Intelligenza artificiale e IA generativa

Why organisations work with Andrew Hessel He is one of a small group of people actually running a human-genome-scale project. Co-founding Genome Project-write with George Church and Jef Boeke gives him a direct line of sight into what will be technically and commercially real in the next ten years, not a commentator’s view. He has built companies in this space, not just written about it. Miikana Therapeutics, Pink Army Cooperative and Humane Genomics each tested a different commercial model for synthetic biology, which is what boards want when they are sizing their own exposure. His Autodesk work made the abstract concrete. The phiX174 genome his team synthesised sits in the Museum of Modern Art’s collection, which is a useful anchor for a room that has not yet understood that genomes can be printed. The Genesis Machine, co-authored with Amy Webb, gives leadership teams a shared reference point. It was named a New Yorker Best Book of 2022 and is already on the reading lists of strategy and R and D functions thinking through biotech platform bets. He speaks to risk as fluently as opportunity. Biosecurity, governance and dual-use are part of his core argument, which matters for regulated industries and for any board that has to sign off on a biology-forward strategy. Biography highlights Co-founder, Genome Project-write (GP-write), the international effort to engineer large genomes including the human genome, launched in 2016 with George Church, Jef Boeke and Nancy J. Kelley. Co-founder and President, Humane Genomics, a synthetic-virus cancer therapeutics company based in New York. Distinguished Researcher, Autodesk Bio/Nano Programmable Matter group, 2012 to 2018; led the synthesis of bacteriophage phiX174, a print of which entered the Museum of Modern Art’s collection. Founding faculty and former co-chair of Bioinformatics and Biotechnology, Singularity University. Co-author with Amy Webb of The Genesis Machine: Our Quest to Rewrite Life in the Age of Synthetic Biology (PublicAffairs, 2022), a New Yorker Best Book of 2022. AAAS-Lemelson Invention Ambassador, 2015; contributor to Scientific American. Biography Genome Project-write launched in 2016 with a plan to engineer genomes at the scale of the human genome. Hessel co-founded it with Harvard geneticist George Church, NYU’s Jef Boeke, and Nancy J. Kelley, after a period advocating that biology needed an equivalent to the software industry’s write phase, not just the read phase delivered by the original Human Genome Project. That framing runs through his career. As Distinguished Researcher at Autodesk from 2012 to 2018, he led the team that designed and printed the bacteriophage phiX174 genome in three weeks for roughly a thousand dollars, a demonstration that biology had become a design discipline. A copy of that print entered the collection of the Museum of Modern Art. Before Autodesk he was founding faculty at Singularity University, where he built and co-chaired the Bioinformatics and Biotechnology track. He is also an operator. He co-founded Miikana Therapeutics in 2002, launched Pink Army Cooperative in 2009 as an open-source biotech experiment in personalised cancer therapy, and co-founded Humane Genomics in 2017 to develop synthetic oncolytic viruses, starting with a veterinary indication before moving to human oncology. Each company is a different bet on how synthetic biology gets to market. His 2022 book with futurist Amy Webb, The Genesis Machine, is the clearest articulation of his argument: synthetic biology is on the same kind of curve that digital computing was in the 1970s, with the same mix of platform opportunities and governance risks. The book was named a New Yorker Best Book of 2022 and is widely used by strategy teams trying to build a common vocabulary for biotech decisions. He was named an AAAS-Lemelson Invention Ambassador in 2015 and contributes to Scientific American. Key speaking topics Synthetic biology and the future of medicine Programmable genomes and the write phase of biotechnology Biosecurity and governance of engineering biology Personalised and precision cancer therapies Platform economics of bioengineering Convergence of AI, software and biology Ideal for Pharma, biotech and medtech boards sizing long-horizon platform bets CTOs, Chief Scientific Officers and heads of R and D in regulated industries Insurance, agriculture, food and materials leaders exposed to biological innovation Strategy and foresight teams building scenarios for the next decade of life sciences Audience outcomes A working model of synthetic biology as an industrial platform, not a research topic A clearer read on which biology-driven shifts are near-term commercial and which are still speculative Named examples of where programmable biology is already changing medicine, agriculture and materials A sharper view of the biosecurity and governance questions that sit alongside the commercial upside Language and reference points leadership teams can use to brief their own boards

Why organisations work with Andrew McAfee His Geek Way framework – four named cultural norms (science, ownership, speed, openness) derived from evolutionary biology and management research – gives leadership teams a specific, testable diagnostic for why their organisations underperform digitally, not another instruction to move faster or fail more His research at MIT’s Initiative on the Digital Economy produces evidence-based findings on how AI and automation are actually affecting productivity and competitive structure – drawn from organisations that have already made the transition, not from modelled projections He holds simultaneous positions as MIT Principal Research Scientist, inaugural Visiting Fellow at Google’s Technology and Society group, and co-founder of Workhelix, an AI workforce optimisation startup – a combination that grounds his analysis in research, platform-scale practice, and operating reality at once The Second Machine Age and Machine, Platform, Crowd – both New York Times bestsellers co-authored with Erik Brynjolfsson – established the intellectual framework through which most serious organisations now think about automation, labour displacement, and platform competition; many executives in the room will be updating assumptions formed by those books He and Brynjolfsson are the only individuals named to both the Thinkers50 ranking of the world’s top management thinkers and the Politico 50 group of people transforming American politics – a dual recognition that reflects the reach of his work into the policy questions, not just the business questions, that will define the digital economy’s next decade Biography highlights Principal Research Scientist, MIT Sloan School of Management; co-founder and co-director, MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy Inaugural Visiting Fellow, Technology and Society, Google Co-founder, Workhelix (AI workforce optimisation startup) Six-time Thinkers50 honoree; Thinkers50 Digital Thinking Award 2015 with Erik Brynjolfsson; one of only two individuals named to both the Thinkers50 and the Politico 50 Author of The Geek Way (Economist Best Books 2023; Forbes Top 10 Business Books 2023) and More from Less; co-author of The Second Machine Age and Machine, Platform, Crowd (New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestsellers) Contributor to Foreign Affairs, Harvard Business Review, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times; featured on CNN, 60 Minutes, TED, and the World Economic Forum Biography The gap between digital investment and digital performance is one of the most consequential – and least clearly explained – problems in business strategy. Andrew McAfee, Principal Research Scientist at MIT’s Sloan School of Management and co-founder of MIT’s Initiative on the Digital Economy, has spent three decades building the research base to explain it precisely. His 