Futuro del trabajo speakers

Why organisations work with Madison Butler She works inside the people function as a practitioner, not as an outside commentator. Her perspective comes from running employee experience as Chief Experience Officer at GRAV and as a fractional people ops consultant. She has built a structural intervention into her own industry. The Black Speakers Collection was created to close the speaker pay gap for Black speakers, and is now a working directory used by meeting planners. Her book “Let Them See You” (Wiley, 2025) gives buyers a published thesis on authenticity at work that they can hand to a leadership team before the keynote. She speaks credibly on mental health, trauma and psychological safety in workplace settings without softening the operational implications for managers. Named a LinkedIn Top Black Voice and a DivInc Austin Rising Star, with sustained media presence in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Business Insider and Rolling Stone. Biography highlights Author, “Let Them See You: Empowering Change Through Authenticity” (Wiley, 2025) Founder, Black Speakers Collection, a directory created to address pay equity for Black speakers Founder, Blue Haired Unicorn, an HR and DEI consultancy advising on psychological safety and culture design Chief Experience Officer at GRAV, based in Austin, Texas Named a LinkedIn Top Black Voice; named DivInc Austin Rising Star, 2021 Featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Business Insider, Yahoo and Rolling Stone Biography The employee experience is the part of the company most leaders do not own. HR runs onboarding, operations runs the systems, leadership sets the tone, and the actual lived experience falls between them. Butler works in that gap. As Chief Experience Officer at GRAV and through her consultancy Blue Haired Unicorn, she designs how a workforce actually moves through the organisation, from joining to leaving. Her published thesis sits in “Let Them See You: Empowering Change Through Authenticity”, released by Wiley in 2025. The argument is that performative culture work fails because it asks people to keep their full selves out of the building. Butler treats authenticity as an operating condition for trust, engagement and retention, not as a value statement. The Black Speakers Collection is her clearest demonstration of how she thinks. Faced with persistent pay inequity for Black speakers in the bureau industry, she built a directory rather than writing a position piece. It is now used by meeting planners as a working resource, profiled by PCMA and Prevue Meetings. Her media presence reflects the breadth of her audience. The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Business Insider, Yahoo and Rolling Stone have carried her commentary on workplace culture, mental health and inclusion. LinkedIn named her a Top Black Voice; DivInc named her Austin Rising Star in 2021. Key speaking topics Psychological safety and workplace culture Authenticity and human-centred leadership Employee experience design Inclusion as operating practice Mental health and trauma at work Future of work and the people function Personal branding and self-presentation at work Ideal for CHROs and chief people officers designing employee experience end to end Heads of DEI and inclusion leads looking for operating substance over signalling Founders and CEOs of scaling companies under cultural strain Internal leadership programmes for managers responsible for psychological safety Audience outcomes A clearer view of where the employee experience is breaking inside their own organisation A sharper distinction between performative culture work and operating culture work Language for managers to discuss mental health, trauma and authenticity at work without flinching Practical reference points from a practitioner running these problems day to day A published thesis (“Let Them See You”) to extend the conversation after the room

Why organisations work with Marcel Pesch He runs a structured AI executive education programme, MMAI, with practitioner faculty drawn from Deutsche Bahn, E.ON, Strategyzer, and academic and legal specialists. Few keynote speakers come with their own curriculum. His material covers the full operating stack: generative AI, data science, AI Act compliance, automation and agents, and leadership in the AI era. Audiences leave with a managerial map, not a tour of tools. He treats fairness, bias, and equality of opportunity as operating problems for organisations deploying AI, not as a separate ethics conversation. Fifteen years of coaching practice underpins the keynote register. Sessions translate into how managers behave on Monday, not just what they understood on Friday. Active member of the German AI Association (KI Bundesverband), with a stated engagement in AI standards and ethical guidelines. Biography highlights Founder of academy4.ai, an AI education and training organisation Designer of the MMAI (Master Management with AI) programme, a nine-module cohort-based course covering AI strategy, compliance, and deployment Faculty network on MMAI includes Prof. Dr. Johannes Stübinger (HS Coburg), Dr. Kristina Schreiber (LOSCHELDER), and practitioners from Deutsche Bahn, E.ON, and Strategyzer Member of the German AI Association (KI Bundesverband) Over 15 years of professional coaching experience with individuals and organisations Keynote topics include “AI on Steroids”, “AI & Diversity and Inclusion”, “AI & Inequality of Opportunity”, and “AI & the Workforce of Tomorrow” Biography Most companies have already bought into AI. The harder question is whether their managers can use it well: govern its decisions, interrogate its outputs, and redesign work around it. That is the gap Marcel Pesch built academy4.ai to close. Through the MMAI (Master Management with AI) programme, Pesch and his faculty take working professionals through nine modules covering generative AI, data science, AI Act compliance, marketing and sales applications, automation and agentic systems, sustainability, project management, and leadership in the AI era. Faculty draw on academic specialists, legal experts at LOSCHELDER, and practitioners from Deutsche Bahn, E.ON, and Strategyzer. Alongside