AI Ethics & Responsible Technology speakers

Why organisations work with Aaron Balick He sits at an uncommon intersection: clinical psychotherapy experience, a former directorship of the MA in Psychoanalytic Studies at the University of Essex, and a foundational book on the psychology of social media that is still cited in practitioner and academic literature. His media record gives audiences a speaker whose voice they already know: longest-serving mental health agony uncle on BBC Radio 1’s The Surgery, alongside regular appearances on BBC Radio 4’s Digital Human and The Moral Maze. His published writing runs from serious academic work to accessible self-help, which lets him move between main-stage keynote and in-depth workshop without dropping register. As founder and former CEO of Stillpoint Spaces, the international applied-psychology hub he built across London, Paris, Berlin and Zurich, he developed his reading of digital life from inside an operating organisation, not only from a consulting desk. His framing of AI and social media is psychological rather than technical, which is exactly the angle most executive teams are missing when making decisions about generative AI and platform strategy. Biography highlights Founder and former CEO of Stillpoint Spaces, an international applied-psychology hub formerly with locations in London, Paris, Berlin and Zurich Former director of the MA in Psychoanalytic Studies at the University of Essex; continues as associate post-graduate supervisor in the Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies Psychotherapist in private practice in London, with over 20 years of clinical experience Author of The Psychodynamics of Social Networking (Karnac), The Little Book of Calm and Keep Your Cool Longest-serving mental health agony uncle on BBC Radio 1’s The Surgery Regular BBC Radio 4 contributor; published in Wired, The Guardian, The Independent and Newsweek Biography The Psychodynamics of Social Networking, published by Karnac Books, remains one of the most widely cited practitioner texts on how the platforms senior leaders are now running their strategies through actually affect the people using them. Aaron Balick wrote it at a point when most commentary on social media was still either evangelical or dismissive, and the book set the register for a more serious psychological reading of digital life. His work sits at the seam between clinical practice and public commentary. He has maintained a private psychotherapy practice in London for more than two decades, trained in depth psychology and psychoanalysis, and formerly directed the MA in Psychoanalytic Studies at the University of Essex, where he continues as an associate post-graduate supervisor in the Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies. The applied side of that work ran through Stillpoint Spaces, the international applied-psychology hub he founded and led across London, Paris, Berlin and Zurich. The media presence anchors him inside a mainstream audience. He was the longest-serving mental health agony uncle on BBC Radio 1’s The Surgery and is a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4’s Digital Human and The Moral Maze. His writing has appeared in Wired, The Guardian, The Independent and Newsweek. Alongside his academic book, he has published two accessible titles, The Little Book of Calm and the children’s book Keep Your Cool. For organisations making senior decisions about generative AI, platform strategy, employee wellbeing or customer engagement, Balick brings something their technology advisers do not: a trained clinical reading of what digital experience actually does to the people on the other side of it. That perspective is increasingly what the better boards want on the table. Key speaking topics Psychology of social media, AI and digital connectivity Digital wellbeing and hyperconnectivity at work The psychologically intelligent workplace Personal leadership and authenticity Mental health in technology-mediated environments Ethics and psychology of generative AI Ideal for Executive teams and boards making decisions on AI deployment, platform strategy or digital customer experience CHROs, wellbeing leads and chief people officers designing mental health and engagement strategy Technology, media and platform leadership teams looking for a psychological voice on product and user impact Conferences and leadership events needing a media-recognised speaker who can connect AI, wellbeing and culture Audience outcomes A working psychological framework for understanding social-media and AI effects on people and behaviour Specific implications for wellbeing, engagement and customer experience strategy A clearer language for the ethical questions senior teams are quietly asking about generative AI Reference material from The Psychodynamics of Social Networking and his BBC contributions for internal follow-up

Why organisations work with Adrian Joseph He has run an AI and data function of roughly 1,600 people inside a FTSE 100 company, so his advice to boards reflects what it takes to deliver at that scale, not what a strategy deck suggests. He sits on the boards of Direct Line, Allwyn and Great Ormond Street Hospital, giving him a current view of how AI lands in insurance, gaming and healthcare rather than a single-sector perspective. As an Expert Member of the UK AI Council he contributed to the National AI Strategy, so he reads regulation and policy as someone who has been inside the room, not as an outside observer. He holds an OBE for services to equality and diversity in business and was named the UK’s most influential minority ethnic technology leader by the Financial Times and Inclusive Boards, which sharpens his credibility on the workforce side of AI transformation. His career path through Google, EY and BT gives audiences a rare triangulation: the hyperscaler view of what the technology can do, the consulting view of how to sell change internally, and the operator view of what actually breaks. Biography highlights Former Chief Data and AI Officer, BT Group, leading approximately 1,600 data and AI professionals. Former Senior Partner and Head of UK Data and Analytics for Financial Services at EY. Over ten years in senior leadership roles at Google across cloud, digital and data science. Non-Executive Director at Direct Line Insurance Group, Allwyn UK and Great Ormond Street Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. Expert Member of the UK Government’s AI Council and former Non-Executive Director at the Home Office. OBE for services to equality and diversity in business; named the UK’s most influential BAME technology leader by the Financial Times and Inclusive Boards. Biography Running an AI and data function of 1,600 people inside BT Group taught Adrian Joseph OBE what most board conversations about AI miss. The commercial case is not won in the model. It is won in the operating model, the talent pipeline and the patience of the leadership team to let value compound. That operator’s view is what he brings