Inteligência Artificial e IA Generativa

Why organisations work with Jenny Fleiss She has built a consumer business from a Harvard Business School idea to a publicly listed company, and a separate venture inside Walmart’s Store No. 8 incubator. That gives a board credible answers on both routes into a new market. She speaks from inside the operating cockpit of conversational commerce and AI-driven personalisation, not from a strategist’s deck. Jetblack used text and machine learning to handle real customer requests at scale. Her seat at Initialized Capital and prior investing work put her across hundreds of early-stage decks in e-commerce, consumer and AI. She can tell a corporate audience which startup behaviours are worth importing and which are noise. She brings board-level perspective from listed and private companies including The Lanvin Group, Shutterfly and Rent the Runway, which lets her translate founder language into governance language an audit and risk committee will understand. Biography highlights Co-founder and board member, Rent the Runway, the New York-listed designer rental company she started with Jennifer Hyman in 2008. Founder and former CEO of Jetblack, the conversational commerce startup launched inside Walmart’s Store No. 8 incubator in 2018. Former Partner at Initialized Capital, the seed-stage venture firm, where she led e-commerce, consumer and AI investing. Independent director, The Lanvin Group (since 2022); board member, Shutterfly (since 2019); board member, Arteza. MBA, Harvard Business School; BA in Political Science, Yale University, cum laude. Recognised on Fortune’s 40 Under 40 (2012), Inc. 30 Under 30 (2010), Forbes Disruptors 2013, and Fast Company’s Most Influential Women in Technology. Biography Renting a designer dress through a website was not an obvious business in 2008. Jenny Fleiss and Jennifer Hyman started Rent the Runway from a Harvard Business School idea and turned it into a publicly listed consumer company. The work needed to be done in unglamorous places: dry cleaning logistics, returns flows, fit data, inventory forecasting. The brand sat on top of an operations problem. A decade later, Walmart asked her to build a startup inside its corporate body. Jetblack was a text-based, AI-assisted personal shopping service for high-spending New York households, incubated inside Store No. 8. The product taught Walmart what conversational commerce actually costs to run, what humans still have to do behind the model, and where machine learning genuinely earns its keep in retail. That double track, founder of a venture-backed unicorn and intrapreneur inside a Fortune 1 retailer, is what makes her useful in a corporate room. She has lived the trade-offs between speed and brand risk, between founder autonomy and parent-company governance, between AI promise and operating reality. Her investing work at Initialized Capital and as an angel adds a third lens: which early-stage signals are worth a corporate’s attention and which are theatre. Her board work at The Lanvin Group, Shutterfly, Rent the Runway and Arteza puts her in front of the same governance questions her audiences face. Boards want innovation, but they also want explanations. Key speaking topics Building and scaling consumer internet businesses Conversational commerce and AI in retail Corporate venture building and intrapreneurship Customer data and personalisation at scale Female founders and the funding gap Early-stage investing in consumer and AI Board governance for innovation programmes Ideal for CEOs and divisional presidents in retail, consumer goods and direct-to-consumer brands Heads of innovation, corporate venture and new ventures inside large incumbents Chief digital, chief data and chief AI officers responsible for customer-facing AI deployment Founder communities, accelerator cohorts and women-in-business leadership programmes Audience outcomes A clearer view of which startup behaviours translate into a corporate parent and which collapse on contact with it. A working vocabulary for what conversational commerce and AI personalisation actually require to run at scale. A board-level frame for sponsoring internal ventures: what to measure, what to protect, when to wind down. A grounded read on the current early-stage consumer and AI investment market from someone who has sat on both sides of the table.

Why organisations work with Jeremy Heimans His intellectual authority is built on a named thesis. New Power, co-authored with Henry Timms, was shortlisted for the FT/McKinsey Business Book of the Year, featured as the “Big Idea” in the Harvard Business Review, and accompanied by a TED talk viewed over 1.5 million times. The operating credentials are rare. As co-founder of GetUp!, Avaaz and All Out, and CEO of Purpose, he has built some of the most successful campaigning organisations and social movements of the last two decades, so he reasons about participation from live product experience. His framework, (Product + Purpose) × Participation, gives brand and marketing leaders a concrete equation rather than a worldview, which makes it easier to translate into campaign design and consumer engagement strategy. His recent work on AI participation, autonomous agents and governance scaffolding brings the New Power thesis into the question most executive teams are now actually wrestling with, how to build legitimacy around AI systems that are already in the building. The institutional recognition, Young Global Leader at the World Economic Forum, Chair of its Global Agenda Council on Civic Participation, the Ford Foundation’s 75th Anniversary Visionary Award, means he opens doors for the organisations he speaks to as well as the audiences he addresses. Biography highlights Co-founder and CEO of Purpose, a public-benefit corporation building social movements for brands, NGOs and philanthropies Co-founder of GetUp!, Avaaz and All Out Co-author of New Power with Henry Timms (Penguin Random House); FT/McKinsey Business Book of the Year shortlist; HBR Big Idea feature TED talk on new power with over 1.5 million views World Economic Forum Young Global Leader; Chair of the WEF Global Agenda Council on Civic Participation; Ford Foundation 75th Anniversary Visionary Award Educated at the University of Sydney and Harvard; earlier career at McKinsey Biography Power has changed shape. The argument that Jeremy Heimans built over two decades