2023 book The Geek Way – named a best book of the year by both The Economist and Forbes – makes a specific argument: the companies consistently outperforming their sectors share four cultural norms (science, ownership, speed, openness), and those norms are not accidents of Silicon Valley geography but replicable patterns grounded in evolutionary science. Organisations that treat digital transformation as an infrastructure challenge, McAfee argues, are misidentifying the problem. The bottleneck is almost always managerial culture, not technology capability. That argument carries weight from multiple directions. McAfee is the inaugural Visiting Fellow at Google’s Technology and Society group and co-founder of Workhelix, an AI startup focused on workforce optimisation – positions that situate his MIT research in both platform-scale and operating practice. His earlier books with Erik Brynjolfsson – The Second Machine Age and Machine, Platform, Crowd, both New York Times bestsellers – established the frameworks that shaped how most serious organisations now think about automation, platform competition, and the economics of digital productivity. He and Brynjolfsson are the only individuals named to both the Thinkers50 ranking of the world’s top management thinkers and the Politico 50 group of people transforming American politics – a pairing that reflects how far McAfee’s work extends beyond corporate boardrooms into the policy questions about AI, labour, and economic growth that will define the decade ahead. Key speaking topics AI and digital business performance The Geek Way: cultural norms for the digital organisation Platform competition and digital business models Technology, productivity, and economic growth Machine intelligence and the future of work Dematerialisation and sustainable growth Organisational culture in the technology-driven enterprise Ideal for C-suite and board audiences evaluating digital strategy and competitive positioning against digital-native rivals Strategy and transformation leads in established industries under sustained digital disruption Innovation and R&D leaders benchmarking organisational culture against technology-sector performance models Executive education programmes on digital leadership, AI adoption, and future-of-work strategy Audience outcomes A clear account of why digital-native organisations outperform incumbents structurally – not through superior technology budgets but through specific, replicable management norms A practical diagnostic framework (The Geek Way: science, ownership, speed, openness) for identifying where organisational culture is constraining digital performance Evidence-based perspective on how AI and automation are actually affecting productivity and workforce structure, grounded in MIT research rather than market projections A more disciplined vocabulary for separating genuine digital transformation from technology investment that changes operating performance little Sharper thinking on platform competition and the long-term viability of traditional business models against digital-native challengers

Why organisations work with Andrew Trask He has built the working infrastructure for privacy-preserving AI, not just written about it. PySyft, the open-source framework he created through OpenMined, is used by researchers and engineers to train models on data they never directly see. He sits inside one of the most consequential AI research labs in the world, DeepMind, while also leading an 18,000-strong community of privacy-preserving AI engineers. Few speakers operate credibly in both rooms. His agenda is structured transparency: making it possible for institutions to collaborate on AI without surrendering the underlying data. That is the exact tension a regulated industry leader is now trying to solve. He teaches the material rather than narrates it. Grokking Deep Learning and his Udacity courses have introduced tens of thousands of practitioners to neural networks and to private AI, which is why technical audiences find him credible rather than performative. Biography highlights Senior Research Scientist, Google DeepMind, working on privacy, federated learning, differential privacy, and secure computation. Founder of OpenMined, an open-source community of more than 18,000 researchers and engineers building privacy-preserving AI tools. Creator of PySyft, the open-source framework for training machine learning models on data the model owner cannot see. PhD candidate, University of Oxford, on the Oxford-DeepMind Graduate Scholarship; affiliated with the Future of Humanity Institute and the Centre for Governance of AI. Author of Grokking Deep Learning, Manning Publications, and instructor on Udacity’s Secure and Private AI and Deep Learning Nanodegree courses. Term Member, Council on Foreign Relations. Biography The hardest problem in applied AI is not modelling. It is access. The data that would make a healthcare model genuinely useful sits inside hospital systems that cannot legally share it. The data that would make a financial crime model work is split across banks that compete with each other. The default response has been to do less. Trask has spent the last decade building the technical answer to that problem. Through OpenMined, the open-source community he founded, he created PySyft, a framework that lets engineers train models on data they never directly see. The underlying methods, federated learning, differential privacy, secure multi-party computation, homomorphic encryption, are what serious AI governance now relies on. He calls the broader agenda structured transparency, and it is becoming the operating vocabulary for AI deployment in regulated settings. The institutional positioning matters. He is a Senior Research Scientist at Google DeepMind and a PhD candidate at Oxford, funded by the Oxford-DeepMind Graduate Scholarship and affiliated with the Future of Humanity Institute and the Centre for Governance of AI. He is also a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations. That combination puts him inside the frontier AI conversation and inside the AI governance conversation at the same time, which is unusual. The teaching record is the test of whether his ideas travel. Grokking Deep Learning, published by Manning, taught a generation of engineers how neural networks actually work. His Udacity courses on secure and private AI did the same for the privacy-preserving stack. The reason senior technical audiences treat him as a primary source rather than a commentator is that they have already worked through his material. Key speaking topics Privacy-preserving artificial intelligence Federated learning and secure computation AI governance and structured transparency Differential privacy in practice AI safety and responsible deployment The future of data infrastructure for AI Foundations of deep learning for non-specialists Ideal for Chief AI officers, CTOs, and chief data officers in regulated industries (healthcare, financial services, government) deciding how to deploy AI on sensitive data. Boards and audit committees pressure-tested on AI governance, data risk, and the gap between AI ambition and AI infrastructure. Heads of research, innovation, and product engineering teams building the next generation of AI products. Policy and public-sector leaders responsible for AI standards, data sharing, and international AI governance. Audience outcomes A working mental model of the privacy-preserving AI stack, named technique by named technique, instead of the usual abstractions. A clearer view of which AI use cases are unlocked by federated learning and secure computation, and which remain blocked by data access. A grounded read on where AI governance is heading, from someone inside both DeepMind and the Oxford AI governance ecosystem. A direct sense of how to move from AI pilots to deployments that survive regulatory and reputational scrutiny.