into the room. Before BT, he spent over a decade at Google in senior cloud, digital and data science roles, then led the UK Data and Analytics practice for Financial Services at EY as a Senior Partner. The path gives him three lenses on the same problem. Hyperscalers built the infrastructure. Consultancies sold the transformation story. Incumbents have to actually run the thing in production under regulatory scrutiny. He currently holds non-executive director roles at Direct Line Insurance Group, Allwyn UK, the National Lottery operator, and Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Foundation Trust, and sits on the Technology Advisory Board at NatWest Group. As an Expert Member of the UK Government’s AI Council he contributed to the National AI Strategy, and served as a Non-Executive Director at the Home Office from 2015 to 2020. He was awarded an OBE in the 2019 New Year’s Honours for services to equality and diversity in business, and the Financial Times and Inclusive Boards named him the UK’s most influential Black, Asian and ethnic minority technology leader. That recognition is not decoration on the CV. It sharpens his argument that the AI advantage large organisations seek is inseparable from who they let build and govern the systems. Key speaking topics Enterprise AI strategy and commercial return Responsible AI and governance Data and AI operating models at scale Digital and cloud transformation in regulated industries AI policy and the National AI Strategy Diversity and inclusion in technology leadership Board-level oversight of AI risk Ideal for CEOs, CFOs and boards under pressure to show commercial return from AI and data spend Chief Data Officers, CIOs and CTOs building or restructuring AI and data functions Financial services, insurance, healthcare and public sector leaders navigating AI in regulated environments CHROs and transformation leads addressing the talent and inclusion dimension of AI adoption Audience outcomes A sharper line between AI activity that produces commercial return and AI activity that produces slides A realistic view of what an AI and data operating model looks like at enterprise scale, from someone who ran one Current reading of UK AI policy and regulation from inside the AI Council and National AI Strategy work Practical signals for boards on where to probe AI risk, governance and delivery maturity Language for connecting AI capability to workforce, talent and inclusion strategy

Why organisations work with Alex Connock He runs the AI for Executives module on the Oxford Executive MBA and co-directs Oxford’s postgraduate course in Artificial Intelligence for Business, so the content has been pressure-tested with senior leaders before it reaches a corporate audience. He spent two decades running media businesses at scale, including thirteen years as co-founder and CEO of Ten Alps with Bob Geldof and five as Managing Director of Endemol Shine North, which means his framing of AI is grounded in production economics, not vendor narrative. His Routledge textbook on media business models in the AI age is a teaching reference at multiple business schools and has been translated into Korean and Turkish, giving him a coherent published argument rather than a deck of demos. He moves credibly between a board conversation about AI strategy and a creative team session on generative tools, which is rare in a topic dominated by either technologists or policy commentators. Biography highlights Senior Fellow, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford; co-director of Oxford’s postgraduate course in Artificial Intelligence for Business. Professor of Media and Artificial Intelligence, University of Exeter. Head of Department, Creative Business, National Film and Television School. Author of three Routledge titles, including “Media Management and Artificial Intelligence” (2022), “Media Management and Live Experience” (2024), and “Entrepreneurship in Media and Entertainment” (2025). Co-founder and former CEO of Ten Alps (now Zinc Media) with Bob Geldof; former Managing Director of Endemol Shine North. Education: PPE (Oxford), Journalism (Columbia), MBA (INSEAD), PhD in video optimisation for e-commerce. Biography Generative AI has reordered the cost base of every business that produces content, software, or marketing, and the question for leadership teams is no longer whether to engage but where the operating model actually changes. That question is harder to answer well than the public debate suggests. It needs someone who has run a production company through a previous wave of digital disruption, and who teaches the underlying technology to senior executives now. That is the position Alex Connock occupies. At Saïd Business School in Oxford he co-directs the postgraduate course in Artificial Intelligence for Business and runs the AI for Executives module on the Executive MBA. He holds a Professorship in Media and Artificial Intelligence at the University of Exeter and leads the Creative Business department at the National Film and Television School. Before the academic work he spent two decades as an operator. He co-founded Ten Alps with Bob Geldof in 1998 and ran it as chief executive for thirteen years, producing programming for UK and international broadcasters and the UK government’s Teachers TV. He then ran Endemol Shine North as Managing Director through a period of substantial growth. His three Routledge titles, including the 2022 textbook “Media Management and Artificial Intelligence” with Korean and Turkish translations, give the talks a published spine. The result is a speaker who can take a board conversation from generative AI as topic to specific decisions about content, channel, and capital, with a vocabulary that holds up in front of both the strategy team and the creative team. Key speaking topics Generative AI and the media business AI for executives and the corporate operating model AI applied to marketing and brand The economics of synthetic content and creator platforms AI, national strategy and creative industries policy Entrepreneurship and growth in media and entertainment Ideal for Boards and executive committees commissioning an AI strategy session that goes beyond capability demos. CMOs, CSOs, and content leaders in media, entertainment, publishing, advertising, and marketing. Executive education and senior leadership programmes inside large corporates. Industry conferences in media, technology, and creative industries seeking a credentialed academic voice with operator history. Audience outcomes A clear read on where generative AI changes the unit economics of content, marketing, and customer-facing operations. A structured view of the AI tooling landscape, anchored to specific business decisions rather than vendor categories. Reference points from media businesses already running AI in production, including platforms, broadcasters, and creator economies. A working vocabulary for the boardroom conversation on AI strategy that holds up with both technical and commercial colleagues.