the curriculum, Pesch speaks publicly on the harder political content of AI deployment: bias in algorithmic systems, equality of opportunity, and the way AI is reshaping who gets which jobs. He is a member of the German AI Association (KI Bundesverband), engaged in standards and ethical guidelines for the field. Fifteen years of coaching shape his keynote register. Sessions are designed to leave senior audiences with a managerial map of where AI changes their work, where it does not, and where the next governance and fairness decisions will sit. Key speaking topics AI literacy for managers and executives Operationalising AI beyond pilots AI Act and regulatory compliance for business leaders Bias and equality of opportunity in algorithmic systems Automation and agentic systems in the workplace The AI-era workforce and future skills Leading teams in AI-augmented organisations Ideal for C-suite teams and senior managers preparing to deploy AI across operations Heads of HR, transformation, and learning planning AI workforce upskilling Boards seeking a structured view of AI governance, compliance, and risk DEI and ethics leads working with technical teams on algorithmic fairness Audience outcomes A practical map of where AI changes managerial work and where it does not Sharper language for governing AI decisions, model outputs, and vendor claims A clearer view of bias and equality-of-opportunity questions in algorithmic systems A workable next step for AI literacy across leadership and team levels

Why organisations work with Marcus Buckingham He is the source, not a secondary interpreter, of the strengths-based management research that now sits inside most large engagement and performance programmes. His HBR cover story with Ashley Goodall, “The Feedback Fallacy,” was named by HBR as one of the most influential articles of its first century, and gives executives a defensible reason to dismantle conventional review cycles. He brings a working evidence base from the ADP Research Institute, which gives boards a global, current dataset on engagement and team performance rather than another set of opinions. First, Break All the Rules is one of the most widely read management books in circulation; senior audiences arrive already familiar with the argument, which lets a session move quickly from premise to application. Few speakers can stand on a body of work that has reshaped how Cisco, Deloitte and other large employers redesigned performance management; Buckingham is one of them. Biography highlights Co-author of First, Break All the Rules (1999) and Now, Discover Your Strengths (2001), foundational texts of strengths-based management and the basis for the StrengthsFinder assessment. Head of People and Performance Research at the ADP Research Institute. Co-author with Ashley Goodall of Nine Lies About Work (Harvard Business Review Press, 2019), named best management book of 2019 by Strategy+Business. HBR cover authorship includes “Reinventing Performance Management” (April 2015) and “The Feedback Fallacy” (March/April 2019), the latter selected by HBR as one of the most influential articles of its first hundred years. Author of Love + Work (Harvard Business Review Press, 2022), a Wall Street Journal bestseller. Thinkers50 ranked thinker, peaking at #8 in 2011 and shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Leadership Award the same year. Cambridge University, MA in Social and Political Sciences. Biography The orthodoxy of corporate performance management is built on premises that the evidence does not support. Marcus Buckingham’s research at Gallup, and later at the ADP Research Institute, has spent more than three decades testing those premises against what the highest-performing teams actually do. His finding, in short form, is that performance is local, individual and rooted in what people do best, not in what an annual review tells them to fix. That argument first reached scale through First, Break All the Rules, co-written with Curt Coffman in 1999 and built on Gallup’s global manager interviews. Now, Discover Your Strengths followed in 2001 with Donald O. Clifton and introduced the StrengthsFinder assessment. Together they reframed the conversation in HR from competency gaps to talent deployment. The work has continued to land where senior leaders are paying attention. “Reinventing Performance Management,” his 2015 HBR cover with Ashley Goodall, documented Deloitte’s redesign of its review system. “The Feedback Fallacy,” their 2019 cover, was later named by HBR as one of the most influential articles of its first century. Their book Nine Lies About Work was named best management book of the year by Strategy+Business. Buckingham now heads people and performance research at ADP, with access to one of the larger live datasets on engagement and team behaviour anywhere in business. His most recent book, Love + Work, published by Harvard Business Review Press in 2022, extends the strengths argument into the question of how individuals build careers around the activities that genuinely energise them. The work in front of leaders today is the same work that produced StrengthsFinder: identify what each person does best, then organise around it. Key speaking topics Strengths-based leadership Performance management redesign Employee engagement and team effectiveness Future of work and workforce research Talent strategy and career design Manager development Ideal for CHROs and senior people leaders rebuilding performance management or engagement frameworks Executive teams whose growth strategy depends on retaining and deploying skilled talent Boards reviewing the evidence base behind their human capital reporting Leadership development audiences inside large, multi-location workforces Audience outcomes A clear account of which assumptions inside conventional performance management the data actually supports, and which it does not. Specific design principles, drawn from Gallup and ADP research, for how teams should be measured and led. A working definition of strengths that is operational at the level of an individual conversation, not just a slogan. An evidence-based case for replacing annual feedback rituals with a different cadence of attention from managers.