of campaigning and writing is that the organisations, brands and leaders who will matter in this century are the ones who understand participation as a structural force, not a communications channel. New Power, his book with Henry Timms, turned that argument into one of the most cited frames in contemporary leadership thinking, shortlisted for the FT/McKinsey Business Book of the Year, featured as the Big Idea in Harvard Business Review, and anchored by a TED talk now viewed over 1.5 million times. The credibility behind the frame is operational. Heimans co-founded GetUp! in Australia in 2005, a political organisation that grew to more members than all of Australia’s political parties combined, and was a co-founder of the global campaigning platforms Avaaz and All Out. His company, Purpose, is the public-benefit corporation he built to carry that expertise into brands, NGOs and philanthropies, helping them design the participation models that command-and-control marketing no longer produces. Academically, he is a McKinsey alumnus with degrees from the University of Sydney and Harvard. Institutionally, he has been recognised as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, chaired its Global Agenda Council on Civic Participation, and received the Ford Foundation’s 75th Anniversary Visionary Award. His framework, (Product + Purpose) × Participation, is the simplest expression of what his advisory work delivers for consumer brands. The current edge of the work is artificial intelligence. Heimans’ thesis on how participation builds legitimacy is increasingly being applied to AI deployment, autonomous agents and the governance scaffolding companies are building for large-scale AI use. For leadership teams trying to work out how to retain brand trust, employee commitment and regulatory standing as AI reshapes their operating model, he is one of the few commentators whose framework was already built for this shift. Key speaking topics New power and the shift from broadcast to participation AI, autonomous agents and the governance of participation Brand building and consumer engagement under (Product + Purpose) × Participation Movement design for organisations, NGOs and advocacy Leadership and influence in hyperconnected systems The future of work and distributed authority Ideal for CEOs, CMOs and communications leaders redesigning brand and stakeholder strategy for a participatory environment Chief AI officers, governance leads and executive committees building legitimacy around AI systems NGO and philanthropy leadership teams scaling movements and civic participation programmes World Economic Forum, public affairs and policy forums where civic and corporate power converge Audience outcomes A working grasp of the New Power frame and how it changes marketing, leadership and governance decisions Concrete examples of brands, movements and platforms that have applied (or failed to apply) new power mechanics A clearer view of how participation can be designed into AI deployment and governance rather than retrofitted Practical models for civic, employee and customer engagement that work with the grain of hyperconnected systems

Why organisations work with Jerry Kaplan He has built the technology he now teaches. Two of his four startups went public, his team at GO Corporation produced the first commercial tablet operating system, and he co-founded the first internet auction site five months before eBay. He teaches the social and economic impact of AI at Stanford and writes the Oxford University Press primers that policymakers and boards actually cite. That sits between technical depth and decision-grade clarity. His framing of AI’s labour market consequences in Humans Need Not Apply was selected by The Economist as a top ten science and technology book of 2015, well before generative AI made the question urgent. He approaches AI as a question of competitive advantage, regulation, and capital allocation, not as a feature roadmap. Boards leave with a sharper view of what they are actually deciding. Biography highlights Adjunct Lecturer, Stanford University (Ford Dorsey Master’s in International Policy; Department of Computer Science) Fellow, Centre for Legal Informatics, Stanford Law School Founding CEO, GO Corporation (PenPoint OS, tablet computing) Co-founder, Onsale Inc., the first internet auction site (IPO 1997) Author, Generative Artificial Intelligence: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press, 2024) and Humans Need Not Apply (Yale University Press, 2015), an Economist top ten book PhD in Computer and Information Science, University of Pennsylvania; inventor on more than a dozen patents; over twenty peer-reviewed papers across ACM and IEEE journals Biography Tablet computing, online auctions, expert systems, and one of the first commercial personal information managers were all built in Silicon Valley before most people had heard of them. Kaplan was inside each of those stories. He was founding CEO of GO Corporation, the company whose PenPoint operating system anticipated the iPad by two decades, and he co-founded Onsale, the first internet auction site, five months before eBay. That operating history is the reason his current work on artificial intelligence is taken seriously by board-level audiences. He teaches the social and economic impact of AI at Stanford and is a Fellow at the Centre for Legal Informatics at Stanford Law School. The Oxford University Press primers he writes, including Generative Artificial Intelligence: What Everyone Needs to Know, are designed for readers who need to decide, not just to understand. His 2015 book Humans Need Not Apply, published by Yale University Press and named one of The Economist’s top ten science and technology books that year, argued that AI’s labour market effects would arrive faster than most institutions were preparing for. The argument has aged unusually well. It now reads as a brief on the question every executive committee is asking about generative systems. The combination of a working technologist, a serial founder with two IPOs, and a current Stanford lecturer is rare. Kaplan uses it to translate AI from a procurement conversation into a strategic one, and to tell senior audiences where they are exposed. Key speaking topics Generative AI and the executive agenda AI and the future of work AI regulation and public policy Competitive advantage in an AI-led economy Industry-specific AI disruption AI risks, dangers, and safety Silicon Valley entrepreneurship and innovation Ideal for Boards and executive committees weighing capital allocation to AI C-suite leaders setting AI strategy, governance, and workforce policy Policy and regulatory audiences confronting AI rules and competition Industry leadership offsites in financial services, technology, healthcare, and professional services Audience outcomes A working mental model of what generative AI can and cannot do, stripped of vendor framing A sharper read on where AI will reshape the workforce and on which timelines A view of the regulatory and geopolitical pressures shaping AI competition Specific questions a board should be asking management about its AI exposure A historical perspective on technology adoption cycles, from someone who has run several

