Riaz Shah
Most large organisations have AI strategies their workforces are not equipped to deliver. The capability gap sits inside the firm: tens of thousands of professionals whose roles are quietly being rewritten by automation, while learning functions still ship classroom modules. The question for the executive team is no longer whether to invest in reskilling, but how to do it at the pace technology is moving.
Riaz Shah helps senior leaders rebuild the capability of their workforce around AI, automation and digital disruption, drawing on 27 years at EY where, as Global Learning Leader, he designed how more than 400,000 professionals learned to work in a changing economy.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Riaz Shah
- He has run reskilling at a scale almost no academic or consultant has matched: more than 400,000 employees and 24 million hours of learning a year inside EY.
- He built the EY Tech MBA, one of the first corporate degree programmes to put technology fluency at the centre of professional services training, and can speak about what it took to make it work.
- His authority on the future of work rests on operating responsibility, not research alone. He has been the executive on the hook for the budget, the platform choices and the outcomes.
- He chairs One Degree Academy, a free school for children in an underserved part of London now ranked among the world’s top ten in the Overcoming Adversity category of the World’s Best School Prizes. His argument that learning design matters at scale is supported by results, not theory.
- His OBE for Services to Education, awarded by HM King Charles III in 2023, signals that the credibility is recognised beyond the corporate audience.
Biography highlights
- Professor of Practice for Innovation & Leadership, Hult International Business School.
- 27 years as a partner at EY, including Global Learning Leader, Managing Partner of London Assurance and Chief Operations Officer for EMEIA Markets.
- Architect of the EY Tech MBA, deployed across a workforce of more than 400,000 professionals.
- OBE for Services to Education, 2023.
- Founder and Chair of One Degree Academy, a Top 10 finalist for the World’s Best School Prize in the Overcoming Adversity category.
- Non-executive director, Genius Group (appointed July 2024).
Biography
Most large organisations have an AI strategy. Very few have a learning strategy capable of delivering it. That gap, between what a workforce is being asked to do next year and what it knows how to do today, is the specific problem Riaz Shah has spent the last decade inside.
At EY, as Global Learning Leader, he carried operating responsibility for how more than 400,000 professionals were equipped for a market reshaped by automation, AI and digital platforms. His team delivered more than 24 million hours of learning a year and built the EY Tech MBA, a full corporate degree programme that put technology fluency at the centre of a professional services career. He had previously been Managing Partner of London Assurance and Chief Operations Officer for EMEIA Markets, so the work was anchored in commercial reality, not in the learning department’s preferences.
He now teaches at Hult International Business School as Professor of Practice for Innovation & Leadership, where his sessions with senior executives concentrate on global megatrends, digital disruption and how organisations rebuild capability fast enough to keep up. He also chairs One Degree Academy, a state-funded free school for children aged 4 to 18 in an underserved part of London. The school is a Top 10 finalist in the Overcoming Adversity category of the World’s Best School Prizes, and is the practical expression of his argument that learning design, done seriously, scales.
In 2023, King Charles III awarded him the OBE for Services to Education. He sits on the board of Genius Group, a Nasdaq-listed education business, and is a member of YPO.
Key speaking topics
- AI and the future of work
- Reskilling and workforce transformation at scale
- Corporate learning as a strategic capability
- Innovation and growth mindset inside large organisations
- Generational shifts in the workplace
- Demographics and changing consumer attitudes
- Leadership in conditions of digital disruption
Ideal for
- CHROs and Chief Learning Officers commissioning a workforce transformation tied to AI and automation.
- CEOs and executive committees of large services and knowledge businesses where the talent base is the product.
- Boards reviewing the capability assumptions inside a digital or AI strategy.
- Senior leadership conferences where the brief is to make the case for serious, not cosmetic, reskilling.
Audience outcomes
- A sharper view of where the gap between AI ambition and workforce capability is biggest, and which gaps matter most commercially.
- A clearer picture of what corporate learning has to look like to keep pace with technology, drawn from running it at EY scale.
- An honest read on what worked and what did not in building the EY Tech MBA, with the operational detail intact.
- A more confident sense of how to talk to a workforce about AI without losing trust.
Talks
A view from inside the boardroom of a global firm on how AI, automation and digital platforms are reshaping competitive position.
Key takeaways:
- Which technology shifts most directly threaten existing business models, and which open up new ones.
- How to read megatrends in a way that informs near-term capital and talent decisions, not just long-range slides.
- Where leaders most often misjudge the pace of disruption inside their own industry.
A working session on what large organisations need to do to keep their workforce relevant as roles are rewritten by automation and AI.
Key takeaways:
- Why classroom-style learning has run out of road as a response to AI, and what replaces it.
- What the EY Tech MBA tried to solve, what it cost to build, and what other firms can borrow from it.
- How to sequence investment in reskilling so it is visible on the P&L, not just in the engagement survey.
A session for senior leaders on holding direction when the operating environment, the workforce and the technology stack are all moving at once.
Key takeaways:
- What changes in the leader’s role when half the workforce is using tools the leader does not personally use.
- How to set expectations on AI adoption without overpromising or stalling.
- Where confidence has to come from when the playbook no longer applies.