Why organisations work with Alf Rehn His central argument runs against the grain of the innovation industry: that most of what organisations call innovation is performance, not practice – and that rebuilding the real thing requires dismantling the very frameworks many have paid consultants to install. Innovation for the Fatigued (Kogan Page) provides a named, publishable framework – “deep innovation” – that gives leadership teams a vocabulary to diagnose and address innovation theatre without discarding ambition. His current research at SDU’s Center for Organizational Datafication and its Ethics in Society gives him a credible, peer-reviewed lens on how AI and algorithmic systems are reshaping management and innovation decisions – a perspective grounded in data, not trend commentary. Having held chairs at three universities across Finland, Denmark and Sweden, and served on the board of a billion-dollar corporation, he operates across the researcher-practitioner boundary in a way that is rare in the innovation speaking space. His Thinkers50 Guru Radar inclusion (2016) and coverage in the Financial Times, The Sunday Times and Harvard Business Review give buyers a named, verifiable body of external endorsement to anchor the engagement. Biography highlights Professor of Innovation, Design and Management, University of Southern Denmark Head of the Center for Organizational Datafication and its Ethics in Society, SDU – researching AI’s effects on management, innovation and algorithmic ethics Previously held the Chair of Management and Organisation at Åbo Akademi University, Finland; and a professorship in Innovation and Entrepreneurship at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden Named to Thinkers50 Guru Radar (2016) – listed among “the 30 management thinkers most likely to shape the future of management” Author of Innovation for the Fatigued (Kogan Page) and Dangerous Ideas – the latter translated into eight languages Featured in the Financial Times, The Sunday Times and Harvard Business Review; over 1,000 keynotes delivered across five continents Biography Alf Rehn has spent much of his academic career making the same uncomfortable argument: that organisations are not suffering from a lack of innovation, but from an excess of innovation theatre. His book Innovation for the Fatigued, published by Kogan Page, names this problem directly – and his concept of “deep innovation” offers a framework for distinguishing creative cultures that produce real output from those that have learned to imitate one. That critique has weight because of where it comes from. Rehn holds a chair in Innovation, Design and Management at the University of Southern Denmark, where he also leads the Center for Organizational Datafication and its Ethics in Society – a research unit examining how AI and algorithmic technologies are changing the way executives, engineers and managers make decisions. He has previously held professorships at Åbo Akademi University in Finland and KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden, combining research across critical management studies, creativity and organisational theory. His earlier book Dangerous Ideas – translated into eight languages – argues that the ideas organisations most need are precisely the ones they are instinctively disposed to dismiss. Together, the two books form a coherent intellectual position: that genuine innovation requires not better processes but the courage to engage with what is uncomfortable, inconvenient and structurally difficult. Named to the Thinkers50 Guru Radar in 2016 and covered by the Financial Times, The Sunday Times and Harvard Business Review, Rehn engages boards and executive teams on the strategic gap between innovation ambition and innovation reality – and on how emerging technologies, including AI, are creating new versions of the same problem. Key speaking topics Innovation strategy and organisational creativity Innovation fatigue and deep innovation Creative cultures and their destruction Dangerous and unconventional ideas in business AI, datafication and ethics in management Leadership paradox and contradictory demands on leaders Scenario planning and taboo futures Contrarian and critical thinking in strategy Ideal for Chief Innovation Officers and strategy leads seeking to audit and rebuild innovation culture Executive leadership teams who have invested in innovation programmes with limited return Boards and C-suite audiences examining how AI is reshaping organisational decision-making CHROs and transformation leads working on the cultural conditions for sustained creativity Audience outcomes A clearer diagnostic for distinguishing genuine creative capacity from performative innovation activity Practical language and frameworks from Innovation for the Fatigued to challenge and rebuild internal innovation practice A more rigorous approach to unconventional and uncomfortable ideas, informed by the argument of Dangerous Ideas Familiarity with how AI and algorithmic systems are reshaping management decisions, grounded in current academic research A more honest account of what leadership under contradictory demands actually requires – and how to navigate it without resolving it