Why organisations work with Jim Al-Khalili He is an active research physicist with a publication record in quantum biology and nuclear theory, which means his account of quantum computing, sensing, and adjacent technologies comes from inside the field, not summarised from press coverage. As presenter of BBC Radio 4’s The Life Scientific since 2011, he has interviewed several hundred working scientists, which gives him a rare cross-disciplinary read on where genuine breakthroughs are forming and where they are not. Co-author of Life on the Edge with Johnjoe McFadden, the book widely credited with bringing quantum biology to a mainstream readership and shortlisted for the Royal Society Winton Prize. Holds a Chair in the Public Engagement in Science at the University of Surrey, and has built a career-long discipline of translating technical material for non-specialist senior audiences without losing precision. Recognised by his peers as much as by the public: Royal Society Michael Faraday Medal, Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication, OBE and CBE for services to science. Biography highlights Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Theoretical Physics, University of Surrey, with a PhD in theoretical nuclear physics from Surrey (1989). Fellow of the Royal Society (2018); Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. Presenter of BBC Radio 4’s The Life Scientific since October 2011. Author or co-author of more than a dozen popular science books, including Life on the Edge, The World According to Physics, and The Joy of Science (Princeton University Press). Royal Society Michael Faraday Medal, Wilkins-Bernal-Medawar Medal, IOP Kelvin Medal, Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication. OBE (2007) and CBE (2021) for services to science; past President of the British Science Association. Biography The hardest scientific decisions facing senior leaders today are the ones the leaders themselves are least equipped to make. Quantum computing, AI, synthetic biology, and the next wave of physics-driven technology demand a level of judgement that confident vendor decks cannot provide. What organisations need is someone who can read the underlying science, place a claim in context, and tell them where the field actually is. That is the role Jim Al-Khalili has built across forty years. A theoretical physicist with a PhD from the University of Surrey and now Distinguished Professor Emeritus there, he has published more than 150 peer-reviewed papers in nuclear reaction theory, quantum mechanics, and quantum biology. With Johnjoe McFadden he co-authored Life on the Edge, the book that did more than any other to bring quantum biology into mainstream scientific conversation, shortlisted for the Royal Society Winton Prize. Since 2011 he has presented The Life Scientific on BBC Radio 4, conducting hundreds of interviews with working scientists across every discipline. Few people in the UK have a sharper sense of where genuine breakthroughs are forming and where the noise outpaces the substance. His books with Princeton University Press, including The World According to Physics and The Joy of Science, frame how non-specialists can think clearly about evidence, uncertainty, and modern physics. Recognition from his peers tracks the public profile: Fellow of the Royal Society, Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, Royal Society Michael Faraday Medal, Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication, OBE and CBE for services to science. He has chaired the British Science Association and continues to advise government, industry, and the public on the science that will shape the next decade of technology. Key speaking topics Quantum mechanics and the science behind quantum computing Quantum biology and the frontiers of life science Scientific reasoning and rational decision-making The history and future of physics Science communication for senior audiences Public trust in science and technology Ideal for Boards and executive teams making capital allocation decisions on quantum, AI, or deep-tech ventures R&D leaders, CTOs, and CSOs who want a credible outside read on where the science actually stands Conferences in pharma, finance, technology, and energy where audiences need a serious scientific keynote rather than a vendor pitch Awards, gala evenings, and high-profile panels needing a hosting or moderating presence with genuine scientific authority Audience outcomes A clearer view of what quantum technologies can plausibly deliver in the next decade and what remains speculative The vocabulary and mental models to question scientific claims without becoming dismissive Exposure to the live debates inside physics and biology that will reshape adjacent industries A renewed sense of why scientific thinking, not just scientific findings, matters for leadership judgement

