Rahaf Harfoush
Every organisation is now running an experiment on its own people. AI is reshaping how leaders think and how they decide, and most of them are watching it happen without a framework for what they are seeing. The productivity tools assume creativity is an output problem. The transformation programmes assume culture is a training problem. Neither assumption is true, and the gap between them is where the real cost is accumulating.
Digital anthropologist and New York Times bestselling author Rahaf Harfoush helps leaders understand what AI and digital culture are actually doing to human behaviour; a question she pursues through governance roles at the UN, research fellowships at Oxford and Cambridge, and a body of work recognised by the 2025 Thinkers50 ranking.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Rahaf Harfoush
- Her work is anthropological, not predictive. It is grounded in fieldwork, behavioural research, and fifteen years of watching what technology does to the people who use it. That matters when leadership teams have already absorbed every version of the AI hype cycle and want something more durable.
- Her positions on AI move with the research, because the research is hers. What she takes into a boardroom in 2026 is not what she said in 2024, and the next book she is writing on humane productivity in the age of AI is shaping her current thinking in real time.
- She works across the full institutional range. The same questions she takes into board conversations on AI strategy show up in her policy work at the UN, her research at Oxford and Cambridge, and her teaching at Sciences Po. That range means she can speak credibly to executives, regulators, and creative teams in the same week.
- The Decoded Company thesis; that organisations should apply the same analytical rigour to understanding their talent as they apply to understanding their customers, gives CHROs and people strategy teams a precise, data-grounded argument for workforce intelligence.
- She brings an active body of work. The Decoded Company was a New York Times bestseller, Hustle & Float set the structural argument on productivity and creative work, a fourth book on humane productivity in the age of AI is in progress, and her weekly newsletter and original research mean she arrives at every engagement with new material rather than a fixed deck.
Biography highlights
- Executive Director, Red Thread Institute of Digital Culture; former Associate Director, Technology Pioneer Programme, World Economic Forum, Geneva
- Member, UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Advisory Body on Artificial Intelligence; member, France’s National Digital Council; served on President Macron’s “Enlightenment in the Digital Age” commission on AI and democracy
- Visiting Policy Fellow, Oxford Internet Institute; Research Affiliate, Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy, University of Cambridge
- Author of Hustle & Float (2019); co-author of The Decoded Company (New York Times and USA Today bestseller; 2015 Gold Axiom Award for Best Business Technology Book)
- Named to the Thinkers50 2025 ranking; shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Innovation Award (2021); writing featured in Harvard Business Review, Wired, Financial Times, and Fast Company
- Faculty at Sciences Po’s School of Management and Innovation, Paris, teaching “Innovation and Emerging Business Models”
Biography
For the past fifteen years, the same question has run through her work. What happens to human beings when the systems they work and live inside change faster than their ability to absorb the change?
That question has taken her into the early Obama campaign, the World Economic Forum, the UN, the Oxford Internet Institute, and the boardrooms of some of the largest companies in the world. The pattern she keeps finding is the same. The technology gets the attention. The behavioural and cultural consequences get ignored until they show up as a problem no one can solve with another tool.
Her first book, Yes We Did, documented the digital infrastructure behind the 2008 Obama campaign from inside the war room. Her second, The Decoded Company (co-authored, and a New York Times and USA Today bestseller), argued that organisations apply rigorous analytics to their customers and intuition to their people, and pay for that mismatch in every retention number. Her third, Hustle and Float, made the case that the conflict between productivity culture and creative work is older than any of the tools we blame for it, and cannot be solved by another wellness programme.
Her current research focuses on AI’s impact on human cognition and learning. This is the territory where the most urgent questions are being asked, and where the gap between what the technology can do and what organisations actually need is widest. She is writing about it, teaching about it at Sciences Po, advising on it at the UN, and bringing what she finds onto the stage as it develops.
She holds research affiliations with the Oxford Internet Institute and Cambridge’s Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy. She served on President Macron’s “Enlightenment in the Digital Age” commission and on France’s National Digital Council. Her work has been featured in the Harvard Business Review, Wired, the Financial Times, and Fast Company. She was named to the Thinkers50 2025 ranking and shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Innovation Award in 2021.
Key speaking topics
- Digital culture and organisational behaviour
- Artificial intelligence governance and ethics
- The future of creative and knowledge work
- Human-centred AI strategy
- Innovation and emerging business models
- Leadership in technological disruption
- Data intelligence and talent strategy
Ideal for
- C-suite leadership teams who want to think clearly about AI before committing to a strategy they will have to defend in eighteen months
- CHROs and people leaders facing the talent, learning, and creative-performance consequences of AI adoption
- Government, regulatory, and policy audiences working on AI governance and digital policy
- Innovation, foresight, and strategy functions in technology-intensive and creative industries
Audience outcomes
- A working framework for understanding what AI is actually doing to the people in your organization, beyond productivity metrics
- Language for the cultural and cognitive shifts your leaders are already sensing but have not been able to name
- A clearer position on AI governance, grounded in research and lived policy experience at the UN and national level
- A sharper read on the gap between what your technology strategy assumes and what your people are experiencing
Talks
A framework for how leadership must evolve in response to technological acceleration, introducing a hybrid model that integrates strategic adaptability with specialist depth.
Key takeaways:
- A practical leadership model that balances broad contextual intelligence with deep domain expertise
- Strategies for navigating AI-driven change, multigenerational teams, and shifting stakeholder expectations
- Approaches to building resilience and confident decision-making in conditions of sustained complexity
A structured approach to transforming information overload into applied knowledge, building the critical thinking and intellectual agility that AI-generated content can erode.
Key takeaways:
- A framework for shifting from passive consumption to active, intentional knowledge mastery
- Practical systems for improving critical thinking, decision-making, and creative problem-solving
- Strategies for integrating AI tools while preserving independent expertise and professional judgement
An examination of how digital behaviours affect the nervous system, emotional regulation, and overall wellbeing, and how organisations can design healthier relationships with technology at scale.
Key takeaways:
- Insight into the physiological effects of notifications, social media, and constant connectivity on performance and decision-making
- Practical tools to reduce digital exhaustion and prevent burnout at the organisational level
- Strategies for psychological safety and nervous system regulation in digital work environments
An analysis of the structural pressures facing creative and knowledge workers, and what organisations must change to sustain both innovation and long-term performance.
Key takeaways:
- The cultural and historical forces behind the productivity-creativity tension, and why wellbeing interventions alone cannot resolve it
- Insight into the challenges of recruiting and retaining highly skilled creative talent in a hyper-connected economy
- A practical framework for designing work cultures that support sustained creativity alongside performance
A forward-looking examination of the societal and human implications of AI and automation, framed through governance experience at the UN and national policy level.
Key takeaways:
- The ethical and governance questions AI raises – and how organisations and policymakers are responding
- How algorithms are reshaping institutions, decision-making, and long-standing social systems
- A clearer frame for the evolving relationship between human capability and machine intelligence
Videos
Testimonials
Books
Fees
| EUR | GBP | USD | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Home Country | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| Asia Pacific | €40000 to €90000 | £35,001 - £75,000 | $50000 - $100000 |
| Europe | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| Middle East & Africa | €40000 to €90000 | £35,001 - £75,000 | $50000 - $100000 |
| South America | €40000 to €90000 | £35,001 - £75,000 | $50000 - $100000 |
| United Kingdom | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| US East Coast | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| US West Coast | €40000 to €90000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| Virtual | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |