AI Ethics & Responsible Technology

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

Why organisations work with Limor Ziv She closes the gap between AI governance theory and AI commercial performance, with named client work at Google, KPMG, Bright Data, SolarEdge, and Medison Pharma. Humane AI was selected by Meta among 2025’s most promising AI startups; she sits on the Scientific Council of the Israeli Association for Ethics in AI. Her peer-reviewed research with 74 senior AI and data professionals (MDPI, 2025) gives boards a working diagnostic for the breakdowns that destroy AI value, from data and governance to context and business alignment. She works the practitioner seam between academic credibility and commercial deployment, the same person teaches the lecture and runs the workshop afterwards. Operator credibility on the women-in-AI question, with public roles in Israel’s data and ethics communities, without converting that into a separate keynote category. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, Humane AI, selected by Meta among 2025’s most promising AI startups. Postdoctoral fellowship in Human-AI Interaction; Ph.D., Tel Aviv University, where she was named to the “100 Outstanding Lecturers” list. Co-author, “Behind the Algorithm: International Insights into Data-Driven AI Model Development” (MDPI, 2025), based on interviews with 74 senior AI and data professionals. Scientific Council member, Israeli Association for Ethics in AI (IAEAI). Named keynote and consulting work for Google, KPMG, Bright Data, SolarEdge, Medison Pharma, government ministries, and municipalities including Tel Aviv. Biography AI investments are returning less than executive committees expected, and regulatory scrutiny is rising in parallel. The two pressures meet at the same operational layer, where most AI deployments quietly fail. Dr. Limor Ziv built Humane AI to work at that seam. The company was selected by Meta among 2025’s most promising AI startups. In a keynote, she takes apart the hidden risks built into everyday algorithms and gives senior audiences practical ways to govern AI systems and to lower the exposure they create. She works with organisations to capture the upside of AI and avoid the failure modes that come with deploying it. The research underwrites the consulting. Her 2025 paper with Maayan Nakash in MDPI’s Machine Learning and Knowledge Extraction draws on interviews with 74 senior AI and data professionals across countries and sectors. The recurring breakdowns it surfaces are the same ones that destroy commercial performance: weak data quality, missing context, governance gaps, and business misalignment. Her client base spans government ministries and municipalities, universities, and technology companies, including Google, KPMG, Bright Data, SolarEdge, and Medison Pharma. She lectures in graduate programmes at universities and was named to Tel Aviv University’s list of 100 Outstanding Lecturers. The brief is consistent across them: make AI deployments that earn their investment and hold up when someone audits the decisions. Key speaking topics Responsible AI and AI ethics AI risk management and compliance AI governance and regulatory readiness Data quality and data-centric AI Human-AI interaction and human-centred design Realising value from AI investment AI in regulated sectors, including healthcare and finance Operationalising responsible AI in the enterprise Ideal for Boards and executive committees accountable for both the return on AI investment and the defensibility of the AI systems they sign off. Chief AI officers, chief data officers, and CISOs operationalising responsible AI policy while showing it earns its cost. Regulated-industry leadership in healthcare, financial services, and public sector wrestling with AI deployment under compliance pressure. Heads of AI, innovation, and transformation under pressure to show a return on AI spend without creating regulatory exposure. Audience outcomes A working definition of AI risk that distinguishes data risk, model risk, and decision risk, and a sense of where each lives in the organisation. A view of what AI deployment actually demands of operating teams, drawn from her empirical research with 74 senior practitioners across countries and sectors. A grounded read on the live regulatory and ethical debates, from a Scientific Council member of the Israeli Association for Ethics in AI. An honest read on the gap between what AI investments cost and what they return, and on the operating work that decides whether the gap closes.

Why organisations work with Sidney Shapiro Argues openly against AI hype. His featured keynote “Stop Believing the AI Hype” treats vendor claims as a leadership evaluation problem, which is the conversation regulated buyers and procurement teams actually need to have. Has published governance work in peer-reviewed venues. A Routledge book chapter on AI governance for higher education institutions, and a forthcoming IGI Global chapter on the governance of generative AI, give him a documented position on what responsible deployment looks like in practice. Brings a decade of operational data science alongside the academic work. A former Data Science Manager at Sofvie building occupational health and safety software, he speaks to the integration and accountability problems that follow a proof of concept. Active in the working practitioner conversation. Hosts the AI in Action podcast and organises the Southern Alberta AI Conference, which together keep his perspective grounded in what organisations across healthcare, agriculture, manufacturing, and public administration are actually trying to ship. Biography highlights Assistant Professor of Business Analytics, Dhillon School of Business, University of Lethbridge Adjunct Assistant Professor of Computer Science, University of Lethbridge Book chapter on AI governance frameworks for higher education published by Routledge (2025); forthcoming chapter on the governance of generative AI with IGI Global Host of the AI in Action podcast and organiser of the Southern Alberta AI Conference Former Data Science Manager at Sofvie Inc., building data systems for occupational health and safety in the mining sector Featured or quoted in The Globe and Mail, CBC News, Lethbridge Herald, and Canadian Family Offices Magazine Biography Most organisations have already run AI pilots. The harder question is what happens after the proof of concept ends. Procurement standards stay unclear, and the governance frameworks people quote in slides do not survive contact with real workflows. This is the gap Sidney Shapiro works in. He is Assistant Professor of Business Analytics at the Dhillon School of Business at the University of Lethbridge, and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Computer Science. Published work includes a Routledge book chapter on AI governance frameworks for higher education and a forthcoming IGI Global chapter on the governance of generative AI. Both set out what responsible deployment actually requires from organisations. His authority on the operational side comes from a decade in data-centric roles before academia. He worked as a Data Science Manager at Sofvie, an occupational health and safety software company in the mining sector, and previously coordinated the Business Analytics graduate program at Cambrian College. That background shapes how he addresses the procurement and integration problems that follow proof of concept, which is where most AI initiatives slow or stall. Public engagement keeps the work current. Shapiro hosts the AI in Action podcast, interviewing practitioners and researchers across healthcare, education, finance, and software development on what AI deployment actually looks like in their organisations. He also organises the Southern Alberta AI Conference. Recent audiences include Indigenous Services Canada, McCain Foods, EY Calgary, CMC Alberta, and the Digital Research Alliance of Canada. These are buyers with low tolerance for vendor language and high tolerance for hard questions. Key speaking topics AI governance and responsible deployment Generative AI in business and society Data privacy and trust in AI systems AI literacy for non-technical leaders Analytics leadership and digital transformation AI in higher education policy Ideal for C-suite leadership teams and boards facing AI governance and accountability decisions CIOs, CTOs, and Chief Data Officers moving AI from pilot to operational deployment Public sector leaders, including municipal and federal government, working under privacy and equity constraints on AI adoption Higher education executives shaping institutional policy on generative AI in teaching and research Audience outcomes A working framework for evaluating vendor AI claims against operational reality, in time to shape procurement decisions Sharper questions to ask of any AI initiative on data governance and where accountability sits when AI is wrong A grounded view of what generative AI does well today and where it still fails, with the implications for organisational adoption Reference points for designing operational AI governance: procurement standards, acceptable-use policies, and accountability mechanisms

Why organisations work with Tina Stowell She has run a national regulator from the inside. As Chair of the Charity Commission for three years, she rebuilt how a public body holds an entire sector to account, and can speak to regulatory pressure with the authority of someone who has applied it. She is one of the few practitioners who has led a legislative chamber through politically contested change, including the passage of equal marriage law through the House of Lords. Her current chairmanship of the Lords Communications and Digital Committee places her at the centre of UK scrutiny on generative AI, large language models and the future of news, with published committee reports cited by government and industry. She offers a working insight into how organisations earn or lose public trust, drawn from BBC corporate affairs, No. 10, the Cabinet table and a non-executive seat at Impellam Group plc. She speaks without political performance. Buyers commission her when the room contains regulators, ministers, journalists and executives who would all detect spin instantly. Biography highlights Leader of the House of Lords and Lord Privy Seal, 2014 to 2016, full Cabinet member from 2015. Chair, Charity Commission for England and Wales, 2018 to 2021. Chair, House of Lords Communications and Digital Committee, with reports on generative AI, media literacy and the future of news. Nearly a decade at the BBC, including Head of Corporate Affairs and Head of Communications for the BBC Trust. MBE in the 1996 Birthday