Why organisations work with Jim Harris Direct strategic counsel on enterprise AI deployment from a consultant who advises CEOs at IBM, SAP, Walmart, American Express and the UK Cabinet Office on the same decisions A peer-validated authority signal: named 2024 Speaker of the Year by TEC Canada, the Canadian arm of Vistage, an audience of operating chief executives who book speakers for utility, not entertainment An evidence base built across industries undergoing structural disruption, from autonomous vehicles and insurance to retail, financial services and energy, applied to the specific competitive context of the client A clear analytic frame separating product innovation (where most executive attention sits) from business model, process and customer experience innovation (where most of the value sits) Biography highlights #1 international bestseller Blindsided!, published in 80 countries and selected by Soundview Executive Summaries as a best business book of the year TEC Canada Speaker of the Year, February 2024, recognising AI keynotes to chief executives Closing keynote speaker, World Future Society conference Consulting and keynote client roster including Walmart, IBM, SAP, American Express, Barclays, Munich Re, Swiss Re, Zurich Insurance and the UK Cabinet Office Trained personally by former US Vice President Al Gore to deliver An Inconvenient Truth BA in English and Politics, Queen’s University; former representative of the Covey Leadership Center teaching The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People Biography Most enterprise AI investment has produced pilot projects, not operating advantage. The boards funding those pilots increasingly want to know which ones will move the P&L, which ones should be killed, and which competitor’s business model will collapse first as generative AI matures. That is the brief Jim Harris is working against when he sits with an executive team. His authority is built on the consulting side of his career, not the publishing side. Walmart, IBM, SAP, American Express, Barclays, GM, Canon, Munich Re, Swiss Re and the UK Cabinet Office have all retained him for strategic work on disruption and innovation. TEC Canada, part of the Vistage peer network of operating CEOs, named him Speaker of the Year in 2024 specifically for his AI keynotes. The award is meaningful because the audience is buying decision-grade content, not motivation. His core analytic argument is simple. Product innovation gets the budget and the headlines, but reimagining the business model, the process stack and the customer experience is where most of the value moves. Blindsided!, a #1 international bestseller distributed in 80 countries and summarised by Soundview to 80,000 executives, traced that pattern across industries. The current generative AI cycle is the most concentrated test of that argument so far. Harris was trained personally by Al Gore to deliver An Inconvenient Truth and has been the closing keynote speaker at the World Future Society conference. He read English and Politics at Queen’s University and spent the early 1990s representing the Covey Leadership Center, teaching The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People before the consulting practice took over. Key speaking topics Generative AI in the enterprise Disruptive innovation across industries Business model and process redesign Digital transformation strategy Leadership through technological disruption Strategic foresight and scenario planning Sustainability and the energy transition Ideal for CEO, COO and board audiences setting AI and digital strategy Chief Information Officers, Chief Technology Officers and Chief Digital Officers responsible for enterprise AI rollout Strategy and transformation leaders working on business model redesign Executive offsites and senior leadership retreats where the brief is to set direction, not workshop tactics Audience outcomes A sharper view of where in the business AI investment is most likely to convert into margin and where it is being wasted Industry-specific examples of how disruption cascades from a single technology shift into adjacent sectors A working distinction between product, process, business-model and customer-experience innovation, applied to live competitive questions A defensible answer to the question a board will ask next: which of our current bets are pilots, and which are operating commitments

Why organisations work with JJ Delgado He runs a corporate venturing unit inside a century-old beverages group, so his AI and digital arguments are backed by current P&L responsibility, not consulting distance. His Amazon background gives him a working view of how the world’s most operationally disciplined digital company actually builds growth, which he translates for non-digital natives. He works across both EMEA and LATAM markets, useful for groups whose digital strategy has to land in mature and emerging consumer markets at once. He brings a named portfolio of work across Burger King, Pepsi, Ford, Bosch, Siemens, Vodafone, and Telefonica, which means his case material is recognisable to senior commercial audiences. Biography highlights General Manager, MOVE Estrella Galicia Digital, the open innovation and digital ventures unit of Hijos de Rivera. Former Head of Marketing, Southern Europe, at Amazon, where he led the company’s largest international sales day at the time. PhD Cum Laude in Digital Economy; MBA from London School of Business and Finance. Guest teaching at the London School of Economics and IE Business School on digital economy and consumer behaviour. Author of three books published on Amazon, including Smash It, an Amazon international bestseller in 2021. Named #1 Amazon LinkedIn profile in the UK across 2016 and early 2017 (self-reported ranking). Biography Amazon’s largest international sales day at the time was run out of Southern Europe by a marketing team led by JJ Delgado. That experience, three years inside the operational engine of the world’s most disciplined digital retailer, is the spine of his work today. He moved from running Amazon’s marketing in the region to running a digital ventures unit inside a legacy corporate, which is a more useful vantage point for the audiences he now speaks to. He is General Manager of MOVE Estrella Galicia Digital, the corporate venturing and open innovation arm of Hijos de Rivera, the Spanish beverages group behind Estrella Galicia. The remit is to build and scale new digital businesses for a company whose core is 100 years old, and to invest in startups that can accelerate that shift. The role gives him live operating responsibility for the questions he speaks on: AI deployment, Web3 commerce, and how a non-digital-native organisation actually generates new revenue from new technology. His commercial track record spans 15 years across EMEA and LATAM, with named work for Burger King, Pepsi, Hertz, Ford, Bosch, Siemens, Vodafone, Telefonica, and Estrella Galicia. He holds a PhD Cum Laude in Digital Economy and teaches as a guest at the London School of Economics and IE Business