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

Why organisations work with Mark Levy He built Employee Experience as a discipline inside Airbnb during the years it was named Glassdoor’s #1 Place to Work, so the playbook he teaches is one he has actually shipped. He treats culture as something designed, instrumented, and operated, not as a values poster or a wellness programme, which gives CHROs and CEOs a concrete way to talk about it with the board. He has done the same work twice at very different scales, at Airbnb in hypergrowth and at Allbirds through global expansion, so the frameworks travel beyond one company’s circumstances. He is co-authoring the Wiley method that is becoming the reference text for EX practitioners, alongside Dean Carter of Patagonia and Samantha Gadd, which gives his sessions a body of work rather than a personal anecdote set. He speaks fluently to the alignment between CMO and CHRO, where most internal-brand efforts break down, because he has run the function that sits between them. Biography highlights Pioneered the Employee Experience function at Airbnb, replacing the traditional HR model with an end-to-end employee journey approach. Led the people and culture work during the year Airbnb was named Glassdoor’s #1 Place to Work. Most recently led Employee Experience at Allbirds during its global expansion. Co-author of Employee Experience Design (Wiley, 2026) with Dean Carter and Samantha Gadd. Earlier corporate roles at Best Buy, Levi Strauss & Company, Gap Inc., and Thomson/Technicolor in Paris. Board director at First Graduate; former Gap Foundation board member; advisor to Backstage Capital and MixR. JD/MBA from the University of Colorado. Biography Airbnb hit Glassdoor’s #1 Place to Work ranking in 2016 with a people function that did not look like a people function. It had been rebuilt as Employee Experience, with culture, workplace, and social impact reporting alongside traditional HR. The person who designed that structure was Mark Levy. He came to it from a long retail and consumer career: Best Buy, Levi Strauss & Company, Gap Inc., and two years at Thomson/Technicolor in Paris. The pattern across those roles was practical, not academic. How does a company actually live its brand internally, in the systems and rituals employees experience every day, rather than in the language printed on the wall? At Airbnb he turned that question into an operating model. The result, codified now in the Wiley book he co-authored with Dean Carter of Patagonia and Samantha Gadd, treats employee experience as something you design with employees rather than for them, and instrument the way a product team would. Most recently he led the same work at Allbirds as the company scaled internationally. What organisations get from him is the rare combination of a builder who has actually run the function and a teacher with a published method. The audience he is sharpest with is the CHRO who needs to translate culture into board-readable substance, and the CEO and CMO who want the company their customers experience to match the company their employees work in. Key speaking topics Employee Experience design Belonging and the internal brand Culture during hypergrowth and global expansion The shift from HR to end-to-end employee journey CMO and CHRO alignment on brand Hybrid and distributed work Ideal for CHROs and Chief People Officers redesigning the HR operating model. CEOs and founder-led companies in scale-up where culture is starting to fragment. CMOs and brand leaders working with people teams on internal brand and employer brand. Boards and executive committees treating culture as a governance topic, not an HR topic. Audience outcomes A clear distinction between Employee Experience as a discipline and HR as a function, with the structural implications of each. A practical model for designing employee journeys the way product teams design customer journeys. A working language for the CMO and CHRO to align internal and external brand. Specific examples from Airbnb and Allbirds of what design-led culture looks like when it is built and instrumented. A reference point in the Wiley method, including how Patagonia, Airbnb, and other companies have made it operational.