Why organisations work with Angela Barnes She is a sitting business editor, not a retired one. The Euronews remit means she walks into a room with the same week’s markets, policy and corporate stories already loaded. The Big Question is a CEO-interview franchise she writes and presents every week. Boards hiring her for a fireside or on-stage interview are hiring a format she runs as a day job. Her reporting reach spans Sky News, CNBC (including East Tech West), ITV, Yahoo Finance and The Telegraph, which gives her fluency across markets, technology and energy without a single-sector tell. She has moderated for the IMF and the Paris Finance Forum, so the step up to finance-ministry-level panels does not require coaching. The technology background from Sky Swipe and CNBC East Tech West means a tech-and-AI panel does not need a separate host. Biography highlights Managing Editor of Business, Euronews, Brussels Anchor and interviewer, The Big Question, Euronews Over a decade at Sky News as producer, reporter and presenter, including the Swipe technology show Contributor credits at CNBC (East Tech West), ITV, IG, Yahoo Finance and The Telegraph Moderator credits include the IMF and the Paris Finance Forum Described by Ireland’s Better Business magazine as “one of Europe’s most prominent news figures” Biography The Big Question goes out weekly on Euronews. Angela Barnes writes it, produces the conversation and puts the questions to a rolling cast of chief executives, ministers and investors. That is the core of her working life, and it is why she is in demand on stage. Barnes runs business, markets and economics for Euronews from Brussels, which puts her inside the policy bloodstream of the European Union and within a short flight of the financial centres her audience trades in. Before Euronews she spent more than a decade at Sky News as a producer, reporter and presenter, including on the Swipe technology programme, and has contributed to CNBC’s East Tech West, ITV, IG, Yahoo Finance and The Telegraph. As a moderator she has worked with the IMF and the Paris Finance Forum, which means the vocabulary of sovereign balance sheets, energy transition finance and central-bank communication is already familiar. Ireland’s Better Business magazine called her “one of Europe’s most prominent news figures.” The practical point for a board hiring a host: the person on stage has done the interview that morning, on camera, with someone senior, and will do another one next week. That keeps the questions current and the pace sharp. Key speaking topics Global markets and the macro picture Energy markets and the energy transition European economic and political risk Technology, AI and the platform economy Central bank policy and financial stability Corporate strategy and CEO accountability Business journalism and media strategy Ideal for Annual conferences and investor days needing a moderator who can interview a CEO and a finance minister in the same programme Financial services, energy and technology clients hosting C-suite and board-level forums Public-sector and multilateral convenings on economic policy, trade and transition finance Audience outcomes A panel or fireside that stays on point because the host has read the file and the morning’s news Senior guests stretched on the questions that matter, without hostility, so the audience learns something new A running thread between sessions that ties markets, policy and technology into one narrative for the day A tighter run of show, because a working editor manages time on air for a living

Why organisations work with Anne-Marie Imafidon She has run the experiment at scale. Stemettes has engaged more than 60,000 young women and non-binary young people across the UK, Ireland and Europe since 2013, giving her a live evidence base on what moves technical participation and what does not. Her technical credibility is not borrowed. Master’s in Mathematics and Computer Science from Oxford at 20, Honorary Fellow of Keble College, and guest arithmetician on Channel 4’s Countdown for 60 episodes, so technical audiences engage her as a peer rather than an advocate. She sits inside the UK policy conversation on digital skills. Co-Chair of the Institute for the Future of Work, 2022-2023 President of the British Science Association, and DSIT Women in Tech Envoy, which gives leaders a direct line to how regulation and industrial strategy are likely to land. She has a published thesis. She’s In CTRL (Transworld, 2022) argues that women need to take back tech as users, builders and decision-makers; that frame is portable into strategy conversations about product, customer and workforce. She is comfortable in front of non-technical boards. Her broadcast work and Chancellorship of Glasgow Caledonian University mean she translates between technical reality and senior decision-maker vocabulary without losing either. Biography highlights Co-founder and CEO of Stemettes, social enterprise founded in 2013 that has reached 60,000+ young women and non-binary young people across the UK, Ireland and Europe. Master’s in Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Oxford, aged 20; Honorary Fellow of Keble College, Oxford. Appointed MBE in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to young women and STEM. Chancellor of Glasgow Caledonian University; 2022-2023 President of the British Science Association; Co-Chair of the Institute for the Future of Work. Author of She’s In CTRL: How Women Can Take Back Tech (Transworld, 2022). Guest arithmetician on Channel 4’s Countdown across 60 episodes (2021-2022), first Black woman to take the Countdown board; voted Computer Weekly’s Most Influential Woman in UK Tech (2020); Forbes Top 50 Women in Tech. DSIT Women in Tech Envoy, co-chairing a UK government Taskforce with the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology (2025). Biography Stemettes was set up in 2013 after its co-founder returned from the Grace Hopper Celebration in 2012 and decided the UK needed its own infrastructure for girls in STEM. More than 60,000 young women and non-binary young people have passed through its programmes since, across the UK, Ireland and Europe. That operating record is the spine of Anne-Marie Imafidon’s authority on technology talent. The technical credentials are unusual. Imafidon took her Master’s in Mathematics and Computer Science at Oxford at 20, is an Honorary Fellow of Keble College, and was the guest arithmetician on Channel 4’s Countdown for 60 episodes in 2021 and 2022, the first Black woman to run the Countdown board. She was appointed MBE in 2017 for services to young women and STEM. Her public roles put