Susi O’Neill

Why organisations work with Susi O’Neill

• She translates frontier technology into language non-technical executives can act on, drawing on years running global brand content for Kaspersky, the world’s largest privately owned cybersecurity firm.
• Her practice is built around the adoption gap, not the technology itself, which is why she resonates with leaders whose AI rollouts have stalled at proof-of-concept.
• She brings a builder’s track record in tech storytelling, including the Platinum MarCom Award winning Insight Story podcast for Kaspersky and Editor-in-Chief roles on Secure Futures magazine and the Tomorrow Unlocked channel.
• Through EVA and her Rethinking the Hype Cycle newsletter, she works with leaders on inclusive AI adoption, including the lag in women’s engagement with AI tools and what closing it changes about who benefits from the technology.

Biography highlights

• Founder and Executive Director of EVA, a London-based technology and communications consultancy.
• Former Head of B2B Brand Content (Global) at Kaspersky.
• Editor-in-Chief of Kaspersky’s Secure Futures magazine and Tomorrow Unlocked cyberculture channel.
• Creator and host of the Platinum MarCom Award winning Insight Story podcast.
• Named in Pepper Content’s Top 50 Global Women in Content 2023.
• Author of the Rethinking the Hype Cycle newsletter on AI and frontier technology adoption.

Biography

The hard part of AI is rarely the model. It is the distance between an executive sponsor and the team being asked to use a new tool by Friday. O’Neill has spent her career working that distance, first inside one of the world’s largest cybersecurity firms, now from the outside through her consultancy EVA.

At Kaspersky, she ran global B2B brand content and edited Secure Futures, the company’s business-leader magazine, alongside the Tomorrow Unlocked cyberculture channel. She commissioned and hosted Insight Story, a podcast unpacking tech trends for executives that won a Platinum MarCom Award in 2023. The work taught her how senior buyers actually absorb information about complex technology, and where the standard tech-marketing playbook fails them.

EVA, the practice she founded next, takes that experience into client work on AI strategy, responsible technology and adoption. Her newsletter Rethinking the Hype Cycle puts the same question to a wider audience: what does a serious organisation do once the AI announcement is out and the cultural work begins. She also writes and speaks on inclusive adoption, including the documented lag in women’s use of generative AI tools and what it costs organisations that ignore it.

Earlier brand-content programmes for EY, GSK and Unilever, and a recognition in Pepper Content’s Top 50 Global Women in Content, sit behind that current work. The throughline is consistent. Technology only changes a business when the people inside it are willing to use it, and most organisations are still under-investing in the communications and trust work that makes that happen.

Key speaking topics

• AI adoption and the hype cycle
• Responsible and trusted technology
• Frontier and emerging technologies for business
• Inclusive AI and women in technology
• Tech communications and thought leadership
• Cybersecurity culture and digital trust

Ideal for

• CIO, CTO and Chief Digital Officer audiences whose AI programmes have stalled in pilot.
• CMO, communications and brand leaders building tech credibility with non-technical buyers.
• Boards and executive teams setting AI governance and responsible-use principles.
• Diversity, talent and L&D leaders working on inclusive AI capability across the workforce.

Audience outcomes

• A clearer reading of where their organisation actually sits on the AI hype cycle, and which moves are worth making next.
• A practical sense of how to bring sceptical or hesitant employees with them, instead of around them.
• Specific examples of how serious organisations are translating frontier tech into adoption, not just announcements.
• A sharper view of inclusive AI as a capability question, including who is using these tools and who is being left behind.