Why organisations work with Mark van Rijmenam He gives boards a named decision framework, WAVE (Watch, Adapt, Verify, Empower), drawn from his book Now What?, now built into an operating diagnostic that scores a leadership team’s AI readiness against its own industry and regulatory context. The framework translates futurist material into something a planning cycle can actually use. His research base spans AI, blockchain and the metaverse across six books, so the technology view is not a single-trend pitch but a structured map of how these layers interact for an operating business. Salesforce named him one of 16 human voices shaping the future of AI, which gives buyers an external credibility marker beyond bureau ranking. He has built and run technology platforms himself, Datafloq and Futurwise, and has turned the WAVE framework into the Intelligence Age Scorecard, so the perspective is informed by building the tools, not only commenting on them. Format range is unusually wide for a futurist: he delivered the first TEDx talk in virtual reality and a TEDx in Athens via digital twin, and runs sessions in person, virtually and as holographic delivery when the brief calls for it. Biography highlights PhD in Management, University of Technology Sydney Author of six books, including Step into the Metaverse (Wiley) and Now What? How to Ride the Tsunami of Change Founder of Datafloq and of Futurwise, an AI-powered insights platform Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) and Global Speaking Fellow Recognised by Salesforce as one of 16 human voices shaping the future of AI Delivered the first TEDx Talk in virtual reality (2020) and a TEDx talk in Athens via digital twin (2023) Biography The hardest question for a board right now is not whether AI matters. It is what to commit to, when most of the technology in front of them will be obsolete in eighteen months. Van Rijmenam works on that question. His latest book, Now What? How to Ride the Tsunami of Change, sets out the WAVE framework: Watch, Adapt, Verify, Empower. The framework is built to be used by an executive team in a planning cycle, not admired from a stage. The credibility behind that work is structural. A PhD in management from the University of Technology Sydney sits alongside six published books that span big data, blockchain, the metaverse and now generative AI. Step into the Metaverse was published by Wiley in 2022. Future Visions, written in five days as an experiment in human-AI co-authorship with ChatGPT, came the following year. The body of work treats each technology layer as part of a connected operating reality, not as standalone trends. He builds the tools he talks about. Datafloq curates emerging-technology intelligence for executives. Futurwise is an AI-powered learning environment he founded to give organisations a structured way to track signal across technology, regulation and culture. He has since turned WAVE into the Intelligence Age Scorecard, a diagnostic that scores a leadership team’s AI readiness, surfaces the gap between what the C-suite believes and what management experiences, and returns a 90-day action plan. Salesforce named him one of 16 human voices shaping the future of AI, and the Global Speakers Federation has admitted him as a Global Speaking Fellow, a designation held by fewer than fifty people worldwide. The format choices reinforce the argument. He delivered the first TEDx Talk in virtual reality in 2020, and a TEDx in Athens in 2023 through a digital twin. For a buyer, the relevant signal is not the novelty. It is that the speaker is using the technologies he is asking leadership teams to make decisions about. Key speaking topics Generative AI and enterprise deployment Strategic foresight and scenario planning Decision architecture under exponential change The metaverse and immersive business models Blockchain and distributed-ledger applications AI ethics and governance Future of work and human-machine collaboration Ideal for Boards and executive committees setting AI and emerging-technology strategy Strategy, innovation and transformation leaders moving from pilots to operational deployment CTO, CIO and Chief Digital Officer audiences Leadership offsites and planning cycles where a structured foresight method is needed Audience outcomes A working decision architecture (WAVE) that an executive team can apply to its own AI and technology bets, with the option of a structured readiness diagnostic that benchmarks the team against its industry A structured map of how AI, blockchain and immersive technologies interact across the operating model A clearer view of where to commit capital now and where to keep optionality A read on where leadership perception and operational reality diverge on AI, including early preparedness for AGI-level systems Specific examples of organisations that have moved from technology pilots into operational advantage

Why organisations work with Matt Havens He treats generational friction as a leadership design problem, not a personality clash, which gives HR and operations leaders something they can act on rather than another set of demographic slides. His Simplicity framework is built from inside a Fortune 50 operating environment, not from a consultancy deck, so the examples land with line managers who run contact centres, branches, and field teams. The “4 Human Truths” content reframes engagement around what employees of every age actually share, which is useful for organisations stuck rotating perks instead of fixing leadership behaviour. He carries a room. Comedy-club upbringing translates into a delivery style that holds attention through a full keynote, which matters for late-day conference slots and large internal kickoffs. Deployable across very different audience profiles, with named repeat clients including Cisco, State Farm, RE/MAX, Lockheed Martin, Allstate, Duke Energy, and Mondelez International. Biography highlights Fourteen years in Fortune 50 leadership across finance, sales, and customer service, with responsibility for contact centres in five US locations. Creator of the Simplicity framework for leading multigenerational teams and reducing organisational complexity. Author of the “Make Your Business Human: The 4 Human Truths” keynote on engagement and culture. Repeat keynote speaker for organisations including Cisco, State Farm, RE/MAX, Lockheed Martin, Allstate, Duke Energy, and Mondelez International. Grew up backstage in comedy clubs alongside a stand-up comedian father; uses that craft to deliver leadership content with sustained audience energy. Programmes are delivered in person and virtually, working across corporate, association, and franchise audiences. Biography Five generations now