standards, acceptable-use policies, and accountability mechanisms

Why organisations work with Blake Morgan Three books, each making a distinct argument about customer experience: the operational discipline of More Is More, the technology playbook of The Customer of the Future, and the leadership framework of The 8 Laws of Customer-Focused Leadership. Audiences leave with applicable frameworks they can put to work the following week. Over a decade of weekly interviews with chief customer officers and CEOs on The Modern Customer Podcast. That volume of primary-source research gives her keynotes a specificity and currency that circuit speakers cannot match. Before becoming a full-time author and speaker, Blake was a customer service leader inside a Fortune 100 company. She speaks to leadership teams as someone who has worked inside the operational machinery that turns CX strategy into delivery. Her work focuses on the question now dominating CX boardrooms: how AI and automation are reshaping what customers expect and how organisations respond. She handles both the technology substance and the human experience side with equal credibility. Biography highlights Author of three books on customer experience: More Is More (2017), The Customer of the Future (2019), and The 8 Laws of Customer-Focused Leadership (2024). The Customer of the Future was listed by Business Insider among the top 20 books executives were reading during the COVID-19 period, and placed on Book Authority’s Top 100 Future of Technology Books of All Time. Senior Contributor to Forbes, with additional bylines in Harvard Business Review and Hemispheres magazine. Host of The Modern Customer Podcast, featuring chief customer officers, CEOs and CX operators from across industries. Guest lecturer at Columbia University and UC San Diego; adjunct faculty in the Executive MBA program at Rutgers Business School. Dubbed “The Queen of CX” by Meta; LinkedIn Top Voice; named one of the Top 40 female keynote speakers by Real Leaders magazine. Biography Most organisations that describe themselves as customer-centric are not. They have customer language in the strategy deck and customer photographs on the wall, alongside operational decisions that point in a different direction. Closing that gap is the work Blake Morgan has done for most of her career. She was working in the field before customer experience existed as a named discipline. Three books have followed. More Is More argued that memorable customer experience requires sustained corporate investment and introduced her DOMORE framework for structuring the work. The Customer of the Future, published in 2019, set out ten principles for companies preparing for AI, automation, and rising customer expectations around frictionless experience. The 8 Laws of Customer-Focused Leadership, published in 2024, is a playbook for keeping a customer-centric strategy alive inside an organisation under pressure. What gives her work unusual breadth is the range of roles she holds in parallel. She is a Forbes Senior Contributor on customer experience, host of The Modern Customer Podcast with hundreds of chief customer officer interviews behind her, adjunct faculty in the Executive MBA program at Rutgers Business School, and an adviser to companies including Amazon, Marriott, Coca-Cola and the Federal Reserve Bank. Each role produces primary-source material for the others. The dominant CX question has moved on from whether to invest in AI-enabled customer experience design. It is now how to build AI that customers actively want to interact with, at scale, without losing the emotional quality of the brand. That is the question at the centre of Morgan’s current keynote, Designing AI Experiences That Customers Remember. Key speaking topics Customer experience strategy and operations AI-enabled customer experience design Customer-focused leadership Building customer-centric cultures across the organisation Employee experience as the foundation of customer experience The future of customer loyalty in the AI era Digital transformation in service-intensive businesses Ideal for Chief Customer Officers, Chief Experience Officers and heads of customer experience responsible for operationalising CX strategy across an organisation Senior leadership teams and boards deciding how to integrate AI and automation into customer-facing operations without eroding the brand CMOs and heads of digital who are moving their organisations from campaign-driven marketing to experience-driven growth Audience outcomes A usable framework for turning customer experience from a strategic slogan into a daily operating decision Specific examples from companies currently getting CX right, and those getting it wrong, drawn from Morgan’s primary-source interviews A specific assessment of where AI genuinely improves customer experience and where it currently makes it worse A checklist of what customer-focused leaders do differently, drawn from the research behind The 8 Laws of Customer-Focused Leadership

Why organisations work with Marc Saltzman Three decades of daily working-journalist output across USA Today, AARP, Forbes Vetted, Reader’s Digest, Costco Connection and Yahoo, which means his read on what is real versus hype is grounded in actual product testing, not slide-deck futurism. Author of 17 books, including Wiley’s Siri, Apple Watch and Apple Vision Pro For Dummies titles, giving him a track record of translating frontier consumer tech into language a general audience can act on. Host of Tech It Out on 100+ U.S. radio stations via Radio America, plus Canada’s longest-running technology radio show, Tech Talk; broadcast craft that translates directly into keynote pacing for mixed audiences. Covers a working business stack in plain English: generative AI, cybersecurity, smart home and aging-in-place tech, retail and commerce, social media, automotive innovation, so a single booking can address multiple functions in the room. Regular on-camera commentator for CNN, NBC, CBS, FOX, CTV and Global, which means he is comfortable in front of a sceptical room and on stage with executives and media partners. Biography