Why organisations work with Anand Tamboli His Apress book Build Your Own IoT Platform is a widely used technical manual for developers building IoT platforms, which anchors him outside the bureau-speaker register and inside the engineering community. His second book Keeping Your AI Under Control applies the same discipline to AI governance, giving senior audiences a specific frame on the control layer that most AI keynotes skip. Chartered Engineer status plus MBA in International Business gives him the combination buyers want: deep technical credibility with business-side vocabulary. He mentors innovators through Venture Cafe Sydney, CSIRO and UNSW, so the current reading on emerging technology is current and specific to what is actually being built, not abstract. Twenty-plus years of Fortune 500 speaking and consulting plus awards from Consensus Group Australia («Best Author of the Year») and IoT Hub Australia («IoT Pioneer» nomination) give the credibility an external anchor. Biography highlights Founder, Knewron Technologies; Chartered Engineer; MBA in International Business Author of Build Your Own IoT Platform (Apress) and Keeping Your AI Under Control Innovation mentor for Venture Cafe Sydney, CSIRO and UNSW Honorary Treasurer, Computer Society of India; member, Australian Computer Society «Best Author of the Year», Consensus Group Australia; «IoT Pioneer» nomination, IoT Hub Australia 21-plus years speaking and consulting with Fortune 500 clients Biography Most AI and IoT keynotes operate at the level of strategy slides. Anand Tamboli’s work starts at the implementation layer. His Apress title Build Your Own IoT Platform is used by engineering teams to stand up working platforms inside a small number of business days. His second book Keeping Your AI Under Control does the same job for AI governance: it translates the control question into decisions that a senior operator can make, not an ethics committee. The academic base is Chartered Engineer status and an MBA in International Business, with earlier training in electrical, electronics and power-systems engineering. The commercial base is over two decades of Fortune 500 speaking and consulting through Knewron Technologies. The community base is mentoring through Venture Cafe Sydney, CSIRO and UNSW. Those three combined are unusual in the technology-futurist speaker market. The recognition sits with the substance. He has been named «Best Author of the Year» by Consensus Group Australia and nominated as an IoT Pioneer by IoT Hub Australia. He serves as Honorary Treasurer of the Computer Society of India and is an active member of the Australian Computer Society. The institutional footprint is inside engineering communities, not inside bureau marketing. For boards, CIOs, CTOs, innovation leaders and transformation functions at Fortune 500 enterprises, Tamboli offers a register that sits between engineering implementation and executive governance. He works in English across keynote, masterclass, panel and consulting formats. Key speaking topics AI governance and keeping AI deployments under control IoT platform strategy and implementation Transformative innovation and future-ready organisations Technology ethics and responsible technology Learning to unlearn and leading through disruption Distributed leadership and the future of work Ideal for Boards, CIOs and CTOs making AI and IoT deployment decisions Innovation, R&D and transformation functions at Fortune 500 enterprises Engineering leadership communities requiring a technical, not commentator-level, speaker Asia-Pacific and Australasian corporate and public-sector audiences Audience outcomes A working framework for AI governance drawn from Keeping Your AI Under Control An engineering-level view of IoT platform strategy from an Apress-published author Specific examples drawn from 21-plus years of Fortune 500 technology consulting A view of where the emerging-technology agenda sits for boards over the next cycle

Why organisations work with Anders Indset His Quantum Economy framework gives organisations a named argument for what comes after digitalization – not a call to “transform,” but a specific claim: that existing economic and organisational models require a philosophical upgrade, and that human potential, not technology alone, determines what follows. He coined the concept of the “Final Narcissistic Injury of Humankind” – the argument that AI’s deepest threat is not job displacement but the erosion of human agency and self-perception. This gives boards and executive teams a precise vocabulary for what is genuinely at stake in AI strategy. His “Anticipated Future” concept reframes strategic foresight as a leadership competency: the capacity to project forward from exponential data rather than extrapolate backwards from historical analysis. It is a directly applicable decision-making discipline, not a futurist premise. As an early investor in Terra Quantum AG and founder of the Njordis Group, his perspectives on deep tech are grounded in active investment decisions – meaning his claims about emerging technology have been stress-tested against real capital allocation. He has co-authored peer-reviewed philosophical and scientific papers with physicist Florian Neukart on the simulation hypothesis and the convergence of AI and human intelligence (AHI) – providing a rigour of argument that distinguishes him from commentators working purely at the level of narrative. Biography highlights Four Spiegel bestselling books – Wild Knowledge, The Quantum Economy, Das infizierte Denken, The Viking Code – translated into more than ten languages Named to Thinkers50 Radar 2018 among 30 Global Thinkers most likely to shape the future of organisational leadership; 2019 Breakthrough Idea Award finalist for The Quantum Economy Founder, Global Institute of Leadership and Technology (GILT), 2012; Founder and Chairman, Njordis Group (venture capital and advisory) Early investor and advisory board member, Terra Quantum AG; supervisory board member, German Tech Entrepreneurship Center (GTEC) Keynote speaker at the World Economic Forum, Global HR Summit, and Mobile World Congress; over 1,500 presentations across more than 60 countries Media coverage in Fast Company, Forbes, Fortune, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, NZZ, and Harvard Business Manager Dubbed “Rock’n’Roll Plato” by European media; guest lecturer at leading international business schools Biography Anders Indset’s central argument is simple and uncomfortable: in a world with near-unlimited access to information, knowledge is no longer the scarce resource for leaders – understanding is. His work begins where most AI and technology commentary stops, asking