her inside the UK conversation on digital skills and industrial strategy. She is Chancellor of Glasgow Caledonian University, Co-Chair of the Institute for the Future of Work, served as President of the British Science Association in 2022-2023, and in 2025 was appointed the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology’s Women in Tech Envoy, co-chairing a Taskforce with the Secretary of State. Her book She’s In CTRL, published by Transworld in 2022, argues that women should treat technology as something to take control of, not just consume or be represented within. For senior leaders it reframes the DEI-in-tech conversation as a product and capability question: who builds the tools, who governs them, and whose problems they get designed to solve. Key speaking topics Women and underrepresented groups in STEM Technology talent pipelines and digital skills Future of work and AI Inclusive product and technology design Social entrepreneurship at scale UK digital policy and industrial strategy Responsible and inclusive AI Ideal for CHROs, CPOs and heads of talent building technology hiring pipelines beyond the usual funnel. CTOs, CDIOs and engineering leaders under pressure to improve retention and representation in technical teams. Boards and ExCos setting policy on AI, digital skills and workforce strategy, particularly in regulated sectors. Corporate foundations, ESG leads and public-sector partners designing STEM and social mobility interventions. Audience outcomes A sharper read on why conventional diversity-in-tech programmes under-deliver and where the real intervention points sit. A working vocabulary for discussing inclusive AI and technology design at board level without defaulting to platitudes. Concrete examples, drawn from Stemettes and UK policy work, of what moves technical participation and retention. A reframe of women-in-tech as a product, governance and capability issue, not only a hiring issue. A sense of how UK digital skills policy and regulation are likely to shape talent strategy over the next cycle.

Why organisations work with Aric Dromi Nine years as an in-house Futurologist at Volvo Cars gives him an operator’s view of how a global manufacturer actually absorbs autonomous, electric and connected technology, not a consultant’s slide on it. He works across the same problem from three angles, corporate strategy, government policy and civic infrastructure, which is unusual in technology foresight and useful when a brief touches more than one of them. Founder of TEMPUS.MOTU and advisory board member at NTT Innovation Institute and UNLEASH, with a network that spans telecoms, mobility, energy and the UN Sustainable Development Goals agenda. Pushes against deck-driven strategy. His stated rule, that any strategy worth executing should fit on a napkin, lands well with executives tired of frameworks that do not survive contact with the operating business. Comfortable in uncomfortable territory. He frames himself as a “professional troublemaker” and is booked for sessions where leadership wants their assumptions stress-tested, not validated. Biography highlights Nine-year tenure as in-house Futurologist at Volvo Cars, advising on autonomous, electric and connected vehicle strategy. Founder of TEMPUS.MOTU, a strategic advisory and think tank serving corporate and public-sector clients. Advisory board, NTT Innovation Institute, the corporate research arm of NTT Group. Innovation Advisory Board, UNLEASH, the global innovation lab built around the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Earlier roles at Ericsson, Microsoft and Cellcom, where he was Chief Knowledge Officer. Author of The Intellectual Rage and The Prophet, plus further titles published under the pen name D.B. Solomon. Biography Volvo did not hire a futurologist for nine years to predict the next car. It hired one to help the leadership team work out what a car company even is once mobility becomes autonomous, electric and connected. That brief, sustained over almost a decade inside one of Europe’s most identifiable industrial brands, is the foundation of how Aric Dromi thinks. He now runs TEMPUS.MOTU, a strategic advisory and think tank that takes the same posture into other sectors. The work spans corporate strategy, government policy and city-scale infrastructure, with engagements that have included clients such as Mastercard, Siemens, Volkswagen, Telefonica, the World Bank and the IFC, alongside government work in Kazakhstan and Moscow city. His public positions reflect the same range. He sits on the advisory board of NTT Innovation Institute, the research arm of one of the world’s largest telecoms groups, and on the Innovation Advisory Board of UNLEASH, the global lab built around the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The point of those affiliations is not credentialing. It is access to the actual conversations where technology, capital and policy are being negotiated. Dromi is direct about what he is for and what he is against. He calls himself a professional troublemaker, writes books that read more like critiques than playbooks, and tells executive audiences that any strategy worth doing should fit on a napkin. Leaders book him when they want their assumptions broken in a room where it still costs less than breaking them in the market. Key speaking topics AI, automation and the future of work Autonomous and connected mobility Smart cities and urban infrastructure Data, privacy and digital governance Strategic foresight under exponential change Innovation strategy and corporate transformation Geopolitics of technology Ideal for Boards and CEOs of industrial, mobility and energy businesses are confronting AI and automation as a strategy question, not an IT one. CSOs, CIOs and heads of innovation are responsible for translating foresight into operating decisions. Government and city leaders are working on smart-city, mobility and digital infrastructure programmes. Executive offsites and leadership summits where the brief is to break orthodoxies, not confirm them. Audience outcomes A clearer view of how AI, automation and connected systems will reshape the audience’s specific industry, not technology in general. Sharper questions for the next strategy cycle, framed around capability, governance and societal licence to operate. A working sense of where corporate, policy and civic decisions intersect, and where leaders are exposed when they assume they do not. Confidence to retire foresight tools that no longer survive contact with the operating business. A direct, sometimes uncomfortable challenge to assumptions the leadership team has stopped questioning.