sit on the same org chart, and most leadership systems were not built for that reality. Engagement programmes default to perks. Generational training defaults to stereotypes. Leaders end up managing labels rather than people, and the friction shows up in attrition data long before anyone names it. Matt Havens works that problem from inside the operating side of an organisation. Fourteen years of Fortune 50 leadership across finance, sales, and customer service, including responsibility for contact centres in five US locations, gave him a working view of where complexity actually accumulates: in handovers, in jargon, in well-meaning processes that no one will defend if pressed. His Simplicity framework is the response. It asks leaders to strip away the layers that make modern work harder than it needs to be, and to manage multigenerational teams through what people share rather than how they differ. The companion “4 Human Truths” content reframes engagement around the few fundamentals that hold across age, tenure, and function. The delivery is the second half of the proposition. Havens grew up in comedy-club green rooms with a stand-up comedian father, and he uses that craft to keep a room with him through serious leadership content. Cisco, State Farm, RE/MAX, Lockheed Martin, Allstate, Duke Energy, and Mondelez International have brought him back for that reason: the message lands, and the audience remembers it on Monday. Key speaking topics Multigenerational workplace leadership Employee engagement and culture Simplicity in leadership and operations Talent attraction and retention Workplace humour and human connection Customer-facing team leadership Ideal for CHROs and heads of culture working on cross-generational engagement Operations and customer service leaders running large frontline teams Conference programmers needing a humour-led, high-energy main-stage keynote on people and culture Sales and franchise leadership audiences at annual kickoffs Audience outcomes A working definition of generational friction as a leadership design issue, with practical levers managers can pull The Simplicity framework as a checklist for stripping unnecessary complexity out of team operations The 4 Human Truths as a shared engagement vocabulary across a multigenerational workforce Renewed energy and a memorable shared reference point for the rest of the offsite or conference

Why organisations work with Melica Moshiri Operating knowledge of the AI scale-up hiring market. SkillTorch places go-to-market, C-suite and technical leaders into companies across automation, robotics, semiconductors and enterprise AI. A founder’s view of what it takes to start and run a specialist business from cold, not a consultant’s view of someone else’s growth. A public platform built through BBC’s The Apprentice (2025) and a TEDxWorthing talk, giving her access to audiences beyond a typical recruitment specialist. A working perspective on how AI is changing recruiting itself, drawn from running an AI-focused search firm and hosting the SkillTorch Disrupt podcast with founders and operators in the field. Biography highlights Founder, SkillTorch, retained and embedded search for venture-backed AI companies across North America and Europe Host, SkillTorch Disrupt podcast on hiring, leadership and applied AI TEDxWorthing speaker, October 2025: “How to reconnect in a robotic world” BBC The Apprentice 2025 contestant, reached Week 8, won five tasks including Project Manager Speaking platforms include NBCUniversal, Spotify and the University of Brighton BA (Hons) Law with Business, University of Brighton Biography AI companies in their first scaling phase usually have two problems at once. The product is moving faster than the leadership team can hire for, and the executive roles they need most are the ones the founders have never personally done. SkillTorch was built to sit inside that gap. Melica Moshiri founded SkillTorch in 2022 after a decade in recruitment that took her from Pareto Law in the UK through executive search in advertising technology to Los Angeles and Orange County, where she opened a US office for a UK firm before launching her own. The firm runs retained and embedded search for venture-backed AI companies across the US and Europe, placing senior commercial, technical and operational leaders into businesses in automation, robotics, semiconductors and enterprise AI. In 2025 she became a contestant on BBC’s The Apprentice, reaching Week 8 and winning five tasks, including one as Project Manager. The platform extended her public reach across BBC News, BBC Radio 5 Live, the Daily Mail, The Mirror and Persian broadcaster Manoto TV, and led to a TEDxWorthing talk later that year on how technology is reshaping the way people connect at work. She also hosts SkillTorch Disrupt, a podcast with founders and operators building applied AI in real-world settings. The recurring theme across her client work, her broadcasting and her speaking is the same: how small, recently funded companies design leadership teams that can hold up when growth gets ahead of the org chart. Key speaking topics Building and scaling a specialist business in the AI sector Executive hiring for venture-backed technology companies AI’s effect on recruiting and talent strategy Resilience and reinvention as a first-time founder Women founding and leading in technology Personal brand and visibility for entrepreneurs Ideal for Founders and CEOs of early-stage and Series A to C technology companies Heads of Talent and CHROs scaling teams inside AI-native businesses Entrepreneurship programmes, accelerators and university enterprise audiences Conferences on women in technology, leadership and founding Audience outcomes A working picture of how senior hiring inside AI scale-ups actually runs, from brief to closed offer Specific examples of what goes wrong when founders hire too late or too senior, and how to read the signals earlier A candid account of the public, financial and personal exposure that comes with founding a business and a media profile at the same time Practical positioning for women entering or founding in technology, drawn from her own market