not what technology can do but what it means for human decision-making, economic design, and organisational purpose. His 2019 Spiegel bestseller The Quantum Economy introduced the concept of a post-digital economic framework – a named thesis, not a trend report – arguing that capitalism requires a philosophical upgrade to remain compatible with human values as algorithms become authorities. The book was a finalist for the Thinkers50 Breakthrough Idea Award and reached number one on the Manager Magazin business book chart. Subsequent books – including The Viking Code (2024) and The Singularity Paradox (2025, co-authored with physicist Florian Neukart) – have extended the framework into culture, values-driven leadership, and the emergence of what Indset and Neukart term Artificial Human Intelligence (AHI): the argument that a conscious, human-centred response to superintelligence is both possible and necessary. Indset is not a commentator at a distance from the technologies he describes. As an early investor in Terra Quantum AG and founder of the Njordis Group, he has made active capital commitments in quantum computing, AI, healthtech, and cybersecurity. This positions his philosophical arguments inside real decisions about where exponential technology is heading – not above them. He has spoken at the World Economic Forum, the Global HR Summit, and Mobile World Congress, and his work has appeared in Fast Company, Forbes, Fortune, and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. For organisations navigating the question of what leadership actually means when AI can outperform human cognition on an expanding range of tasks, Indset offers something specific: a systematic philosophical framework, tested in print, in investment, and across executive audiences in more than 60 countries. Key speaking topics The Quantum Economy and post-digital capitalism Artificial intelligence and human agency Exponential technology and organisational strategy Anticipated Future as a leadership discipline Artificial Human Intelligence (AHI) and the technological singularity Values-driven performance culture Philosophical foundations of strategic decision-making Ideal for C-suite and board-level audiences wrestling with the strategic and existential implications of AI Technology, innovation, and strategy leadership conferences Executive development programmes exploring the relationship between philosophy, leadership, and emerging technology Policy and business forums on the future of economies and social structures in an AI-accelerated world Audience outcomes A named, book-backed conceptual vocabulary – Quantum Economy, Anticipated Future, Possibilism – for framing strategic thinking about technology beyond trend language A sharper distinction between information access and organisational wisdom, and why the gap between them is the real leadership challenge of the AI era Specific philosophical tools for exercising anticipatory leadership: projecting forward from exponential change rather than extrapolating from historical data A reframing of AI risk – moving beyond job displacement to the deeper question of human agency, purpose, and self-determination in technology-driven organisations A perspective on performance culture grounded in values and collective intelligence, drawing on the Viking Code framework

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

Why organisations work with Andrew Grill He gives leadership teams a working vocabulary for AI, quantum, blockchain, and adjacent technologies, built on the 200+ concepts codified in “Digitally Curious” and tested on boards at Vodafone, Dell, Nestle, and the NHS. His engineering training and former IBM Global Managing Partner role mean technical claims hold up under scrutiny from a CTO, while the framing stays legible to a CFO or CHRO. Each session ends with the “Curious Five”, a concrete set of follow-up actions, so the room leaves with decisions to make rather than slides to forward. He has delivered five TEDx talks and advises at board level, so the same material scales from a 1,500-person keynote to a closed strategy session. Biography highlights Former Global Managing Partner, IBM Social Consulting Author, “Digitally Curious” (Wiley, 2024), international bestseller Host, the Digitally Curious Podcast, running since 2019 Named to the AI 100 UK List 2025 for responsible AI leadership Five TEDx talks delivered in London and Cardiff Non-Executive Director, Britain Australia Society Bachelor of Electronic Engineering plus two Master’s degrees (Engineering, MBA) Biography Every board now has AI on its agenda. Far fewer have a clear view of which decisions inside the business actually change because of it. Andrew Grill built his career in the gap between those two positions, first as a telecoms engineer at Optus and Telstra in Australia, then as Global Managing Partner in IBM’s Social Consulting practice, working with some of the largest enterprises in the world on how technology reshapes the way they operate. “Digitally Curious”, published by Wiley in 2024, is the distilled version of that experience. It walks executives through more than 200 technology concepts, from generative AI and quantum to blockchain and 5G, and ends every chapter with the Curious Five, a short set of concrete actions. The book reached international bestseller status and has become the spine of his keynote and advisory work. The podcast of the same name, running since 2019 with more than 60 interviews, gives him a working library of case material. That shows up in the room. Boards at Vodafone, Dell, Nestle, DHL, Sanofi, Bupa, and the NHS have brought him in for sessions that move from technology explanation to specific organisational choices, usually in the same hour. He has delivered five TEDx talks across London and Cardiff, appears regularly on BBC, Sky News, Channel 4, and in The Economist and Financial Times, and was named to the AI 100 UK List in 2025 for his work on responsible AI. The throughline is consistent: make the technology legible to the people who actually have to decide what to do about it. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and generative AI for business Digital transformation at board level Responsible AI and AI governance The future of work Emerging technology: quantum, blockchain, Web3 Customer experience in an AI-mediated economy Digital fluency for senior leaders Ideal for Boards and executive committees sequencing their AI strategy CIOs, CDOs, and transformation leads building internal buy-in for technology roadmaps CHROs and people leaders reshaping roles around AI-augmented work Industry conferences addressing senior commercial and technology audiences Audience outcomes A shared vocabulary across the executive team for AI, generative AI, and adjacent technologies A concrete short list of next actions, drawn from the Curious Five framework, tailored to the brief Sharper judgement on which vendor claims and use cases deserve investment and which do not A clearer view of where AI changes roles, processes, and customer experience inside their own organisation

Why organisations work with Andrew Trask He has built the working infrastructure for privacy-preserving AI, not just written about it. PySyft, the open-source framework he created through OpenMined, is used by researchers and engineers to train models on data they never directly see. He sits inside one of the most consequential AI research labs in the world, DeepMind, while also leading an 18,000-strong community of privacy-preserving AI engineers. Few speakers operate credibly in both rooms. His agenda is structured transparency: making it possible for institutions to collaborate on AI without surrendering the underlying data. That is the exact tension a regulated industry leader is now trying to solve. He teaches the material rather than narrates it. Grokking Deep Learning and his Udacity courses have introduced tens of thousands of practitioners to neural networks and to private AI, which is why technical audiences find him credible rather than performative. Biography highlights Senior Research Scientist, Google DeepMind, working on privacy, federated learning, differential privacy, and secure computation. Founder of OpenMined, an open-source community of more than 18,000 researchers and engineers building privacy-preserving AI tools. Creator of PySyft, the open-source framework for training machine learning models on data the model owner cannot see. PhD candidate, University of Oxford, on the Oxford-DeepMind Graduate Scholarship; affiliated with the Future of Humanity Institute and the Centre for Governance of AI. Author of Grokking Deep Learning, Manning Publications, and instructor on Udacity’s Secure and Private AI and Deep Learning Nanodegree courses. Term Member, Council on Foreign Relations. Biography The hardest problem in applied AI is not modelling. It is access. The data that would make a healthcare model genuinely useful sits inside hospital systems that cannot legally share it. The data that would make a financial crime model work is split across banks that compete with each other. The default response has been to do less. Trask has spent the last decade building the technical answer to that problem. Through OpenMined, the open-source community he founded, he created PySyft, a framework that lets engineers train models on data they never directly see. The underlying methods, federated learning, differential privacy, secure multi-party computation, homomorphic encryption, are what serious AI governance now relies on. He calls the broader agenda structured transparency, and it is becoming the operating vocabulary for AI deployment in regulated settings. The institutional positioning matters. He is a Senior Research Scientist at Google DeepMind and a PhD candidate at Oxford, funded by the Oxford-DeepMind Graduate Scholarship and affiliated with the Future of Humanity Institute and the Centre for Governance of AI. He is also a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations. That combination puts him inside the frontier AI conversation and inside the AI governance conversation at the same time, which is unusual. The teaching record is the test of whether his ideas travel. Grokking Deep Learning, published by Manning, taught a generation of engineers how neural networks actually work. His Udacity courses on secure and private AI did the same for the privacy-preserving stack. The reason senior technical audiences treat him as a primary source rather than a commentator is that they have already worked through his material. Key speaking topics Privacy-preserving artificial intelligence Federated learning and secure computation AI governance and structured transparency Differential privacy in practice AI safety and responsible deployment The future of data infrastructure for AI Foundations of deep learning for non-specialists Ideal for Chief AI officers, CTOs, and chief data officers in regulated industries (healthcare, financial services, government) deciding how to deploy AI on sensitive data. Boards and audit committees pressure-tested on AI governance, data risk, and the gap between AI ambition and AI infrastructure. Heads of research, innovation, and product engineering teams building the next generation of AI products. Policy and public-sector leaders responsible for AI standards, data sharing, and international AI governance. Audience outcomes A working mental model of the privacy-preserving AI stack, named technique by named technique, instead of the usual abstractions. A clearer view of which AI use cases are unlocked by federated learning and secure computation, and which remain blocked by data access. A grounded read on where AI governance is heading, from someone inside both DeepMind and the Oxford AI governance ecosystem. A direct sense of how to move from AI pilots to deployments that survive regulatory and reputational scrutiny.