highlights Reporting on the technology sector since 1994 as journalist, author and broadcaster. Contributor to USA Today/Gannett (109 publications), AARP, Forbes Vetted, Reader’s Digest, Costco Connection, Yahoo, Toronto Star, Zoomer and Postmedia. Author of 17 books, including Siri For Dummies (Wiley, 2012), Apple Watch For Dummies (Wiley, 2015) and Apple Vision Pro For Dummies (Wiley, 2024). Host and producer of Tech It Out on 100+ U.S. stations via Radio America. Creator and host of Tech Talk, Canada’s longest-running technology radio show. On-air technology commentator for CNN, NBC, CBS, FOX, CTV, Global and CP24, with prior hosting credits on FOX Business and Bloomberg Television. Biography Most consumer technology coverage is written by people who do not actually use the products. Saltzman’s career is built on the opposite habit. Since 1994 he has reported on the technology sector as a working journalist, columnist and broadcaster, with a syndicated USA Today/Gannett column reaching 109 publications and regular bylines in AARP, Forbes Vetted, Reader’s Digest, Costco Connection, Yahoo and Postmedia titles. The output across formats is what makes the perspective useful to senior teams. He has written 17 books for general audiences, including Siri For Dummies, Apple Watch For Dummies and Apple Vision Pro For Dummies for Wiley, where the editorial constraint is to make a frontier consumer product usable by a non-technical reader on day one. That same constraint shapes his radio work: Tech It Out airs on 100+ U.S. stations through Radio America, and Tech Talk is Canada’s longest-running technology radio show. Television sharpens the discipline further. As a regular commentator on CNN, NBC, CBS, FOX, CTV, Global and CP24, with prior hosting credits on FOX Business and Bloomberg Television, he has spent years translating new categories, AI assistants, wearables, smart home, mixed reality, connected vehicles, into language a general audience can use within a four-minute segment. For organisations, the practical value is a single voice that can speak across consumer technology, generative AI, cybersecurity, retail and commerce, and the future of work, grounded in what products actually do today rather than what vendor decks claim they will do tomorrow. Key speaking topics Generative AI in everyday business and consumer life Cybersecurity and digital safety for organisations and customers The future of retail and commerce Smart home, wearables and connected devices Social media strategy for business Aging-in-place and consumer health technology Automotive and mobility innovation Emerging consumer technology trends Ideal for CMOs and customer experience leaders responding to AI, social and commerce shifts IT, security and risk leaders briefing non-technical executives and boards Retail, consumer goods and franchise leadership teams Conference programmers seeking a credible technology emcee, panel host or keynote across mixed audiences Audience outcomes A working filter for separating durable consumer technology shifts from short-lived hype A clearer view of how generative AI, cybersecurity threats and connected devices show up in customer behaviour Concrete examples of how retail, commerce and workplace tools are changing, drawn from current product testing Plain-English language that executives can repeat to staff, customers and boards without distortion Sharper questions to take back to vendors, agencies and internal technology teams

Why organisations work with Theresa Payton She has held the most accountable technology seat in the world – not as an adviser, but as the operator responsible for securing the Executive Office of the President. That is a different class of credential from the vendor or think-tank backgrounds most cybersecurity speakers bring. Her book Manipulated – on The Guardian’s Top 10 Books About Cybercrime list, maps the specific mechanics of AI-driven disinformation, deepfakes, and election interference; organisations working on trust, governance, or brand integrity get a strategic framework they can act on. As a patented inventor of security designs and co-founder of a cybersecurity product company (Dark3, acquired by Celerium), she brings the practitioner’s perspective, not the theorist’s: she has built the solutions, not just described the problem. She translates threat intelligence into board-level language. Her seventeen years across banking technology, government, and private advisory work means she can speak credibly to risk committees, technology leaders, and general business audiences in the same event. Biography highlights First female White House Chief Information Officer, serving under President George W. Bush, 2006–2008 Founder and CEO of Fortalice Solutions, ranked in the Global Cybersecurity Top 500 by Cybercrime Magazine Prior senior technology executive roles at Bank of America and Wells Fargo Author of Manipulated: Inside the Cyberwar to Hijack Elections and Distort the Truth, The Guardian Top 10 Books About Cybercrime list; revised edition published 2024 Co-inventor on an approved U.S. patent in security design Recipient of the FBI Director’s Award for Community Service; 2020 CISO MAG Cybersecurity Crusader of the Year; 2019 Woman Cybersecurity Leader of the Year Starred as Deputy Commander of Intelligence on the CBS reality series Hunted Regular security commentator on the Today Show, Good Morning America, CNN, CBS News, Fox News, and MSNBC Biography Theresa Payton ran cybersecurity for the White House. From 2006 to 2008, as Chief Information Officer for the Executive Office of the President under George W. Bush, she was accountable for the security of IT systems used by the President and 3,000 staff: not as an adviser, but as the person responsible. Before that, she spent sixteen years in senior technology roles at Bank of America and Wells Fargo. The combination is unusual: operational authority at the highest level of government, built on a banking technology foundation. That background shapes how she approaches cyber risk with corporate audiences. The question she puts to boards is not whether their organisation