Why organisations work with Mike Evans He gives an audience a defence plan for AI disruption, not a forecast. The 7-Sided Pincer Movement maps the forces reshaping work, and the 5-Ingredient Kryptonite Defence sets out the capabilities that keep people and teams hard to replace. He has worked these forces since the 1990s, inside Kotter International, FranklinCovey, and Tom Peters Company, which puts three decades of change practice behind a topic most speakers picked up after 2023. He built and tested the frameworks inside 34 of the Fortune 50, with named results such as shorter decision cycles at Intel and a rebuilt pilot training pipeline at the US Army Aviation Center. He builds each keynote backward from a structured discovery call with the client, so the room gets its own challenges addressed rather than a stock talk. His Kryptonite Scorecard, a 30-behaviour diagnostic, and the distributed ownership thesis in Achieve with Accountability give a leadership team a way to keep working the plan after the session. Biography highlights Author of two books: Distinct or Extinct: Future-Proofing People and Organizations in the Age of AI (Pincer Press, 2026) and Achieve with Accountability (Wiley). Founder of Pincer Press; works full-time as a keynote speaker and author. Former senior consultant at Kotter International, FranklinCovey, and Tom Peters Company, working alongside John Kotter, Stephen Covey, and Tom Peters. Clients include 34 of the Fortune 50, among them Intel, Apple, PepsiCo, Caterpillar, Cargill, Capital One, and Pfizer. Developer of the 7-Sided Pincer Movement and the 5-Ingredient Kryptonite Defence, with the Kryptonite Scorecard diagnostic. Biography Seven forces are reshaping how organisations work at the same time: software, robotics, globalisation, outsourcing, digital transformation, disruptive competition, and AI as the accelerant that multiplies the rest. Most organisations defend one flank while the other six go unguarded. Mike Evans has worked these forces since the 1990s, well before AI made them urgent. He built his frameworks inside Kotter International, FranklinCovey, and Tom Peters Company. He worked directly with John Kotter on change acceleration, with Stephen Covey on personal effectiveness, and with Tom Peters on operational excellence. His 2026 book, Distinct or Extinct, turns that history into a method. It argues that people and organisations survive disruption by becoming hard to replace, through five capabilities: ideas, speed, talent, distinction, and leadership at all levels. Evans founded Pincer Press to publish it, choosing speed to market over a traditional deal so it reached leaders inside the 2026 disruption window. The frameworks were tested inside 34 of the Fortune 50, including Intel, Apple, PepsiCo, and the US Army Aviation Center. His Wiley book, Achieve with Accountability, supplies the execution layer beneath them, the distributed ownership that lets a workforce act on a plan rather than receive one. At Intel the work shortened decision cycles; at the US Army Aviation Center it rebuilt a pilot training pipeline under a constrained budget. Key speaking topics AI disruption and the future of work Future-proofing people and organisations The 7-Sided Pincer Movement and converging disruptive forces Distributed accountability and execution discipline Change leadership under permanent disruption Personal and organisational distinctiveness Resilience under repeated disruption Ideal for Boards and executive teams deciding how AI changes their workforce and operating model Chief People Officers and Chief Transformation Officers redesigning roles and accountability for an AI-shaped workforce Leadership conferences, annual meetings, and sales kickoffs in sectors under pressure from AI, such as financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, pharma, and technology Associations running “future of the industry” programmes where members are anxious about staying relevant Audience outcomes A map of the seven forces hitting their organisation at once, and which ones they are currently leaving unguarded The five capabilities that keep people and teams hard to replace as AI absorbs routine work A working model for distributing accountability so a workforce can act on the plan rather than receive it Specific changes leaders can put in motion within the week, beyond general AI awareness Shared language senior teams can use after the session to hold momentum

Why organisations work with Mike Walsh He works on the leadership and operating-model question that AI keynotes usually skip: who decides, with what data, supported by which machine systems, and what that means for org design. His thesis is published, not improvised. The Algorithmic Leader (Page Two, 2019) sets out ten principles for leading in the algorithmic age and has been translated into Chinese, Japanese, Korean, German, Polish and Russian. His next book, Abundant Intelligence, is being published by Harvard Business Review Press with Deloitte’s Global Head of AI Nitin Mittal, giving boards a current reference point on hybrid human and machine workforces. He brings in-the-room exposure to Fortune 500 reinvention programmes through Tomorrow, with named advisory work across the BBC, HSBC, Philips, Fujifilm, Richemont and Televisa. He writes for the audience he speaks to. As a regular Harvard Business Review columnist, his arguments are pressure-tested with the same readers buying him. Biography highlights CEO of Tomorrow, a global consultancy on designing companies for the 21st century. Author of The Algorithmic Leader (Page Two, 2019), translated into six languages. Forthcoming book Abundant Intelligence with Harvard Business Review Press, co-authored with Deloitte’s Global Head of AI, Nitin Mittal. Regular Harvard Business Review columnist; bylines in Inc., BusinessWeek, Forbes and the Wall Street Journal. Host of the Between Worlds podcast and the YouTube series The Future is Elsewhere. Founder of Jupiter Research in Asia Pacific and former senior strategy executive at News Corporation in the region. Biography Boards now buy AI tools faster than they redesign the organisations using them. The Algorithmic Leader, published by Page Two in 2019, was an early attempt to put that mismatch into a framework senior leaders could use, with ten principles for working in an environment where machine systems share the decision load. The book has since been translated into Chinese, Japanese, Korean, German, Polish and Russian. The work sits inside a longer career arc. Tomorrow, the consultancy Walsh founded in Hong Kong, advises CEOs and executive teams of multinationals including the BBC, HSBC, Philips, Fujifilm, Richemont and Televisa on reinvention in the algorithmic age. Earlier roles include founding Jupiter Research in Asia Pacific, an early tracker of e-commerce and digital business adoption, and senior strategy positions at News Corporation in the region. Publishing has been the spine of the practice. Futuretainment, published by Phaidon in 2009, won an Art Directors Club design award in New York. The Dictionary of Dangerous Ideas followed in 2014. As a regular Harvard Business Review columnist, with bylines in Inc., BusinessWeek, Forbes and the Wall Street Journal, Walsh writes for the same