School. He has written three books on Amazon, the most recent being Smash It, an international bestseller on the platform in 2021, and runs an AI-focused newsletter with a large subscriber base. What makes him useful to boards is the angle of attack. He is not an academic on AI, nor a consultant pitching frameworks. He is an operator who has run digital growth inside Amazon and now runs new business creation inside a traditional corporate, and he speaks from that seat. Key speaking topics AI and ChatGPT in commercial operations Digital transformation in legacy corporates Web3 and new digital business models Consumer behaviour and the emotion behind the click Corporate venturing and open innovation Voice and conversational interfaces (Alexa as customer channel) Ideal for CMOs and chief digital officers in non-digital-native organisations Corporate venturing, innovation, and new business leads Senior commercial and growth leadership teams across EMEA and LATAM Boards weighing AI and Web3 investment decisions Audience outcomes A working view of how Amazon actually built growth from inside one of its regional marketing teams A concrete picture of what AI deployment looks like inside an operating business unit, not a pilot Recognisable case material from named global brands across consumer, automotive, and telecoms A clearer sense of where Web3 has commercial traction and where it does not

Why organisations work with Jochen Wirtz He wrote the textbook the global services marketing field teaches from. Services Marketing: People, Technology, Strategy, co-authored with Christopher Lovelock, has sold over a million copies and shaped how MBAs are taught the discipline in more than 26 countries. He has paired that academic authority with two operator-facing AI books, Intelligent Automation and Agentic Artificial Intelligence, written with Pascal Bornet. Few service strategy voices can speak as fluently to both a CMO and a Chief Automation Officer. His Christopher Lovelock Career Contributions Award from the American Marketing Association and the Gronroos Service Research Award are the two most senior honours in the global services research community. Boards get a recognised authority, not a generalist. He has been Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher in economics and business in 2022, 2023, and 2024, which means his frameworks are the ones other researchers and practitioners are actively building on. He spent fifteen years running the UCLA-NUS Executive MBA Programme as founding director, so the audiences he addresses most naturally are senior leaders, not students. Biography highlights Vice Dean of MBA Programmes and Professor of Marketing, NUS Business School, National University of Singapore. Co-author of Services Marketing: People, Technology, Strategy (9th edition) with the late Christopher Lovelock, adapted for over 26 countries. Co-author of Intelligent Automation (2021) and Agentic Artificial Intelligence (2025) with Pascal Bornet, with contributors including Thomas H. Davenport. Christopher Lovelock Career Contributions Award (AMA, 2019) and Christian Gronroos Service Research Award (2024). Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher in economics and business, 2022, 2023, and 2024; over 200 academic articles and six features in Harvard Business Review. Academic Scholar at Cornell Institute for Healthy Futures; International Fellow at Karlstad University Service Research Center; Global Faculty at Arizona State University Center for Services Leadership. Biography Service businesses are where AI is hitting the operating model first. Customer interactions, advisory work, claims handling, hospitality, healthcare reception, professional services delivery: all of it is being rewired around intelligent agents, and very few people on the academic side have stayed close to that shift in practical terms. Jochen Wirtz has. He is Vice Dean of MBA Programmes and Professor of Marketing at NUS Business School, and the co-author, with the late Christopher Lovelock, of Services Marketing: People, Technology, Strategy. The textbook is now in its ninth edition, has sold over a million copies, and has been adapted for more than 26 countries. It is the spine of the discipline globally. What makes him useful in a leadership room rather than a classroom is the second body of work. With Pascal Bornet he wrote Intelligent Automation in 2021 and Agentic Artificial Intelligence in 2025, with contributions from Thomas H. Davenport and others. Both are written for operators making real choices about where to put AI inside their service architecture and where not to. The credentials line up behind that: the Christopher Lovelock Career Contributions Award from the American Marketing Association, the Christian Gronroos Service Research Award, three consecutive years as a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher in economics and business, and fifteen years as founding director of the UCLA-NUS Executive MBA Programme. Boards get an academic with the authority to set the agenda and the operator literacy to follow it through. Key speaking topics Services marketing and service management AI agents and intelligent automation in service organisations Service strategy and organisational redesign Customer experience in AI-enabled service Platform business models Corporate digital responsibility and governance Cost-effective service excellence Ideal for CEOs, COOs, and CMOs of service-led businesses redesigning operations around AI agents. Chief Digital, Transformation, and Automation Officers building the AI-and-services roadmap. Boards and executive committees in financial services, professional services, hospitality, healthcare, and telecoms working through service productivity and customer impact at the same time. Audience outcomes A clearer view of where AI agents create durable advantage in a service business and where they create new risk. A working vocabulary for the service strategy choices behind automation programmes, drawn from the field’s leading textbook. Frameworks from Intelligent Automation and Agentic Artificial Intelligence that translate AI investment into service design decisions. A sharper sense of corporate digital responsibility as service interactions become increasingly machine-mediated. Confidence that the operating model conversation and the customer experience conversation are the same conversation.