Why organisations work with Arun Sundararajan He works inside the regulatory machinery his audiences are exposed to. Testimony to the US Congress, the European Parliament and the United Nations, plus a seat on the World Economic Forum’s AI Governance Alliance, means he can tell a board where AI rules are actually heading, not where the press thinks they are. His research asks a question most AI strategies skip: what part of “human capital” should remain owned by humans once a model has learned it. For any company building on or competing with generative AI, that question sits underneath copyright exposure, talent contracts and product liability at the same time. He separates durable economic shifts from cycle noise. The same economist who mapped the move to crowd-based capitalism in The Sharing Economy now tells executives which AI effects are structural and which are hype, a distinction worth real money in capital allocation. He advises both sides. He works with technology companies on strategy, litigation and regulation, and with non-tech boards on AI governance and foresight, so he understands the incentives of the firms building the infrastructure your business now depends on. Biography highlights Harold Price Professor of Entrepreneurship at NYU Stern and Director of its Fubon Center for Technology, Business and Innovation. Author of The Sharing Economy (MIT Press, 2016), winner of the Axiom Best Business Books Award and translated into five languages. Has given testimony on the digital economy and AI to the US Congress, the European Parliament and the United Nations. Member of the World Economic Forum’s AI Governance Alliance; former member of the Carnegie Council’s AI and Equality Initiative. Recognised with a Thinkers50 Radar Thinker Award, nine academic Best Paper awards and two Google Faculty Awards. Author of more than 40 op-eds across the New York Times, Financial Times, Guardian, Wired, Le Monde and Harvard Business Review, and a regular AI commentator for CNN, CNBC and Wired. Biography Generative AI learns to write, compose and design by training on work that people already made. That creates a problem older intellectual property law was never built for: a person’s past output is now also the blueprint for a machine that can reproduce their skill. Arun Sundararajan has made this the centre of his work, framing it as a single question for policymakers and boards: what facets of human capital should be owned by humans? The question carries weight because of where he asks it. As an economist at NYU Stern, Director of its Fubon Center for Technology, Business and Innovation, and a member of the World Economic Forum’s AI Governance Alliance, he has given testimony to the US Congress, the European Parliament and the United Nations. His paper “Rethinking Intellectual Property Law in an Era of Generative AI” lays out why copyright designed for the internet era misfires when the thing being copied is a creative process rather than a file. His authority on technological transitions is established. The Sharing Economy, published by MIT Press, was the early rigorous account of platforms like Uber and Airbnb displacing the managed corporation, and it won the Axiom Best Business Books Award. That track record matters now because the same economist is telling executives which AI effects are structural and which are noise, a judgment his recent work on the AI-capital-to-labour threshold makes concrete. What distinguishes him from the wider future-of-work field is the second half of his argument. Alongside the ownership question, he presses the case for national infrastructure that lets people move between occupations mid-career with dignity, treating workforce displacement as a design choice rather than an inevitability. For a board weighing how far to build on generative AI, he is the rare voice who can map both the legal claims forming underneath the technology and the economic settlement that will determine whether it holds. Key speaking topics AI governance and regulation Intellectual property and copyright in the age of generative AI Ownership of human capital The AI-driven future of work Platform strategy and network effects Antitrust and market power in technology Ideal for Boards and C-suites setting generative AI strategy, particularly where IP exposure, talent contracts or litigation risk are in play. Chief Legal Officers, General Counsel and Chief Strategy Officers navigating AI regulation across US, EU and Asian jurisdictions. Policymakers and regulators shaping AI, copyright and labour rules. Technology and platform companies setting strategy against a shifting governance backdrop. Audience outcomes A clear read on where AI regulation is actually heading across the major jurisdictions, from someone inside the bodies writing it. The ability to tell which AI effects on their industry are structural and which are cycle-driven hype. A sharper view of their company’s exposure on IP, copyright and the ownership of human capability. A framework for workforce planning that treats AI-driven displacement as something to design for, not absorb passively.

Why organisations work with Ashlea Atigolo She has co-built a generative AI product, Finley AI, that has been recognised on the WealthTech100 2024 list, so the advice she offers boards is grounded in shipped technology rather than commentary. She brings a regulated-industry lens. Her work spans wealth management, private equity and fintech, where the question is not whether to deploy AI but how to do it without breaking trust, compliance, or customer relationships. She is a credible voice on women in AI without leaning on the topic alone. The named recognition (TechRound Top 64 Women in Tech, Great British Businesswoman finalist, Fintech Powerlist) sits alongside the technical and commercial credentials. She is equally fluent as a keynote speaker, panel host and workshop facilitator, which makes her a flexible fit for AI summits, leadership offsites and investor-facing events. Biography highlights Co-founder of INATIGO, a generative AI venture builder. Co-founder of Finley AI, listed on the WealthTech100 2024. Managing Partner at Consult Venture Partners, advising executives on generative and agentic AI adoption. Former Co-Founder and Co-Managing Director of City Wharf Private Wealth, awarded Europe’s Most Innovative Wealth Management Model at the 2021 WealthBriefing European Awards. Listed on TechRound’s Top 64 Influential Women in UK Technology (2022) and named on the Fintech Powerlist. Speaker and host at Fintech Week London, Fintech Connect and Chatbot Africa AI Summit. Biography Most organisations have an AI strategy. A much smaller number have AI in production, talking to customers, sitting inside regulated workflows and answering to a compliance function. Ashlea Atigolo works at that second layer. As co-founder of INATIGO and its flagship product Finley AI, listed on the WealthTech100 2024, she has built generative AI systems for personal finance rather than written about them. Her route into AI was operational, not academic. Before INATIGO she co-founded City Wharf Private Wealth, where her co-leadership won Europe’s Most Innovative Wealth Management Model at the 2021 WealthBriefing European Awards. That background gives her advisory work a distinctive cast. She understands wealth, private equity and fintech as live operating environments, not case studies, and her current role as Managing Partner at Consult Venture Partners is built on that. Her independent recognition is dense and recent. She has been named on TechRound’s Top 64 Influential Women in UK Technology, included on the Fintech Powerlist, and shortlisted as a finalist for the Great British Businesswoman Awards in technology. She has advised Adobe directly and has been engaged through GLG, AlphaSense and GuidePoint by executives in fintech, private equity and financial services. On stage she is most useful to organisations that need a builder’s view of generative and agentic AI: what to deploy, what to delay, how to govern it, and where the human still has to sit inside the workflow. She hosts and keynotes at Fintech Week London, Fintech Connect and Chatbot Africa AI Summit, and is equally credible in a board workshop as on a main-stage panel. Key speaking topics Generative and agentic AI in financial services AI product strategy and deployment in regulated industries Conversational and empathetic AI design Responsible AI, trust and governance Fintech and wealth management innovation Women in AI and inclusive technology teams Leadership through technological disruption Ideal for Boards and executive committees in financial services, wealth management, private equity and fintech sizing up generative or agentic AI investments. CIO, CTO, CDO and Head of Innovation audiences moving from AI pilots into operating deployment. Fintech, AI and wealth-management conferences looking for an operator-speaker rather than a commentator. Internal AI summits, leadership offsites and women-in-tech programmes inside large enterprises. Audience outcomes A clearer picture of where generative and agentic AI is genuinely production-ready in regulated industries, and where it is not. A working vocabulary for governance conversations: agents, guardrails, oversight, human-in-the-loop. A view of how a builder, not a vendor, sequences AI adoption inside a regulated business. Named examples of fintech and wealth-management deployments that buyers can take into their own strategy conversations.