Honours for service in the No. 10 Press Office under Prime Minister John Major. Spectator Peer of the Year, 2013 and 2024; Stonewall Politician of the Year, 2013. Non-executive director, Impellam Group plc; board member, ABTA; Social Mobility Commissioner since 2023. Biography The Charity Commission was a regulator that few outside the sector took seriously when Tina Stowell took the chair in 2018. Three years later it was setting the public conversation about how charities behave. That arc, from background body to active regulator, captures the kind of work she has built a career around: institutions under pressure, and the leadership choices that decide whether they recover authority or lose it. She came to that chairmanship through a route few in the Lords have taken. Five years in the No. 10 Press Office under John Major, recognised with an MBE in 1996. Nearly a decade at the BBC, including Head of Corporate Affairs during a period of intense scrutiny of the Corporation. Deputy chief of staff to William Hague at Conservative Party headquarters. The pattern is consistent: senior communications and governance roles inside organisations whose legitimacy was being publicly tested. In 2014 she was appointed Leader of the House of Lords and Lord Privy Seal, becoming a full member of the Cabinet after the 2015 election. The previous year she had taken the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill through the Lords, work that drew Politician of the Year recognition from Stonewall and PinkNews and a first Spectator Peer of the Year award. Her current chairmanship of the Lords Communications and Digital Committee has produced some of the more substantive UK parliamentary work on large language models, generative AI and the future of news, with the 2024 report on LLMs widely cited in the policy debate on AI safety and opportunity. She also brings the texture that comes from having grown up in Beeston, Nottinghamshire, the daughter of a painter-decorator and a factory worker, with five O-levels and no university degree. That biography matters in the room. She has held cabinet rank, regulated a sector, and chaired the parliamentary committee scrutinising AI, without the credentialism that often accompanies those roles. Her Spectator Peer of the Year award was repeated in 2024 for parliamentary work on the ownership of UK newspapers. Key speaking topics Leadership and trust under public scrutiny AI governance and the UK regulatory environment Regulation as a leadership tool, not a compliance burden Decision-making in politically contested terrain Media, communications and reputational risk Public sector and charity sector governance Bridging divides across political, generational and institutional lines Ideal for Boards and executive committees facing regulatory or political exposure Senior leaders in regulated industries, charities, media and the public sector Communications, public affairs and corporate affairs leadership Policy and government relations teams in technology, financial services and consumer-facing businesses Audience outcomes A clearer view of what earns institutional trust in front of regulators, media and elected officials A practical reading of how UK and parliamentary scrutiny of AI is actually evolving Sharper instincts for spotting where leadership communication is hardening or losing the room A more honest sense of what the public sector expects of senior corporate leaders, from someone who has sat on both sides

Why organisations work with Timandra Harkness A working statistician on the Council of Trustees of the Royal Statistical Society who can speak fluently to technical and non-technical audiences in the same room. Author of two books that bracket the AI conversation: Big Data: Does Size Matter? on what data actually does and does not tell us, and Technology Is Not the Problem on why our cultural anxieties about tech are misdirected. A mainstream BBC Radio 4 presenter on FutureProofing, How To Disagree and Steelmanning, which means she handles complex, contested material on air for general audiences and brings that craft to a corporate room. Speaks regularly at institutions that take rigour seriously, including the Royal Society, the Alan Turing Institute, and the Royal Academy of Engineering, so the substance survives scrutiny from technical buyers. Comfortable as keynote speaker, panel moderator, or event host, which makes her useful across the full shape of a leadership offsite or technology summit. Biography highlights Author, Big Data: Does Size Matter? (Bloomsbury Sigma, 2016) and Technology Is Not the Problem (HarperCollins, 2024). Council of Trustees, Royal Statistical Society; chair of the editorial board, Significance journal. Writer and presenter, BBC Radio 4 series including FutureProofing, How To Disagree, Steelmanning, and Political School. Resident reporter across eight series of BBC Radio 4’s The Human Zoo. Speaker and lecturer at the Royal Society, Alan Turing Institute, Royal Academy of Engineering, RSA, Cheltenham Science Festival, and the Abel Prize for Mathematics. Contributor to the Telegraph, Guardian, Sunday Times, WIRED, New Statesman, UnHerd and BBC Focus. Biography Most arguments about technology in the boardroom are arguments about something else. Trust. Identity. What kind of company we want to be. Timandra Harkness, a statistician and broadcaster whose work spans both BBC Radio 4 and the Royal Statistical Society, is unusually well placed to name what is actually being discussed. Her first book, Big Data: Does Size Matter?, published by Bloomsbury Sigma in 2016, took the data revolution seriously without inflating it. Her second, Technology Is Not the Problem, published by HarperCollins in 2024, makes the harder case: that our anxieties about AI and social media are anxieties about ourselves, and that locating the problem in the technology is what stops us from acting on it. She presents BBC Radio 4’s FutureProofing, How To Disagree, and Steelmanning, programmes that work because they take competing arguments seriously rather than flattening them. That habit transfers. In a leadership room, she is the speaker who can hold a senior team’s attention on the awkward middle of an AI question, where the technical position and the cultural position have to be reconciled. She sits on the Royal Statistical Society’s Council of Trustees and chairs the editorial board of Significance, the Society’s journal. She has spoken at the Royal Society, the Alan Turing Institute, and the Royal Academy of Engineering. The technical rigour is real, and it is what stops the cultural argument from drifting into commentary. Key speaking topics Big data and what it does and does not reveal The cultural and ethical questions raised by AI Statistics, evidence and decision-making Human agency in an automated environment Identity, recognition and the social media question Technology and trust Disagreement and constructive argument inside organisations Ideal for Boards and executive teams making AI, data, and digital infrastructure decisions Technology and innovation summits seeking a credible non-vendor voice Leadership offsites where the AI conversation has to bridge technical and cultural ground CDO, CTO, and CHRO audiences working through the human consequences of new systems Audience outcomes A sharper sense of what data and AI systems can and cannot do, written by someone who works with statisticians A clearer language for the cultural and ethical questions executive teams keep deferring A defensible way to think about agency, recognition and trust as the technology landscape shifts Better-quality internal disagreement on contested technology decisions

Why organisations work with Dame Wendy Hall Direct line of sight into where AI rules are heading. Hall sat on the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Advisory Body that wrote “Governing AI for Humanity”, and co-chaired the UK government’s 2017 AI Review with Jerome Pesenti. A framework for the geopolitics of digital infrastructure. Her book with Kieron O’Hara, “Four Internets”, sets out the competing Silicon Valley, Brussels, Washington and Beijing models that determine where data and AI capability can actually be deployed. Engineering credibility, not commentary. Her team at Southampton built the Microcosm hypermedia system in the mid 1980s, before the Web existed, which gives her arguments about platform design a foundation most policy voices lack. Standing inside the institutions that boards now have to follow. Fellow of the Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering, former Chair of the Ada Lovelace Institute, founding co-director of the Web Science Research Initiative with Tim Berners-Lee. Biography highlights Regius Professor of Computer Science, University of Southampton, appointed by the Crown in 2017. Member, UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Advisory Body on Artificial Intelligence; contributor to “Governing AI for Humanity” (2024). Co-chair of the UK government’s independent AI Review with Jerome Pesenti, “Growing the artificial intelligence industry in the UK” (2017). Co-author, with Kieron O’Hara, of “Four Internets: Data, Geopolitics, and the Governance of Cyberspace”, Oxford University Press, 2021. Co-founder of the Web Science Research Initiative with Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Sir Nigel Shadbolt; Managing Director, Web Science Trust. Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire; Fellow of the Royal Society; Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering; first non-North American President of the Association for Computing Machinery. Biography The teams writing the rules for AI and digital infrastructure are small, and they sit inside a handful of governments and multilateral bodies. Most boards now have to operate within those rules without much access to the people drafting them. Dame Wendy Hall is one of those people. She co-chaired the UK government’s 2017 AI Review with Jerome Pesenti, “Growing the artificial intelligence industry in the UK”, which set the structure of the country’s AI strategy. In 2023 the UN Secretary-General appointed her to the High-Level Advisory Body on Artificial Intelligence, which delivered “Governing AI for Humanity” in 2024. She chaired the Ada Lovelace Institute from 2020 to 2023. The policy work rests on three decades of original computer science. Her team at Southampton built Microcosm, a hypermedia system, in the mid 1980s, before the Web existed. In 2006 she co-founded the Web Science Research Initiative with Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Sir Nigel Shadbolt, and she now serves as Regius Professor of Computer Science at Southampton, a title conferred by the Crown. Her book with Kieron O’Hara, “Four Internets” (Oxford University Press, 2021, with a foreword by Vint Cerf), is the clearest available map of the four competing value systems, Silicon Valley, Brussels, Washington and Beijing, that now determine where data flows, where AI can be trained, and where products can be sold. That is the document senior teams come back to when they have to make a capital decision about where to put a data centre or a model. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence policy and governance The geopolitics of data and digital infrastructure Web Science and sociotechnical systems AI strategy for national and corporate competitiveness Internet governance and platform regulation Women in technology and the AI skills pipeline Ideal for Boards and executive committees making capital allocation decisions on AI, data and digital infrastructure Chief technology, chief data and chief AI officers responsible for defensible deployment Government, regulator and multilateral audiences working on AI and Internet governance University and research leadership shaping national AI strategy and skills Audience outcomes A working map of the four competing models of Internet governance and what each means for cross-border data and AI A sharper read of where UN, EU, UK, US and Chinese AI rules are converging and diverging A view of AI strategy that connects technical reality, regulation and national competitiveness A first-hand account of how independent AI reviews and advisory bodies are drafted and how to influence them

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.