Why organisations work with Joe Toscano He left Google over the data practices he saw inside it, then wrote the book on what those practices look like from within. That insider account is hard to replicate at the keynote level. His work translates AI and privacy debates into specific operating decisions: what data to keep, what to delete, what to disclose, and where consent breaks under regulatory scrutiny. As founder of DataGrade and BEACON, he speaks from the position of someone running a privacy-first business, not commenting on one from outside. His public visibility through The Social Dilemma, Fox News, and Forbes means he can hold a non-technical audience on a technical subject without dropping the substance. Biography highlights Featured expert in Netflix’s The Social Dilemma. Author of Automating Humanity (powerHouse Books / Simon & Schuster). Founder and CEO of DataGrade. Founder of the Better Ethics and Consumer Outcomes Network (BEACON). Former Experience Design consultant for Google. TEDx speaker; Forbes contributor; recurring Fox News technology commentator. Biography The companies setting the rules for how consumer data trains AI systems are also the companies whose products most depend on that data. That conflict sits at the centre of Joe Toscano’s work. He came out of Silicon Valley with a designer’s view of how those products are built, then turned that knowledge outward. Toscano was an Experience Design consultant for Google before stepping away in 2017 over what he saw of the industry’s data practices. Automating Humanity, his book with powerHouse Books, set out the argument in detail: how attention is engineered, how disinformation pays, and how automation is being trained on data the public never knowingly handed over. He went on to found DataGrade, a privacy-first data company, and BEACON, a network focused on technology literacy and ethical innovation. The Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma brought that work to a mass audience, and he has since become a regular technology commentator on Fox News and a contributor to Forbes. What makes him useful to boards is the combination of inside knowledge and operating responsibility. He is not theorising about AI governance from a lectern. He is building a company that has to make those decisions every day, and translating that into language a non-technical executive team can act on. Key speaking topics AI ethics and governance Data privacy and consumer trust The business case for privacy-first design Technology literacy for non-technical leaders The future of work under AI and automation Disinformation and platform accountability Regulation and the post-GDPR landscape Ideal for Boards and executive committees setting AI and data governance standards Chief Privacy Officers, CISOs, and Chief Data Officers CMOs and customer experience leaders weighing personalisation against privacy HR and transformation leads planning workforce change driven by AI Audience outcomes A clearer line between defensible and indefensible uses of customer data in AI systems Specific questions a board should be asking about model training data and consent A working view of how privacy can be a commercial advantage, not just a compliance cost Sharper judgement about what to believe and discount in vendor pitches on AI capability

Why organisations work with Joerg Niessing He teaches inside the C-suite of the brands most boards benchmark against, Google, L’Oréal, Roche, Walmart, Marriott, Diageo and Samsung among them, and brings that pattern recognition into the room. Before INSEAD he was a Partner at Prophet, the brand and customer experience consultancy, after more than a decade in strategy consulting. That operating background plus a senior faculty role is a combination very few digital strategy speakers credibly hold. His book The Definitive Guide to B2B Digital Transformation is built around a specific argument that customer centricity, not technology stack, is the variable that separates growth from stalled programmes. The Case Centre’s 2025 Outstanding Case Teacher award recognises a rare ability to make complex transformation cases land with senior executives, which translates directly into keynote and workshop work. Most AI and digital advice fixates on the technology. Niessing co-directs INSEAD’s Leading AI and Digital Marketing Strategy programme and leads instead with the question executive teams actually own: how do we turn AI and data investment into profitable growth? Biography highlights Senior Affiliate Professor of Marketing, INSEAD. Former Partner, Prophet. Co-author of The Definitive Guide to B2B Digital Transformation (2020) with Fred Geyer. Winner, Outstanding Case Teacher Competition 2025 (The Case Centre); previous Best Marketing Case award winner. Co-director, INSEAD executive programmes including Leading Digital Marketing Strategy and Leading AI and Digital Marketing Strategy. Has authored 30+ executive cases on companies including Google, Jaguar Land Rover, AccorHotels, BMW Startup Garage and Majid Al Futtaim. Has delivered executive education and keynotes in more than 40 countries for over 200 global organisations. Biography Digital transformation programmes do not usually fail on technology. They fail because the strategy, the culture and the data operating model are not aligned, and the customer experience that results is incoherent. That gap between investment and commercial outcome is the territory Joerg Niessing has spent his career on. At INSEAD, he is a Senior Affiliate Professor of Marketing and co-directs flagship executive programmes including Leading Digital Marketing Strategy, Leading AI and Digital Marketing Strategy and B2B Marketing Strategies. His research and teaching focus on digital customer experience, marketing analytics, brand management and the strategic implications of AI for commercial leaders. Before moving to full-time faculty work he was a Partner at Prophet, the brand and customer experience consultancy, where he led client engagements with global businesses across consumer goods, automotive, healthcare and B2B technology. That operating background sits underneath his 2020 book with Fred Geyer, The Definitive Guide to B2B Digital Transformation, which argues that growth comes from prioritising customers over technology, an argument that has aged well as more transformation budgets are scrutinised. The Case Centre named him Outstanding Case Teacher in 2025, recognition of a 30-strong case portfolio on companies including Google, Jaguar Land Rover, AccorHotels, BMW Startup Garage and Majid Al Futtaim. For a senior buyer, that body of work is the substance behind the keynote: he is testing these arguments on executives from the world’s largest brands every week. Key speaking topics Customer-centric digital transformation B2B digital transformation and growth AI strategy and transformation AI and data in marketing, brand and customer experience Brand building in a digital and AI-driven world Data and analytics as a commercial capability Business model innovation from product to solution Culture and leadership of transformation programmes Ideal for CMOs, Chief Customer Officers and Chief Digital Officers running enterprise transformation programmes. CEOs and boards reviewing the commercial return on multi-year digital and AI investment. B2B leadership teams shifting from product-led to customer-led and solution-led growth. Senior marketing, brand and customer experience teams inside large consumer and B2B businesses. Audience outcomes A sharper view of where customer centricity, not technology, is the binding constraint on growth. A working framework for connecting strategy, culture and data inside a transformation programme. Practical reference points from named global brands, not generic case study language. A clearer commercial agenda for AI in marketing, customer experience and brand. Confidence to challenge the technology-first defaults in their own transformation plans.