Why organisations work with Audrey Tang She has run the experiment that most boards are still debating: AI governance, digital deliberation, and disinformation defence deployed at national scale, with measurable outcomes during a pandemic and a presidential election. She offers a working alternative to the binary of techno-libertarianism and centralised AI control, set out in “Plurality” with E. Glen Weyl and tested inside Taiwan’s government. She built the civic infrastructure she talks about. g0v, the Mask Map, vTaiwan, and Join.gov.tw are operational systems, not concepts, and have been adopted in Japan, the EU, and the United States. Her authority is rare in this category: a TIME100 AI honoree and Foreign Policy Top 100 Global Thinker who has signed off on policy decisions, not just commented on them. Biography highlights First Minister of Digital Affairs of Taiwan, 2022 to 2024; Digital Minister from 2016. Co-author with E. Glen Weyl of “Plurality: The Future of Collaborative Technology and Democracy”. TIME100 Most Influential People in AI, 2023. Foreign Policy Top 100 Global Thinkers, 2019. Co-founder of g0v and architect of Taiwan’s open-data COVID-19 response, including the Mask Map. Ambassador-at-large, University of Oxford Accelerator Fellowship Programme. Biography Most governments responded to COVID-19 with top-down distribution and mandates. Taiwan ran an open-data Mask Map built with civic coders, a participatory platform called vTaiwan, and a disinformation playbook with a 20-minute response window. The minister responsible was Audrey Tang. Tang served as Taiwan’s first Digital Minister from 2016, and as the first Minister of Digital Affairs from 2022 to 2024. Before government, she was a Silicon Valley engineer and a core contributor to Perl and Haskell. She joined the g0v civic-tech community in its early years and helped shape the open-government practices that later became state policy. Her book with E. Glen Weyl, “Plurality: The Future of Collaborative Technology and Democracy”, argues that AI and digital tools can be designed to widen democratic participation rather than narrow it. The book was written openly on GitHub, translated by volunteers into more than a dozen languages, and released into the public domain. It draws directly on what Taiwan built and ran. She has been named to TIME100 AI, Foreign Policy’s Top 100 Global Thinkers, and serves as an ambassador-at-large in the University of Oxford’s Accelerator Fellowship Programme. For a senior audience weighing how to govern AI inside a regulated organisation, she offers something most speakers in this category cannot: a record of decisions made in office, with results visible in pandemic outcomes and election integrity. Key speaking topics Digital democracy and participatory governance AI ethics and trustworthy AI design Plurality and collaborative technology Disinformation defence and election integrity Open-source civic infrastructure Public trust in technology Cybersecurity as democratic resilience Ideal for Boards and executive committees setting AI governance and risk policy Chief Digital, Data, and AI Officers designing deployment frameworks Public-sector and regulated-industry leaders facing trust and legitimacy questions CISOs and risk leads responsible for disinformation, election, or platform integrity Audience outcomes A working mental model for AI governance grounded in a national case, not a thought experiment. A clear view of what participatory and open-source approaches add to organisational decision-making, and where they break. Specific tactics for disinformation response, drawn from Taiwan’s 2-2-2 playbook. A vocabulary for “Plurality” that gives leaders an alternative to the techno-libertarian and centralised-control framings of AI.