Why organisations work with Daniel Hulme He runs AI inside a FTSE 100 holding company. When he talks about deployment at scale he is describing decisions he is currently making across WPP’s operating businesses, not modelling them from the outside. He sold the AI consultancy he founded, Satalia, to WPP after building it across clients including Tesco, Unilever, PwC, BT and the BBC. The deployment track record is operational, not slideware. As founder of Conscium, the first commercial research organisation on machine consciousness, he can address AI safety and the frontier governance questions that boards are starting to ask, without retreating into philosophy. His UCL credentials are substantive, an EngD in AI, the former directorship of the Applied AI MSc, and a current Entrepreneur-in-Residence role. The science behind the commercial advice is real. He signed the 2017 open letter to the United Nations on autonomous weapons alongside Musk, Hinton, Russell and Hassabis. He has been in the public AI governance conversation for almost a decade, well before it became fashionable. Biography highlights Chief AI Officer, WPP plc, coordinating AI strategy across the group since the 2021 acquisition of Satalia. Founder and former CEO of Satalia, the UK AI company named to Gartner’s Cool Vendors list for data science in 2016. Founder and CEO, Conscium, a London-based commercial research organisation studying machine consciousness and neuromorphic AI, founded 2024. EngD and Master’s in Artificial Intelligence, University College London. Computer Science Entrepreneur-in-Residence at UCL. Faculty member, Singularity University, on AI, ethics, innovation and organisational design. Founding Fellow, Academy for the Mathematical Sciences (2026). Co-author, Stories from 2045 (Economic Singularity Foundation, 2019). Signatory, 2017 open letter to the United Nations on lethal autonomous weapons. Biography WPP acquired Satalia in 2021 and made its founder its Chief AI Officer across the group. That move put one person in charge of AI strategy across a FTSE 100 advertising and marketing holding company, with operating brands that touch most of the world’s largest consumer businesses. The job is what most boards are now wrestling with on a smaller scale. Daniel Hulme founded Satalia in 2008 out of his AI research at University College London, where he earned his EngD and went on to direct the Applied AI MSc programme. Satalia’s work for clients including Tesco, Unilever, PwC, BT and the BBC sat at the unglamorous end of AI, optimisation, decision intelligence and operational decision-making, which is where deployment usually succeeds or fails. In 2024 he co-founded Conscium, a commercial research organisation focused on machine consciousness and neuromorphic AI. The work matters commercially because the next set of AI governance questions, around verification, autonomy and accountability, are not solved by the current generation of large language models. He was a signatory to the 2017 open letter to the United Nations on autonomous weapons, alongside Musk, Hinton, Russell and Hassabis, which placed him in the public AI safety conversation long before it reached boardrooms. He remains UCL’s Computer Science Entrepreneur-in-Residence, holds Singularity University faculty status, and was elected a Founding Fellow of the Academy for the Mathematical Sciences in 2026. The combination matters for one practical reason. When he discusses how AI is being deployed inside a FTSE 100 company, the technical claims are coming from someone with a research apparatus underneath them. Key speaking topics Applied AI in large enterprises AI strategy and the Chief AI Officer role AI ethics, safety and governance Machine consciousness and frontier AI research Decision intelligence and optimisation The future of work under AI Organisational design through technology Ideal for Boards and executive committees making AI investment and governance decisions Chief AI Officers, CTOs, CIOs and Chief Data Officers shaping enterprise AI strategy Risk, audit and compliance leaders working out AI accountability Innovation, transformation and digital leaders moving AI beyond pilots Audience outcomes A clearer view of what AI can realistically deliver inside their own organisation in the next 18 months, separated from vendor narrative. Working language for the governance and safety questions their board will be asked, including where the limits of current AI sit. A more honest read on which AI use cases are commercially defensible and which are not yet. Exposure to frontier research questions, including machine consciousness, that will shape the next wave of AI regulation.

Why organisations work with Christina Yan Zhang She co-writes the UN ITU standards her clients will eventually be measured against. Her CitiVerse evaluation framework spans 130 indicators across 14 domains, with input from more than 30 global authorities. She has converted that standards work into operational strategy for cities, including Tampere’s Metaverse Vision 2040, the first people-centred metaverse strategy adopted as a UN resource for governments. Her China innovation insight is grounded in direct operating experience, not commentary. As QS China Director from 2013 to 2020, she sat across hundreds of Chinese universities, national labs and science parks during the 13th Five-Year Plan. She holds advisory positions across the International Science Council’s Centre for Science Futures, The Economist Impact’s AI economy board, and TechUK’s Digital Twins Board, giving her unusually direct line of sight into where AI policy is heading. She was named in the 100 Global Women in AI 2025 list at Davos and chaired the jury of the 2024 Metaverse Entertainment World Awards under the patronage of Prince Albert II of Monaco. Biography highlights CEO, The Metaverse Institute