audience he advises and speaks to. The forthcoming work is where the operating-model question gets sharper. Abundant Intelligence, due from Harvard Business Review Press, is co-authored with Nitin Mittal, Deloitte’s Global Head of AI, and examines how organisations orchestrate hybrid human-and-machine workforces. The thread across the books, the consultancy and the keynotes is consistent: the leadership question, not the technology question, is the one boards keep underestimating. Key speaking topics Algorithmic leadership and decision-making AI agents and digital labour Designing organisations for the 21st century Disruptive innovation and new business models Digital ethics in machine-led decisions The future of work in an AI-driven economy Strategic foresight for senior leaders Ideal for Boards and executive committees setting AI strategy beyond pilots CEOs, COOs and Chief Strategy Officers redesigning operating models Chief AI Officers, Chief Digital Officers and transformation leads Leadership and learning programmes preparing senior cohorts for AI-era decision-making Audience outcomes A clearer language for the leadership question inside AI investment, not just the technology question A framework, drawn from The Algorithmic Leader, for ten shifts in how senior teams decide and operate Named cases of how multinationals are restructuring around hybrid human-and-machine work A sharper view of which executive habits, hiring patterns and decision rights age badly in an AI-driven business A working definition of digital labour and what it changes for org design, talent and accountability

Why organisations work with Miriam Meckel She runs the leadership academy that European boards turn to when they need their executive layer fluent in AI, quantum and adjacent technologies, which gives her a live read on where senior teams actually get stuck. Her 2024 book with Lea Steinacker, “Alles uberall auf einmal”, is one of the most cited German-language treatments of generative AI for business audiences, anchored in regulation, labour markets and governance rather than hype. She combines a serious academic chair at the University of St. Gallen with two decades inside business media, including the editorship of WirtschaftsWoche, so her framing is built for executive audiences rather than translated for them. Her work on brain-computer interfaces and cognitive enhancement gives her unusual range when the conversation moves from current AI deployment to the next horizon of human-machine integration. She holds the 2025 Rudolf-Diesel-Medaille for Best Media Communication, a recognition explicitly tied to making complex future technologies practical for executive audiences. Biography highlights Co-founder and CEO of ada Learning GmbH, the AI and transformation academy spun out of Handelsblatt Media Group with Lea Steinacker and Verena Pausder. Professor of Communication Management and Director of the Institute for Media and Communication Management, University of St. Gallen. Co-author of “Alles uberall auf einmal” (Rowohlt, 2024) on artificial intelligence; author of “Mein Kopf gehort mir” (Piper, 2018) on brain-computer interfaces. Former editor-in-chief and publisher of WirtschaftsWoche, the first woman to lead the title. Faculty Associate at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society; board member of Swiss media group Tamedia. Recipient of the Rudolf-Diesel-Medaille (2025), Ernst Schneider Prize, Cicero Speaker’s Prize for Science, Eisenhower Fellowship and John F. Kennedy Memorial Fellowship. Biography Generative AI sits on most executive agendas and inside very few operating models. The space between those two facts is where European leadership teams currently lose months. Miriam Meckel works in that gap, professionally and intellectually. As co-founder and CEO of ada Learning, she runs the academy that puts senior managers from major European companies through structured programmes on AI, quantum and the technologies reshaping their industries. The work is concrete: how a CFO should think about model risk, how an HR leader should redesign roles around AI capability, how a CEO should commission and challenge an AI strategy. Her 2024 book with Lea Steinacker, “Alles uberall auf einmal”, argues that AI is best understood as a data-driven human amplifier, a framing that cuts through both utopian and apocalyptic readings of the technology. Her authority comes from holding two distinct positions at the same time. She is Professor of Communication Management at the University of St. Gallen and Director of its Institute for Media and Communication Management, with research credentials reaching back to Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center. She is also a working operator who edited WirtschaftsWoche, sits on the Tamedia board, and has built ada into a recognised institution in the German-speaking executive market. Her 2018 book “Mein Kopf gehort mir” took the same operator-academic approach to brain-computer interfaces, with first-person experiments inside the laboratories developing them. For boards confronting AI, she offers something the consultancy reports cannot: a researcher who teaches the technology to executives every week and reports back what they understand, what they resist, and what actually moves once they leave the room. Key speaking topics Generative AI in business strategy AI governance, regulation and ethics The future of work in an AI-enabled economy Brain-computer interfaces and human enhancement Quantum computing for executive audiences Digital transformation and leadership Media, communication and information overload Ideal for Boards and executive committees commissioning AI strategy and asking whether their AI position has any operational substance. CHROs and chief learning officers redesigning workforce capability around AI. CEOs and strategy leaders in regulated European industries balancing AI ambition with the EU AI Act and national supervision. Senior leadership programmes and executive offsites at the point of confronting AI seriously rather than in passing. Audience outcomes A working mental model of where generative AI is already operational, where it remains pilot, and where it is still speculative. A clear read on the EU, US and Chinese regulatory environments and what they mean for European firms. Sharper questions to ask vendors, internal AI teams and consultants, grounded in how the technology actually behaves. An honest sense of what AI will do to roles, teams and decision rights inside their own organisation over the next three to five years. A bridge between today’s deployment questions and the next horizon of human-machine integration, including neural interfaces and quantum.