Why organisations work with Avinash Kaushik He built the intellectual vocabulary a generation of marketers now uses, including the See-Think-Do-Care framework that maps content, media and measurement to real customer intent. Sixteen years as Google’s Digital Marketing Evangelist gave him a view of marketing performance across most of the world’s largest advertisers, not a single case study. He bridges analytics and brand in a room that usually forces leaders to pick one, advising both a measurement firm (Human Made Machine) and a global fashion group (Tapestry). His books sit on the desks of working practitioners in ten-plus languages; the argument has survived translation, platform change and the rise of generative AI. He is unusually direct about what does not work in marketing measurement, which is why senior buyers use him to sharpen internal debates rather than flatter them. Biography highlights Former Senior Director of Global Analytics and Digital Marketing Evangelist at Google, a sixteen-year tenure. Global Chief Strategy Officer at Human Made Machine; Brand Strategy and Marketing Transformation Consultant at Tapestry. Author of “Web Analytics: An Hour a Day” and “Web Analytics 2.0” (Wiley), translated into more than ten languages. Originator of the See-Think-Do-Care framework for intent-based marketing strategy. Recipient of the American Statistical Association’s Statistical Advocate of the Year and the Web Analytics Association’s Most Influential Industry Contributor award. Writes “The Marketing Analytics Intersect” newsletter, read by approximately 55,000 marketing and analytics leaders. Biography Marketing leaders rarely struggle for data. They struggle to decide what any of it means for growth next quarter. That is the problem Avinash Kaushik has spent two decades making tractable, first inside Google as its Senior Director of Global Analytics and Digital Marketing Evangelist, and now as global Chief Strategy Officer at Human Made Machine and brand strategy consultant to Tapestry. His See-Think-Do-Care framework reframed digital marketing around customer intent rather than channel or demographic, and it is now embedded in the working language of marketing teams from consumer goods to financial services. It is a simple idea with a disciplined consequence: measurement and content have to follow the audience’s state of mind, not the agency’s media plan. Two books, “Web Analytics: An Hour a Day” and “Web Analytics 2.0”, carried that argument into practice and have been translated into more than ten languages. The American Statistical Association named him Statistical Advocate of the Year; the Web Analytics Association recognised him as its Most Influential Industry Contributor. He has taught and advised at Stanford, USC Annenberg and the Rotman school at Toronto. What sets his current work apart is the refusal to treat AI as a separate topic. In rooms with CMOs and CFOs, he draws the line from intent-based customer understanding to incrementality-based measurement to where generative AI actually earns its keep. The recommendation is usually sharper and the vendor pitch usually weaker by the time he is done. Key speaking topics Intent-centric marketing strategy Incrementality-based marketing measurement AI and generative AI in marketing Digital analytics and data-driven decision making Customer-centric growth and retention Marketing transformation for senior leaders The See-Think-Do-Care framework in practice Ideal for CMOs and marketing leadership teams rebuilding measurement for an AI-first environment. Boards and executive teams stress-testing the commercial return from digital and marketing investment. Heads of analytics, data and performance marketing aligning with brand and commercial functions. CEO and CFO audiences who want a serious outside view on marketing’s contribution to growth. Audience outcomes A clearer line between customer intent, marketing activity and commercial outcome. A sharper test for whether a measurement approach is actually incremental or just reported. A working critique of how generative AI is being sold into marketing and where it earns real return. A shared vocabulary, grounded in See-Think-Do-Care, that senior teams can use to align content, media and measurement. A more confident internal argument about where to stop investing, not only where to invest more.

Why organisations work with Ayanna Howard Her lab produced the first peer-reviewed algorithms quantifying how robot mistakes erode human trust – including in emergency scenarios where people followed automated systems away from clearly marked exits. That finding reframes the AI governance question from “is our system accurate?” to “are our people dangerously deferring to it?” Her book Sex, Race, and Robots (2021) makes a specific, falsifiable argument: AI bias originates with the designer, not the data. That argument changes where leadership teams assign accountability – and what they need to do before deployment, not after. She holds board seats at Autodesk and Motorola Solutions while running one of the largest engineering schools in the US. She understands AI decisions from lab to boardroom, and she speaks to both with equal authority. Zyrobotics, the company she founded from her Georgia Tech research, has commercialised AI for children with motor and cognitive challenges – she has direct product experience of translating research into regulated, real-world applications. As the 2021–2022 ACM Athena Lecturer and a Fellow of IEEE, AAAI, AAAS, and the National Academy of Inventors, her credentials carry weight in technical due diligence conversations as well as executive ones. Biography highlights Dean of the College of Engineering, The Ohio State University – first woman in the role; manages a $360M annual budget, 12 departments, and 11,900+ students Senior Robotics Researcher and Deputy Manager, Office of the Chief Scientist, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory – contributed to Mars rover and arctic robotics programmes Named 2021–2022 ACM Athena Lecturer for fundamental contributions to accessible human-robotic systems and AI Author of Sex, Race, and Robots: How to Be Human in the Age of AI (Audible Studios/Brilliance Audio, 2021) Fellow of IEEE, AAAI, AAAS, and National Academy of Inventors; elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Independent director, Autodesk Inc. and Motorola Solutions Inc. boards Founder, Zyrobotics – Georgia Tech spin-off developing AI-powered educational and therapy products for children with special needs Named to Forbes America’s Top 50 Women in Tech and Business Insider’s 23 Most Powerful Women Engineers; featured in TIME, Vanity Fair, CNN, and NPR Biography When an AI system makes a flawed decision, most organisations blame the data. Ayanna Howard’s research makes a harder argument: bias in AI is a design failure, and it traces directly to who builds the system. Her audiobook Sex, Race, and Robots (2021) put that argument to a public audience. Her more than 250 peer-reviewed publications put it to the scientific record. Her experimental work sharpens the stakes. Howard’s Human-Automation Systems Lab produced the first algorithms to quantify how robot mistakes erode human trust – including in emergency scenarios, where research subjects followed an automated guide away from clearly marked exits. The implication is direct: humans are overtrusting AI systems in ways that matter for consequential decisions in healthcare, hiring, and security. Her authority on these questions reaches across three distinct domains. She spent twelve years at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory – as Senior Robotics Researcher and Deputy Manager in the Office of the Chief Scientist – developing autonomous systems for Mars and arctic terrain. She then led one of the US’s most productive human-robotics labs at Georgia Tech. She now serves as Dean of Engineering at The Ohio State University – its first female dean – overseeing twelve