Vice Chair, UN ITU Metaverse Working Group on Sustainability, Accessibility and Inclusion Co-Chair, UN ITU Task Group on Pre-standardisation for the CitiVerse Author of the UN’s first approved technical report on People-Centred CitiVerse China Director, QS World University Rankings, 2013 to 2020 100 Global Women in AI 2025 (announced at Davos) Biography The rules for AI in cities, public services and immersive environments are being written right now, mostly inside the UN ITU. Christina Yan Zhang is one of the people writing them. As Co-Chair of the UN ITU Task Group on Pre-standardisation for the CitiVerse, she leads the evaluation framework that 30 plus global authorities have shaped and that hundreds of cities are expected to align to before 2030. That standards work feeds directly into operational strategy. Her team at The Metaverse Institute produced Tampere Metaverse Vision 2040, the first people-centred metaverse strategy commissioned by a city government and subsequently published by the UN as a resource for other administrations. She is also the author of the UN’s first approved technical report on People-Centred CitiVerse, which set out an 8-level entry framework for governments and operators moving into virtual environments. She arrived at this work through an unusual route. Her PhD in 2012 was on digital twin applications for the construction industry, well before the term entered mainstream board conversations. Between 2013 and 2020 she was China Director for QS World University Rankings, building the firm’s China operation from scratch and sitting close to the universities, science parks and national labs that drove the country’s 13th Five-Year Plan in research and innovation. She now advises across the International Science Council’s Centre for Science Futures, The Economist Impact’s AI economy board, and TechUK’s Digital Twins Board. The throughline is consistent: where AI, digital twins and virtual environments meet public infrastructure, she has been writing the standards before most boards have read them. Key speaking topics AI governance and the UN CitiVerse standards Digital twins for cities and critical infrastructure Responsible deployment of virtual environments People-centred AI strategy for governments and operators China’s innovation system and research capacity Future of work in AI-enabled cities Ideal for Boards and C-suites setting AI, digital and immersive technology strategy Government and city leadership teams designing smart city or CitiVerse roadmaps Heads of innovation, digital and infrastructure inside regulated industries Investors and operators positioning capital around AI-powered urban and built-environment plays Audience outcomes A working map of where UN ITU standards on AI and the CitiVerse are heading, and what that means for their own roadmap A clearer view of how digital twins move from technical pilot to citywide operating system Direct insight into China’s innovation engine from someone who operated inside it for seven years A framework for testing whether their current AI and virtual-environment plans will hold up against emerging international standards

Why organisations work with Christian Stiegler He works at the rare junction of three constituencies that rarely speak the same language: regulators, corporates and creative-industry partners. His client list runs from the European Commission, UNICEF and GIZ to Björk, Phoebe Bridgers and the team behind #bravehood with Coldplay and The Rolling Stones. His MIT Press book, The 360° Gaze, gives him a peer-reviewed framework for immersive media that buyers can cite when justifying XR, metaverse or AI-content investments to a sceptical board. He has advised the European Commission, UNICEF and GIZ on algorithmic accountability and digital governance, which means his governance content reflects what regulators are actually pressing for, not a generic responsible-AI script. He runs Guiding Light, an organisation built specifically to convert ethics and sustainability principles into deployable technology programmes, so his keynotes connect to a delivery practice rather than ending at the slide deck. Biography highlights Director, Guiding Light (Organisation for Ethics and Sustainability in Technologies), Vienna and Berlin. Academic Director Design and faculty, IU International University of Applied Sciences, Germany; research focus on AI, XR, Metaverse and technology ethics. Former Wallscourt Associate Professor of Immersive Media, UWE Bristol; former Associate Professor / Senior Lecturer in Digital Media, Brunel University London. Author, The 360° Gaze: Immersions in Media, Society, and Culture (MIT Press, 2021); earlier monograph New Media Culture (transcript, 2015). Named advisor to the European Commission, UNICEF and GIZ on AI ethics, algorithmic accountability and digital governance. Speaker at SXSW, Cannes XR, Berlinale, International Film Festival Rotterdam, MIPTV Cannes and C21 Content Summit London. Biography Most organisations describe AI ethics as a principle and treat it as a compliance task. The decisions that decide outcomes, what training data is licensed, how a model is evaluated before release, who owns the recall trigger, sit several layers below the published policy. That is the operating gap Christian Stiegler works in. As Director of Guiding Light, the Vienna and Berlin organisation he founded for ethics and sustainability in technologies, he advises governments, multilateral bodies and corporates on translating governance principles into deployment decisions. Named advisory clients include the European Commission, UNICEF and GIZ, covering algorithmic accountability, AI ethics and digital policy. His academic anchor is The 360° Gaze: Immersions in Media, Society, and Culture (MIT Press, 2021), a peer-reviewed treatment of immersive media that underwrites his work on XR, the