Why organisations work with Aniyia Williams She has built on both sides of the table. She founded and patented hardware at Tinsel, then moved into ecosystem leadership and capital strategy at Omidyar Network. Few responsible-tech voices have done both. Her work on Zebras Unite gave a vocabulary to a generation of founders who reject the unicorn default. That argument now shows up in boardrooms making real capital allocation decisions. Through Black & Brown Founders and the Black Innovation Alliance, she has spent years inside the operational detail of how 170+ organisations support entrepreneurs the standard system overlooks. The data is concrete. At Omidyar Network’s The Tech We Want, she shapes how a major philanthropic investor thinks about the next layer of technology infrastructure. Senior audiences hear primary-source thinking, not commentary. Biography highlights Director / Principal, Responsible Technology, Omidyar Network. Leads The Tech We Want initiative. Founder and board chair, Black & Brown Founders. Co-founder, Zebras Unite. Co-founder, Firefly Alliance. Convener, Black Innovation Alliance (170+ partner organisations). Founder and inventor, Tinsel. Patent holder for the world’s first audio necklace. 2019 Penn State Alumni Achievement Award (alumni aged 35 and under). Biography The venture model has produced an extraordinary generation of companies. It has also defined what a “real” company looks like in ways that exclude most of the operators who could build the next one. Aniyia Williams has spent the past decade arguing, in operating detail, that the model is one option, not the only one. She began as a fashion-tech founder. At Tinsel she designed, built and patented the world’s first audio necklace. The experience of raising hardware capital as a Black woman founder in Silicon Valley led to the work that followed: Black & Brown Founders, which she founded in 2017 to give Black and Latinx entrepreneurs the financial and community infrastructure that the standard system does not provide, and Zebras Unite, the co-founded movement that gave purpose-aligned founders a clear alternative to unicorn-chasing. That ecosystem work scaled. As convener of the Black Innovation Alliance, she now sits at the centre of a 170-organisation coalition working on the wealth gap for tech entrepreneurs of colour. At Omidyar Network, where she is a director on the Responsible Technology team, she leads The Tech We Want, an incubated initiative shaping how a major philanthropic investor backs the next layer of technology. For boards and executive teams, the value is concrete. She brings the founder’s view of capital, the funder’s view of portfolio strategy, and a working knowledge of governance for technology that has not yet been built. Penn State recognised the trajectory in 2019 with its Alumni Achievement Award. The substance behind the award is what makes her useful in a serious strategy conversation. Key speaking topics Responsible technology and the future of the innovation economy Alternatives to the venture capital model (the “zebra” thesis) Entrepreneurship and scale-up under different rules Inclusive innovation and access to capital Purpose-aligned business strategy Building and governing technology for the long term Ideal for Boards and investment committees rethinking how they back early-stage technology Innovation leaders, CSOs and corporate venture teams designing new operator models Heads of DEI, talent and ecosystem partnerships working on access to capital and supplier diversity Founder communities, accelerators and philanthropic funders Audience outcomes A sharper view of which startup orthodoxies are commercially load-bearing and which are not Working language for purpose-aligned business models that boards and investors can use A clearer map of the responsible-technology agenda and where it intersects with growth strategy Concrete examples of capital, governance and ecosystem design from operators outside the standard pattern A renewed argument for why inclusive innovation is a commercial question, not only a values question

Why organisations work with Anne-Marie Imafidon She has run the experiment at scale. Stemettes has engaged more than 60,000 young women and non-binary young people across the UK, Ireland and Europe since 2013, giving her a live evidence base on what moves technical participation and what does not. Her technical credibility is not borrowed. Master’s in Mathematics and Computer Science from Oxford at 20, Honorary Fellow of Keble College, and guest arithmetician on Channel 4’s Countdown for 60 episodes, so technical audiences engage her as a peer rather than an advocate. She sits inside the UK policy conversation on digital skills. Co-Chair of the Institute for the Future of Work, 2022-2023 President of the British Science Association, and DSIT Women in Tech Envoy, which gives leaders a direct line to how regulation and industrial strategy are likely to land. She has a published thesis. She’s In CTRL (Transworld, 2022) argues that women need to take back tech as users, builders and decision-makers; that frame is portable into strategy conversations about product, customer and workforce. She is comfortable in front of non-technical boards. Her broadcast work and Chancellorship of Glasgow Caledonian University mean she translates between technical reality and senior decision-maker vocabulary without losing either. Biography highlights Co-founder and CEO of Stemettes, social enterprise founded in 2013 that has reached 60,000+ young women and non-binary young people across the UK, Ireland and Europe. Master’s in Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Oxford, aged 20; Honorary Fellow of Keble College, Oxford. Appointed MBE in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to young women and STEM. Chancellor of Glasgow Caledonian University; 2022-2023 President of the British Science Association; Co-Chair of the Institute for the Future of Work. Author of She’s In CTRL: How Women Can Take Back Tech (Transworld, 2022). Guest arithmetician on Channel 4’s Countdown across 60 episodes (2021-2022), first Black woman to take the Countdown board; voted Computer Weekly’s Most Influential Woman in UK Tech (2020); Forbes Top 50 Women in Tech. DSIT Women in Tech Envoy, co-chairing a UK government Taskforce with the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology (2025). Biography Stemettes was set up in 2013 after its co-founder returned from the Grace Hopper Celebration in 2012 and decided the UK needed its own infrastructure for girls in STEM. More than 60,000 young women and non-binary young people have passed through its programmes since, across the UK, Ireland and Europe. That operating record is the spine of Anne-Marie Imafidon’s authority on technology talent. The technical credentials are unusual. Imafidon took her Master’s in Mathematics and Computer Science at Oxford at 20, is an Honorary Fellow of Keble College, and was the guest arithmetician on Channel 4’s Countdown for 60 episodes in 2021 and 2022, the first Black woman to run the Countdown board. She was appointed MBE in 2017 for services to young women and STEM. Her public roles put her inside the UK conversation on digital skills and industrial strategy. She is Chancellor of Glasgow Caledonian University, Co-Chair of the Institute for the Future of Work, served as President of the British Science Association in 2022-2023, and in 2025 was appointed the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology’s Women in Tech Envoy, co-chairing a Taskforce with the Secretary of State. Her book She’s In CTRL, published by Transworld in 2022, argues that women should treat technology as something to take control of, not just consume or be represented within. For senior leaders it reframes the DEI-in-tech conversation as a product and capability question: who builds the tools, who governs them, and whose problems they get designed to solve. Key speaking topics Women and underrepresented groups in STEM Technology talent pipelines and digital skills Future of work and AI Inclusive product and technology design Social entrepreneurship at scale UK digital policy and industrial strategy Responsible and inclusive AI Ideal for CHROs, CPOs and heads of talent building technology hiring pipelines beyond the usual funnel. CTOs, CDIOs and engineering leaders under pressure to improve retention and representation in technical teams. Boards and ExCos setting policy on AI, digital skills and workforce strategy, particularly in regulated sectors. Corporate foundations, ESG leads and public-sector partners designing STEM and social mobility interventions. Audience outcomes A sharper read on why conventional diversity-in-tech programmes under-deliver and where the real intervention points sit. A working vocabulary for discussing inclusive AI and technology design at board level without defaulting to platitudes. Concrete examples, drawn from Stemettes and UK policy work, of what moves technical participation and retention. A reframe of women-in-tech as a product, governance and capability issue, not only a hiring issue. A sense of how UK digital skills policy and regulation are likely to shape talent strategy over the next cycle.