Why organisations work with John Ridding He ran the playbook the rest of the news industry copied. The FT moved to a paywall in 2002, a metered model in 2007, and trial-led subscriptions in 2015, reaching one million subscribers in 2019 and 2.9 million paying users by 2023. He brings the inside view of a cross-border acquisition that worked. The 2015 sale of the FT from Pearson to Nikkei is one of the cleanest examples of a Japanese parent acquiring a Western media asset without breaking it. He has signed the first UK national publisher licensing deal with OpenAI, which gives him a current operator perspective on how content businesses negotiate with foundation model companies, not a commentator’s view. He spent 35 years inside one institution and ran it for almost 20. That tenure is unusual at his level and gives him a coherent argument about long-horizon transformation rather than a sequence of quarterly bets. Biography highlights Chief Executive Officer of the FT Group, May 2006 to June 2025. Special Executive Director of Nikkei, parent company of the Financial Times since 2015. Honorary Chairman of the Financial Times following his transition from CEO. Previously Publisher of FT Asia and Chairman of Pearson Asia, 2003 to 2006. Foreign correspondent for the FT in Seoul, Paris and Hong Kong, with reporting from China, Japan, India and Indonesia. First-class honours degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, Oxford University. Biography The reader-revenue model now treated as orthodoxy across global news media did not exist as a serious commercial strategy when the Financial Times began charging for online journalism in 2002. The decision was contested inside the building and dismissed outside it. Two decades later, it is the model the New York Times, the Washington Post and most of the European broadsheets have adopted in some form. John Ridding ran that experiment to scale. As CEO of the FT Group from 2006 to 2025, he took the paper from print-led economics to a paying audience of 2.9 million and revenues of GBP 500m, with more than two-thirds of revenue from digital subscriptions. The headline numbers matter, but the operating choices behind them are what executives in other sectors find useful: how to price confidently when the market expects free, how to redesign the product around habit rather than transactions, how to build a direct data relationship with a reader. He also managed two structural events most CEOs never face. The 2015 sale of the FT from Pearson to Nikkei moved a British editorial institution into Japanese ownership without disturbing the journalism. In April 2024 the FT became the first UK national publisher to license its content to OpenAI, an early test of how content owners negotiate with foundation model companies on terms rather than waiting to be scraped. Before running the business he reported from it. Postings in Seoul, Paris and Hong Kong covered the Asian financial crisis, the rise of China as a commercial power, and the early years of the Eurozone. That reporter background is the throughline. He talks about the digital subscription business the way a foreign correspondent talks about a country, in specifics, not abstractions. Key speaking topics Subscription and reader-revenue business models Digital transformation of legacy businesses AI and the future of content, media and intellectual property Cross-border M&A and post-acquisition integration Global business through the lens of news and capital flows Leadership of long-horizon transformation The economics of trust in a fragmented information market Ideal for CEOs and CFOs of subscription, media, publishing and content businesses Boards of legacy companies designing direct customer-revenue strategies Chief Strategy and Chief Commercial Officers wrestling with pricing in commoditising markets Senior teams negotiating content, IP or data licensing terms with AI platforms Audience outcomes A clear account of how a legacy business shifted from advertising to direct customer revenue, with the sequencing decisions that made it work A framework for thinking about pricing, product and data as one operating system rather than three departments An informed read on what content owners are actually negotiating with foundation model companies, beyond the headlines A view on cross-border integration that treats culture and editorial autonomy as commercial assets, not soft factors

Why organisations work with Johnny C Taylor Jr He speaks for the formal voice of the global HR profession. SHRM represents nearly 340,000 members influencing more than 362 million workers, which gives his read on workforce trends institutional weight no individual consultant can claim. His book RESET gives executives a structured argument for treating talent, culture, and inclusion as the primary commercial constraint, not technology or capital. He has testified to Congress on workforce policy and chaired the President’s Advisory Board on HBCUs, so he can frame people decisions inside the actual policy and regulatory weather boards are operating in. He writes USA Today’s weekly “Ask HR” column and co-hosts The Work Wire podcast, which keeps his content tested against real questions from working managers, not theory. He has run the talent function at large operating companies including Paramount Pictures, Blockbuster, IAC, and Compass Group, so the perspective is operator-grounded, not academic. Biography highlights President and CEO of SHRM, the largest HR professional body in the world, with members in 180 countries. Author of RESET: A Leader’s Guide to Work in an Age of Upheaval, a Wall Street Journal and national bestseller. Fellow of the National Academy of Human Resources; named Distinguished Executive of the Year by the Academy of Management. Former CEO of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund; chaired the President’s Advisory Board on Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Board director at XPO, Inc. (NYSE: XPO), Guild Education, and Flores HR; Vice Chair, University of Miami Board of Trustees. USA Today columnist on workplace questions; co-host of The Work Wire podcast. Biography The workforce that most boards still describe is the workforce they had in 2019. The one they actually employ has been remade by remote work, AI deployment, five generations on the org chart, and political tension that now arrives at the office door. SHRM’s research, and the questions arriving in Taylor’s USA Today column every week, point at the same gap. Taylor leads SHRM, the global professional body for human resources, with nearly 340,000 members across 180 countries. The seat