metaverse and AI-generated content. He holds faculty positions in technology ethics at IU International University of Applied Sciences in Germany, and was previously Wallscourt Associate Professor of Immersive Media at UWE Bristol and Senior Lecturer in Digital Media at Brunel University London. He also operates across the creative industries, an unusual range for an AI ethics voice. Through his #bravehood initiative with UNICEF and War Child he has worked with Coldplay, The Rolling Stones, Björk, Phoebe Bridgers and others on the technology-driven design of social-impact campaigns. That cross-sector reach is what buyers in regulated industries tend to remark on; he can move between a regulator’s framing, a CTO’s risk register and a brand team’s storytelling problem without losing the thread. Key speaking topics AI ethics and algorithmic accountability Digital policy and AI governance Extended reality and the metaverse Sustainable and human-centred innovation Immersive media and cultural impact of emerging technologies Tech for good and social-impact technology design Ideal for Boards and audit committees setting AI governance and assurance frameworks Chief AI officers, CDOs and CTOs moving from responsible-AI principles to deployed controls Government, regulator and multilateral teams shaping digital policy and AI regulation Brand, content and creative leadership teams evaluating XR, metaverse and generative-AI investments Audience outcomes A clearer map of where regulator attention is actually concentrating across AI governance and digital policy A working distinction between AI ethics as principle and AI ethics as operating practice Reference frames from The 360° Gaze that audiences can use to assess XR, metaverse and generative-content decisions Examples from European Commission, UNICEF and GIZ advisory work that show how governance language converts into named deployment decisions

Why organisations work with Nina Schick She published the first book on generative AI in 2020, years before the technology entered the boardroom conversation, which means her current strategic claims sit on a public track record rather than a recent pivot. She is one of very few commercial speakers who has briefed both a sitting US President and a former NATO Secretary General on AI and statecraft, giving senior audiences direct access to the language used at the top of Western policymaking. Her “Industrial Intelligence” thesis reframes AI from a software adoption question into an infrastructure and energy question, which is the conversation CFOs, infrastructure heads, and strategy teams now need but rarely get from a generalist AI speaker. Through Tamang Ventures she holds active advisory roles with frontier firms including Synthesia, valued at $4 billion in its January 2026 Series E led by Google Ventures, alongside Qlik and Truepic, so she speaks from inside the capital and product decisions she describes, not from the outside. Biography highlights Author, Deepfakes: The Coming Infocalypse (Hachette/Twelve, 2020), translated into multiple languages and widely cited as the first book on AI-generated content Briefed US President Joe Biden and advised former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen as Director of Rasmussen Global Worked on Emmanuel Macron’s 2017 presidential campaign and advised on the Democracy Perception Index, the largest annual study on global attitudes toward democracy Founder of Tamang Ventures; advisor to Synthesia (valued at $4B in its January 2026 Series E), founding AI Council member at Qlik, advisor to Truepic Strategic analyst contributor across CNN, Bloomberg, and Sky News during a decade of European political crises including Brexit and the war in Ukraine Half-Nepalese and half-German, with degrees from the University of Cambridge and University College London; now based in the United States after a decade inside UK and EU policy Biography The race to dominate artificial intelligence is no longer a software race. It is a contest over fabs, energy, compute, and the sovereign infrastructure that will determine which states and which companies hold the next decade of pricing power. That argument, which Nina Schick calls Industrial Intelligence, sits at the centre of her current work with governments, defence institutions, and frontier AI companies. She arrived at it earlier than most. Her 2020 book Deepfakes: The Coming Infocalypse, published by Hachette imprint Twelve, was among the first to describe the geopolitical and informational consequences of generative AI, written before ChatGPT existed as a public product. It introduced the concept of the Infocalypse and is cited as foundational reading in national security and policy circles. That early thesis is grounded in a long career inside European policymaking. As Director of Rasmussen Global, she advised Anders Fogh Rasmussen, former NATO Secretary General, on political risk and the technological evolution of warfare. She worked on Emmanuel Macron’s 2017 presidential campaign and advised on the Democracy Perception Index, the largest annual machine-learning study on global attitudes toward democracy. She has briefed US President Joe Biden on AI, technological integrity, and statecraft, and works with the US Army, the United Nations, and Mastercard on AI and sovereignty. For seven years she also served as a strategic analyst contributor across CNN, Bloomberg, and Sky News during the Brexit, Trump, and Ukraine cycles. Through Tamang Ventures, the advisory firm she founded, she now sits inside the companies building the new stack: Synthesia in enterprise AI video, valued at $4 billion in its January 2026 Series E led by Google Ventures, Qlik in data analytics where she is a founding AI Council member, and Truepic in digital provenance. Now based in the United States, she works with the institutions and capital