departments, a $360M budget, and more than 11,900 students. Howard also holds board seats at Autodesk and Motorola Solutions, and founded Zyrobotics, which translates her research into AI-powered educational and therapy products for children with special needs. She is a Fellow of IEEE, AAAI, AAAS, and the National Academy of Inventors, and the 2021–2022 ACM Athena Lecturer. For boards and leadership teams asking serious questions about AI governance, she offers peer-reviewed research, institutional scale, and direct commercial accountability – in the same person. Key speaking topics AI bias and responsible system design Human overtrust in automated systems Human-robot interaction and trust Assistive and healthcare robotics AI governance and ethics AI in business: risk and opportunity Engineering leadership and workforce diversity in STEM Ideal for Corporate boards and C-suite leaders with AI governance responsibility Chief Technology Officers and Chief Digital Officers overseeing AI deployment R&D and innovation leadership in technology, healthcare, and manufacturing organisations Engineering and technology leadership development programmes Audience outcomes A specific reframe of AI accountability: bias is a design responsibility, not a data problem – with implications for who in the organisation owns it Evidence-based understanding of how humans overtrust automated systems, and what that means for governance and deployment decisions Practical criteria for evaluating AI systems before they are placed in consequential roles Clearer understanding of where workforce diversity in technical teams changes AI outcomes – and how to make the case internally A more confident, evidence-grounded position for boards and leadership teams facing AI adoption decisions

Why organisations work with Ayesha Khanna Her named “pilot purgatory” diagnostic (the finding that over 88% of AI pilots never scale) gives leadership teams a precise frame for why their programmes stall, and a structured path to production. This is a field-tested argument with a clear strategic implication. She brings board-level fiduciary exposure most AI advisors do not hold: Johnson Controls (smart buildings), NEOM Tonomus (national smart city infrastructure in Saudi Arabia), Mercy Healthcare (US), and L’Oréal’s Scientific Advisory Board. She has governed AI strategy, not only advised on it. Her advisory work spans both national AI strategy: she helped shape Singapore’s SkillsFuture programme and served on the IMDA board. Organisations get a strategist who has worked both sides. Her previous board position on AVEVA and her current role at Johnson Controls give her direct insight into how AI and digital transformation are reshaping critical infrastructure, highly relevant to sectors where technology adoption has long tail consequences. As the author of the forthcoming Gamechanger, a practical business strategy guide to generative AI, she is building the intellectual framework for the current adoption challenge while it is happening, not retrospectively. Biography highlights Co-Founder and CEO, Addo AI; a global AI solutions firm whose clients have included Singtel, SMRT, Pfizer, Sompo Holdings, Habib Bank, and Smart Dubai Board director: Johnson Controls (NYSE: JCI); NEOM Tonomus, Saudi Arabia; previously AVEVA (FTSE100, prior to Schneider Electric acquisition) Scientific Advisory Board, L’Oréal; Consumer Committee, Mercy Healthcare; Singapore HTX (homeland security technology) Member, World Economic Forum Global Future Councils; formerly on Singapore IMDA board and Ministry of Education SkillsFuture steering committee Named one of Southeast Asia’s groundbreaking female entrepreneurs by Forbes; Edelman Top 50 AI Creators (2025); Salesforce 16 AI Influencers to Know (2024) Author of Straight Through Processing (2008) and co-author of Hybrid Reality (TED Books, 2012); forthcoming Gamechanger on generative AI business strategy Published and quoted in The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, Forbes, TIME, Foreign Policy, and Strategy+Business PhD, Information Systems (digital innovation in smart cities), London School of Economics; MS, Columbia University; BA (Honours), Harvard University Biography Ayesha Khanna has spent two decades at the point where AI strategy meets the decisions boards have to make. Her argument is specific: most organisations do not fail at AI because they lack ambition or budget. They fail because they build pilots without the business-outcome architecture to scale them, what she calls “pilot purgatory,” a state that traps over 88% of enterprise AI programmes. Ayesha works with large corporations and governments on the full adoption journey, from strategy through deployment, with clients that have included Singtel, SMRT, Pfizer, Sompo Holdings, Habib Bank, and Smart Dubai. Khanna has spent more than a decade on Wall Street developing large-scale trading, risk management, and data analytics systems. Her PhD from the London School of Economics focused on digital innovation in smart cities, grounding her practical work in a rigorous analytical framework. What sets Khanna apart from most AI strategists is the nature of her board exposure. She currently holds directorships at Johnson Controls (smart building technology, NYSE: JCI), NEOM Tonomus (the technology infrastructure body for Saudi Arabia’s $500 billion NEOM smart city project), and Mercy Healthcare, and sits on L’Oréal’s Scientific Advisory Board. She previously sat on the board of AVEVA when it was an FTSE100 company. These are not advisory relationships, they are governance roles in which she has been responsible for technology strategy at fiduciary level, across healthcare, infrastructure, and consumer science simultaneously. Her forthcoming book, Gamechanger, extends this practitioner perspective into a structured business playbook for generative AI. Her two earlier books, Straight Through Processing (2008) and the TED book Hybrid Reality (2012), co-authored with Parag Khanna, established her early argument that the human-technology relationship was shifting from coexistence to co-evolution. That argument has aged well. Khanna has been recognised by Forbes as one of Southeast Asia’s groundbreaking female entrepreneurs, named to Edelman’s Top 50 AI Creators in 2025, and quoted across The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, and Foreign Policy. Key speaking topics Generative AI strategy and enterprise adoption AI governance and risk frameworks Smart cities and urban technology infrastructure AI in financial services and healthcare Future of work in an AI-driven economy National AI strategy and public-private collaboration The Hybrid Age: human-technology co-evolution Ideal for CEOs and C-suite leadership teams building or scaling enterprise AI programmes Board directors and non-executive directors responsible for technology governance and digital risk oversight Government and public sector leaders developing national AI strategies or smart city initiatives Financial services, healthcare, and infrastructure sector organisations at advanced stages of AI deployment Audience outcomes A named diagnostic for why AI pilots stall before scaling, and a framework for building the business-outcome architecture needed to move from experimentation to production Practical understanding of what AI governance looks like at board level: what boards need to own, what they need to delegate, and what risks require a formal framework Sector-specific examples of organisations generating measurable revenue and operational impact through AI, drawn from a client base across telecoms, finance, healthcare, and infrastructure A structured perspective on the “Hybrid Age” – the shift in how humans and AI systems operate together – and what it means for workforce strategy and organisational design Criteria for prioritising AI investment by business outcome rather than technology capability, applicable across industries at different stages of digital maturity