Why organisations work with Mo Gawdat His central AI thesis – that these systems reflect the values humans encode into them, and that organisations still have a window to act – was published in 2021 and validated by the subsequent speed of AI deployment. Boards are not getting speculation; they are getting a forecast with a track record. Scary Smart gives senior leadership a specific accountability framework, not a risk briefing: the argument is that the question is not whether AI will be powerful, but what the organisation is actively doing to shape its values now. The Solve for Happy happiness model is a named, reproducible framework developed through the same engineering logic Gawdat applied throughout his technology career – not a wellbeing programme, but a systematic methodology for building psychological stability under pressure. He addresses the external disruption (AI’s structural impact on work and value) and the internal response (the human psychology of navigating it) as a single argument – which is why his sessions land differently in a strategy forum than a conventional AI speaker or a conventional wellbeing speaker would. Seven years inside Google [X] at the point when self-driving cars, Project Loon, and Google Life Sciences were being built and commercialised gives him a credibility baseline that no amount of research or commentary can replicate. Biography highlights Former Chief Business Officer, Google [X] (2013-2018), overseeing commercial strategy for Google’s moonshot innovation division 30-year career in technology spanning IBM, NCR, Microsoft, and Google, including senior roles across emerging markets globally Author of Solve for Happy (Macmillan, 2017), Scary Smart (Macmillan, 2021), That Little Voice in Your Head (Macmillan, 2022), and Unstressable (2024, co-authored with psychologist Alice Law) Scary Smart named a Sunday Times Business Book of the Year (2021) Chief AI Officer at Flight Story, the digital marketing company co-founded by Steven Bartlett Founder of One Billion Happy, a global initiative to share structured approaches to happiness and wellbeing Host of Slo Mo, one of the leading mental health podcasts globally Biography When Scary Smart was published in 2021, its central argument read as speculative: AI would become superintelligent, its real danger lay not in the technology itself but in the values humans encode into it, and organisations still had a narrow window to shape the outcome. Within a year, the release of ChatGPT had reframed the argument as a warning that had arrived early. Mo Gawdat had been inside Google [X] when these systems were being built. Gawdat joined Google in 2007 and served as Chief Business Officer of Google [X] from 2013, overseeing commercial strategy for the moonshot division behind self-driving cars, Project Loon, and Google Life Sciences. His seven years there gave him direct exposure to both the capability and the accountability gaps at the frontier of AI development. He left in 2018 and now serves as Chief AI Officer at Flight Story, the digital marketing company co-founded by Steven Bartlett. The parallel body of work on happiness was not a departure from his technology career. It emerged from the same engineering mindset applied to personal crisis. Following the death of his son Ali in 2014, Gawdat developed the framework at the centre of Solve for Happy: a systematic, reproducible model for well-being grounded in cognitive science. The book became an international bestseller. His thesis is that the two bodies of work are not separate. An organisation that understands the human psychology of its people is better positioned to navigate the disruption AI will accelerate. Unstressable, co-authored with psychologist Alice Law and published in 2024, extends that logic into a practical stress-management framework built around four human systems. He hosts Slo Mo, one of the leading mental health podcasts globally, and his earlier books – That Little Voice in Your Head (2022) and Scary Smart, a Sunday Times Business Book of the Year – continue to reach executive audiences grappling with AI governance and personal resilience across a 30-year technology career. Key speaking topics AI ethics and governance Responsible AI adoption The human impact of AI disruption Happiness science and the engineering of well-being Stress management frameworks Technology leadership and strategic foresight Human values in AI development Ideal for Boards and executive leadership teams making AI governance and adoption decisions Chief People Officers and Chief Technology Officers managing workforce responses to AI disruption Strategy, transformation, and future of work forums where AI risk and human resilience intersect Technology, financial services, and marketing organisations with significant and growing AI exposure Audience outcomes A coherent framework for evaluating AI’s ethical and human risks, grounded in direct experience of building these systems rather than external commentary Clarity on what values organisations need to embed in AI systems now, and why the window to do so meaningfully is narrowing Practical tools from the Solve for Happy model for building psychological stability and resilience under conditions of sustained uncertainty A more calibrated understanding of the timeline and direction of AI development, distinct from both catastrophism and uncritical optimism Practical techniques from Unstressable for identifying and reducing sources of stress at individual and team level