gives him a working dataset of how organisations of every size are responding to AI adoption, hybrid work, talent scarcity, and contested cultural questions. RESET, his 2021 Wall Street Journal bestseller, made the central argument plainly: the binding constraint on most companies is not capital or technology, it is whether they can find, hire, and engage the people who can use either one. That argument is unusual because it comes from an operator. Before SHRM he was CEO of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund and held senior HR and legal roles at Paramount Pictures, Blockbuster, IAC, and Compass Group USA. He is a Fellow of the National Academy of Human Resources, holds a JD and MA from Drake University, and is admitted to the bar in Florida, Illinois, and Washington, D.C. He has testified to Congress on sexual harassment, paid leave, and workforce development, chaired the President’s Advisory Board on HBCUs, and serves on the boards of XPO, Guild Education, and Flores HR. The Academy of Management named him Distinguished Executive of the Year in 2020. For senior teams trying to run a credible people strategy in front of a board that wants commercial answers, that combination of practitioner authority, policy access, and published thesis is hard to assemble from any other speaker on the topic. Key speaking topics Future of work Talent acquisition and retention Workplace civility and culture AI and the human workforce Workforce policy and regulation Inclusion in a contested political climate Multigenerational workforce dynamics Employee engagement and the social contract of work Ideal for CHROs and senior HR leadership wrestling with talent, engagement, and culture as board-level metrics. CEOs and boards of directors recalibrating workforce strategy around AI, hybrid models, and inclusion. Industry associations and member events convening HR, legal, and operations leaders. Executive offsites and town halls where the people agenda is the central commercial question. Audience outcomes A clearer view of which workforce shifts are temporary and which are structural. A defensible case for treating culture, civility, and engagement as commercial inputs, with evidence drawn from SHRM’s member data. A sharper read on how policy, regulation, and political climate will shape people decisions over the next 12 to 24 months. Practical positions on AI adoption, hybrid work, and inclusion that can survive contact with a sceptical board. A vocabulary for talking about talent that aligns HR, finance, and the C-suite around the same problem.

Why organisations work with Jonathan Gabay He writes the textbooks the field uses. Brand Psychology (Kogan Page) and Practical Digital Marketing and AI Psychology (Routledge) are professional references, not bureau-circuit titles. He reads brand crises in real time on BBC, CNN, Bloomberg and Sky, which means his commercial diagnosis comes from sustained exposure to live reputational damage, not case-study retrospectives. He treats AI in marketing as a trust problem, not an automation problem, and connects ethics, prompt engineering and consumer psychology in one argument senior marketers can act on. His Saatchi & Saatchi Direct origin is creative, not academic, so the strategic frame stays tied to what actually moves a customer. Biography highlights Author of Brand Psychology (Kogan Page) and Practical Digital Marketing and AI Psychology (Routledge, 2024), professional textbooks used by marketing students and practitioners. Former Group Creative Head, Saatchi & Saatchi Direct. Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing and accredited brand journalist. Senior lecturer in crisis management and prompt engineering; teaching record at the London School of Economics, Management Centre Europe and Newport University. Course leader on digital psychology programmes for the Chartered Institute of Marketing and the Direct Marketing Association of Northern California. Regular media commentator on branding, political PR and AI for BBC (including Newsnight), CNN, Bloomberg, Sky, Channel 5 and ABC. Biography Most brands now compete on a question they have not faced before. Not how to reach an audience, but whether anyone still believes the message when they get it. Generative AI has industrialised marketing output and consumers have responded with a sharper, quieter scepticism that no media spend can buy past. Jonathan Gabay has spent three decades on the inside of that question. He started in creative work at Saatchi & Saatchi Direct, where he became Group Creative Head, then moved into the analytical side of the same problem. Brand Psychology (Kogan Page) sets out how social psychology, cognitive science and neuroscience explain why consumers trust some brands and abandon others, and what CEO reputation does to both. His 2024 Routledge textbook Practical Digital Marketing and AI Psychology extends the argument into the AI era. The book is used as a professional reference by marketing students and practitioners, and treats AI not as a productivity tool but as a force that changes the psychological contract between brand and buyer. He teaches the same material as a senior lecturer in crisis management and prompt engineering, with course work at the London School of Economics, the Chartered Institute of Marketing and the Direct Marketing Association of Northern California. The commentary record matters because it is unusually current. BBC Newsnight, CNN, Bloomberg, Sky and Channel 5 use him to read live brand and political PR crises as they unfold, which is why the keynote material is closer to a working diagnostic than a finished case study. Key speaking topics Brand psychology and consumer trust AI ethics in marketing communications Digital trust and online consumer behaviour Crisis communications and brand reputation Political PR, propaganda and persuasion Prompt engineering for marketers CEO reputation and brand storytelling Ideal for CMOs, brand directors and marketing leadership teams rebuilding trust under AI Communications, PR and corporate affairs leaders facing reputational risk Boards and executive teams of consumer-facing brands Marketing and brand functions integrating AI into customer-facing work Audience outcomes A working model of how consumers form trust in brands and what AI changes about it A clearer view of where AI use crosses the ethical line that customers actually punish Sharper diagnosis of brand and reputation crises drawn from live media cases A practical reading of where prompt engineering and marketing psychology meet Confidence to make defensible commercial calls on AI in marketing communications