allocators that will shape what the AI infrastructure stack looks like at the end of this decade. The combination of policy access, commercial proximity, and a public thesis published five years before the market caught up is what makes her useful in a boardroom. Key speaking topics Industrial Intelligence and the AI infrastructure stack Generative AI and corporate strategy AI, semiconductors, and the US-China technology competition AI and energy demand Deepfakes, synthetic media, and information integrity AI in defence, NATO, and statecraft Sovereign AI and the future of national power Ideal for Boards, CEOs, and strategy heads recalibrating long-range AI investment around infrastructure rather than tooling CIOs, CTOs, and chief data officers needing a geopolitical lens on supply, partnerships, and dependency risk Defence, security, and public sector audiences working on AI policy, sovereignty, and statecraft Investor and capital allocator audiences pricing AI exposure across compute, energy, and software layers Audience outcomes A clear thesis about why AI is an infrastructure and energy contest, not only a software adoption question A working frame for assessing corporate exposure to compute, semiconductor, and energy supply constraints Specific examples of how policy, defence, and frontier AI companies are already operating inside the Industrial Intelligence framework Sharper questions to take into the next strategy review on AI, sovereignty, and dependency risk A grounded view of where deepfakes and synthetic media now sit in the corporate and political risk picture

Why organisations work with Andreas Welsch Two decades inside SAP, including a vice president role connected to its Global AI Center of Excellence, give him a working knowledge of enterprise AI at the scale Fortune 500 boards actually operate. His AI Leadership Handbook is built on 60+ named interviews with AI leaders and offers a practitioner framework rather than commentary on the market. The 9 Steps to Successful AI Projects gives leadership teams a sequence to challenge stalled programmes against, covering ownership, strategy alignment, cross-functional delivery and governance. His What’s the BUZZ? podcast, running since 2021 with hundreds of AI executives, keeps his material grounded in what is currently working inside enterprises, not what was true 18 months ago. Named LinkedIn Top Voice, Thinkers360 Top 10 in AI, Generative AI and Agentic AI, and DataIQ Data & AI Leader of the Year Finalist 2025, which signals he is taken seriously by the audiences that book him. Biography highlights Founder and Chief AI Strategist, Intelligence Briefing Former Vice President at SAP, with leadership roles connected to its Global AI Center of Excellence and Business AI go-to-market function Author of AI Leadership Handbook and The HUMAN Agentic AI Edge Host of What’s the BUZZ? AI in Business podcast since 2021 Adjunct Professor at West Chester University of Pennsylvania; Editorial Board member, Journal of AI, Robotics, and Workplace Automation LinkedIn Top Voice; Thinkers360 Top 10 in AI, Generative AI and Agentic AI; DataIQ Data & AI Leader of the Year Finalist 2025; PEX Network Top 30 AI Leader 2025 Biography Enterprise AI has moved past the question of whether to invest. The harder question now is why most programmes never leave pilot. Welsch’s work answers it from the operator’s seat. Over two decades at SAP, including a vice president role connected to its Global AI Center of Excellence, he watched Fortune 500 organisations buy capability and fail to convert it into operating advantage. That experience is the substrate of the AI Leadership Handbook, his best-selling book drawn from 60+ interviews with AI leaders. The book sets out a practitioner sequence, The 9 Steps to Successful AI Projects, that leadership teams use to challenge stalled programmes against ownership, strategy alignment, cross-functional delivery and governance. Through Intelligence Briefing, the advisory he founded after SAP, Welsch now works with senior teams on agentic AI specifically: where autonomous systems sit on the org chart, how accountability survives when decisions are delegated to machines, and what workforce design looks like when AI agents are colleagues rather than tools. His second book, The HUMAN Agentic AI Edge, makes that argument in book form. His What’s the BUZZ? podcast, running since 2021, keeps the material fresh by putting him in regular conversation with named AI leaders inside Accenture, IBM, NVIDIA, PwC, SAP and Siemens. Thinkers360 ranks him in their top 10 globally on AI, Generative AI and Agentic AI; DataIQ named him a Data & AI Leader of the Year finalist in 2025. Key speaking topics Enterprise AI strategy and operating advantage Agentic AI and autonomous systems in the enterprise AI governance and responsible adoption Generative AI for business outcomes Workforce design for the AI-ready organisation AI leadership and executive readiness Change management for AI programmes Ideal for Boards, CEOs and executive committees commissioning enterprise-wide AI strategy CIOs, CTOs, CDOs and Chief AI Officers responsible for moving AI from pilot to operating model CHROs and people leaders redesigning roles around AI capability Industry conferences and leadership summits in technology, financial services, manufacturing and professional services Audience outcomes A sharper read on why most enterprise AI programmes stall and what changes when they do not Familiarity with The 9 Steps to Successful AI Projects as a diagnostic for their own programme A working position on agentic AI: where it belongs in the operating model and where it does not Specific governance questions to take back to the board on accountability, data privacy and risk A view of what other Fortune 500 AI leaders are actually doing now, from Welsch’s podcast research