will face a breach, but whether their governance structures are designed to know about it, act on it, and contain it. As CEO of Fortalice Solutions, listed in the Global Cybersecurity Top 500, she has spent fifteen years working through exactly that question with Fortune 100 clients. Her book Manipulated, named one of The Guardian’s Top 10 Books About Cybercrime, examines how AI-generated deepfakes, self-replicating chatbots, and coordinated disinformation campaigns are used to compromise institutions from the outside in. A revised edition was published in 2024. She is also a co-inventor on an approved U.S. patent in security design, and previously co-founded Dark3, a cybersecurity product company later acquired by Celerium. Her profile extends beyond the conference circuit. She has testified before government bodies, served as Deputy Commander of Intelligence on the CBS series Hunted, and is a regular security analyst on networks including CNN, CBS News, and MSNBC. For organisations where the board genuinely needs to understand what it owns and what it is exposed to, she is one of the few speakers who has actually sat in that seat. Key speaking topics Cybersecurity governance and board-level risk AI-driven threats and deepfake manipulation Secured digital transformation Election security and information integrity Data privacy and digital identity Fraud and social engineering Cybersecurity leadership and workforce Ideal for Boards and non-executive directors navigating cyber and AI governance CISOs, CIOs, and CTOs developing organisation-wide security strategy Risk, compliance, and audit committees in regulated sectors Technology and transformation leaders in financial services, healthcare, and government-adjacent industries Audience outcomes A board-ready framework for assessing the gap between digital investment and security governance Practical understanding of how AI-driven threats – deepfakes, disinformation, autonomous attack tools – operate in practice, not just in theory Clearer accountability structures for cyber risk at executive level Awareness of the specific ways social engineering and fraud are evolving, with concrete defensive steps Language and framing to take cybersecurity from a technical department concern to a strategic leadership conversation

Why organisations work with Alex Goryachev He ran the function he now talks about. Cisco’s global innovation strategy, AI programme launch and innovation centres on five continents were built under his direction. He gives boards and executive teams a working playbook for moving AI past the pilot stage, drawn from Fearless Innovation and codified into the global ISO Standards on Innovation he helped shape. He addresses workforce resistance to AI directly, naming the cultural and behavioural blockers that stall enterprise AI programmes, rather than focusing only on the technology layer. He bridges enterprise practice and the next generation of leaders through his Executive-in-Residence role at Tulane’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, which keeps his frameworks tested against current operating reality. Biography highlights Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Fearless Innovation (Wiley, 2020). Former Managing Director and Global Head of Innovation Strategy, Cisco. Established Cisco’s Global Innovation Centers across five continents and led the launch of its AI innovation programme. Executive-in-Residence, Tulane University Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. Contributor to global ISO Standards on Innovation. Frequent contributor to Forbes, Fast Company, Entrepreneur and CEOWORLD; LinkedIn Top AI Voice. Earlier leadership roles at IBM, Dell and Pfizer. Biography Most enterprise AI programmes do not fail at the model. They fail at the handover, at the moment a promising pilot has to become a working capability inside a large operating company. That is the territory Goryachev spent two decades in. As Managing Director and Global Head of Innovation Strategy at Cisco, he established the company’s Global Innovation Centers across five continents and led the launch of its AI innovation programme. Earlier leadership work at IBM, Dell and Pfizer gave him an unusually broad view of how innovation actually moves through large, regulated organisations. That operating experience became the basis of Fearless Innovation (Wiley, 2020), a Wall Street Journal bestseller that lays out a practical discipline for converting innovation rhetoric into measurable results. The book sits alongside his contribution to the global ISO Standards on Innovation, where he helped codify the principles for how organisations build innovation capability at scale. He continues that work today as an Executive-in-Residence at Tulane University’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and as a regular contributor to Forbes, Fast Company, Entrepreneur and CEOWORLD on the question that now dominates board agendas: how to move from AI as a slide-deck strategy to AI as an operating advantage. Key speaking topics Enterprise AI strategy and operational deployment Innovation as a managed discipline AI literacy and workforce readiness Digital transformation in large enterprises Leadership in an AI-first operating model Culture change and innovation behaviour Ideal for Boards and CEOs setting an AI agenda beyond proof-of-concept Chief Innovation, Strategy and Transformation Officers responsible for translating AI ambition into operating results CHROs and learning leaders rebuilding workforce capability for an AI-first business Executive teams in Fortune 500s, scale-ups and government bodies stalled at the pilot stage of AI Audience outcomes A clear view of the difference between AI experimentation and AI as an operating capability, with named markers of each. Specific patterns from inside Cisco’s innovation programme that audiences can map onto their own organisations. A direct read on where workforce resistance to AI typically appears, and what leaders can do about it. A working sense of what Fearless Innovation prescribes as the discipline behind sustained innovation results.