Why organisations work with Arun Sundararajan He works inside the regulatory machinery his audiences are exposed to. Testimony to the US Congress, the European Parliament and the United Nations, plus a seat on the World Economic Forum’s AI Governance Alliance, means he can tell a board where AI rules are actually heading, not where the press thinks they are. His research asks a question most AI strategies skip: what part of “human capital” should remain owned by humans once a model has learned it. For any company building on or competing with generative AI, that question sits underneath copyright exposure, talent contracts and product liability at the same time. He separates durable economic shifts from cycle noise. The same economist who mapped the move to crowd-based capitalism in The Sharing Economy now tells executives which AI effects are structural and which are hype, a distinction worth real money in capital allocation. He advises both sides. He works with technology companies on strategy, litigation and regulation, and with non-tech boards on AI governance and foresight, so he understands the incentives of the firms building the infrastructure your business now depends on. Biography highlights Harold Price Professor of Entrepreneurship at NYU Stern and Director of its Fubon Center for Technology, Business and Innovation. Author of The Sharing Economy (MIT Press, 2016), winner of the Axiom Best Business Books Award and translated into five languages. Has given testimony on the digital economy and AI to the US Congress, the European Parliament and the United Nations. Member of the World Economic Forum’s AI Governance Alliance; former member of the Carnegie Council’s AI and Equality Initiative. Recognised with a Thinkers50 Radar Thinker Award, nine academic Best Paper awards and two Google Faculty Awards. Author of more than 40 op-eds across the New York Times, Financial Times, Guardian, Wired, Le Monde and Harvard Business Review, and a regular AI commentator for CNN, CNBC and Wired. Biography Generative AI learns to write, compose and design by training on work that people already made. That creates a problem older intellectual property law was never built for: a person’s past output is now also the blueprint for a machine that can reproduce their skill. Arun Sundararajan has made this the centre of his work, framing it as a single question for policymakers and boards: what facets of human capital should be owned by humans? The question carries weight because of where he asks it. As an economist at NYU Stern, Director of its Fubon Center for Technology, Business and Innovation, and a member of the World Economic Forum’s AI Governance Alliance, he has given testimony to the US Congress, the European Parliament and the United Nations. His paper “Rethinking Intellectual Property Law in an Era of Generative AI” lays out why copyright designed for the internet era misfires when the thing being copied is a creative process rather than a file. His authority on technological transitions is established. The Sharing Economy, published by MIT Press, was the early rigorous account of platforms like Uber and Airbnb displacing the managed corporation, and it won the Axiom Best Business Books Award. That track record matters now because the same economist is telling executives which AI effects are structural and which are noise, a judgment his recent work on the AI-capital-to-labour threshold makes concrete. What distinguishes him from the wider future-of-work field is the second half of his argument. Alongside the ownership question, he presses the case for national infrastructure that lets people move between occupations mid-career with dignity, treating workforce displacement as a design choice rather than an inevitability. For a board weighing how far to build on generative AI, he is the rare voice who can map both the legal claims forming underneath the technology and the economic settlement that will determine whether it holds. Key speaking topics AI governance and regulation Intellectual property and copyright in the age of generative AI Ownership of human capital The AI-driven future of work Platform strategy and network effects Antitrust and market power in technology Ideal for Boards and C-suites setting generative AI strategy, particularly where IP exposure, talent contracts or litigation risk are in play. Chief Legal Officers, General Counsel and Chief Strategy Officers navigating AI regulation across US, EU and Asian jurisdictions. Policymakers and regulators shaping AI, copyright and labour rules. Technology and platform companies setting strategy against a shifting governance backdrop. Audience outcomes A clear read on where AI regulation is actually heading across the major jurisdictions, from someone inside the bodies writing it. The ability to tell which AI effects on their industry are structural and which are cycle-driven hype. A sharper view of their company’s exposure on IP, copyright and the ownership of human capability. A framework for workforce planning that treats AI-driven displacement as something to design for, not absorb passively.