AI Ethics & Responsible Technology

Why organisations work with Gerd Leonhard The androrithms concept – Leonhard’s term for the human qualities (empathy, ethical reasoning, creative judgment) that algorithms cannot replicate – gives leadership teams a governance vocabulary that most AI advisors skip. It moves the conversation from “what can we automate?” to “what must we protect, and why is that a strategic decision?” He co-authored The Future of Music (Berklee Press, 2005), correctly forecasting that streaming would displace ownership as the dominant music model years before the industry accepted it. That verifiable prediction track record is what distinguishes his current AI arguments from speculation that cannot be tested against outcomes. The Ten Megashifts framework – mapping ten concurrent technological forces including digitisation, intelligisation, automation and robotisation as a compound system – gives strategy and transformation teams a tool for testing whether their roadmaps account for the full scope of disruption, not just the most visible trend. The HellVen scenario construct frames technology futures as a governance choice between radically different outcomes rather than as a prediction. It is a practical tool for boards running scenario planning exercises on AI strategy and long-term institutional risk. His 2016 argument that digital ethics would become a mandatory boardroom governance issue was published before AI regulation appeared on any major policy agenda. That argument has since been validated, lending weight to his current positions on AI accountability and corporate responsibility. Biography highlights Author of Technology vs Humanity: The Coming Clash Between Man and Machine (2016), published in 12 languages; co-author of The Future of Music (Berklee Press, 2005) Founder and CEO, The Futures Agency, Zurich; Visiting Professor, Fundação Dom Cabral, São Paulo Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts (FRSA), London Listed by Wired UK as one of the Top 100 Most Influential People in Europe; named by The Wall Street Journal as “one of the leading media futurists in the World” (2006) Views and interviews published in or featured by The Guardian, Harvard Business Review, Business Insider and Wired UK; TV appearances on BBC, CNN, ARTE and ZDF Berklee College of Music alumnus; Quincy Jones Award recipient (1985); former professional guitarist, composer and digital media entrepreneur, San Francisco Biography When Technology vs Humanity appeared in 2016, it arrived with a central claim: decisions about what to automate are fundamentally ethical decisions, not just operational ones. Boards mostly disagreed. They are now being forced to revisit that judgment. As CEO of The Futures Agency in Zurich, Gerd Leonhard has spent the intervening years building the frameworks leadership teams are now looking for. His most distinctive contribution is the distinction between algorithms and androrithms. Algorithms are the machine rules that govern digital systems. Androrithms – his term – are the human qualities that organisations risk losing when they optimise purely for efficiency: empathy, ethical reasoning, creative judgment, intuition. His Ten Megashifts framework maps ten concurrent technological forces as a compound system rather than a sequence of isolated disruptions. It gives boards a structured analytical lens rather than a single-trend narrative. The credibility of this perspective rests partly on record. Leonhard co-authored The Future of Music (Berklee Press, 2005), arguing that streaming would replace ownership as the dominant music model years before the industry accepted it. That early, accurate forecast – made when conventional wisdom pointed elsewhere – distinguishes his current AI arguments from commentary that arrives after the fact. A Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts in London and Visiting Professor at Fundação Dom Cabral in São Paulo, Leonhard operates between the academic and advisory worlds. Wired UK lists him among the Top 100 Most Influential People in Europe. His perspective is shaped as much by his career as a professional musician and digital entrepreneur as by any institutional affiliation – a background that gives him a track record of having correctly called the trajectory of technological disruption before it became obvious. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and the future of business Digital ethics and AI governance Technology and human values Digital transformation strategy Scenario planning for technological disruption Human-machine relationships and organisational decision-making Sustainability and the future of capitalism Ideal for Boards and C-suite teams setting AI governance policy or approving digital transformation roadmaps Chief Digital Officers, CTOs and technology leadership teams seeking frameworks for responsible AI adoption Strategy and foresight functions building scenario plans around the compound impact of technological disruption Corporate governance, risk and legal teams navigating emerging AI regulation and digital ethics requirements Audience outcomes A practical governance vocabulary for deciding which organisational capabilities should and should not be automated, grounded in the androrithms/algorithms framework A structured map of ten concurrent technological forces (the Megashifts) reshaping strategy, operations and competitive positioning simultaneously Understanding of how digital ethics is transitioning from a values conversation to a governance and regulatory requirement – and what that means for corporate accountability A scenario framework (HellVen) for stress-testing whether current AI strategies are likely to produce outcomes boards would endorse under scrutiny A more calibrated perspective on AI’s near-term trajectory, distinguishing intelligent assistance from AGI and assessing which predictions about the next decade are well-grounded

Why organisations work with Dominik Boesl Operating credibility from two of the most consequential robotics manufacturers in Europe: KUKA, where he co-managed the market launch of the LBR iiwa, the first industrially certified collaborative robot, and Festo, where he ran a robotics division spanning five international R&D centres. A governance perspective rooted in formal institutional work, not commentary: VP roles in the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society, Global Chair of the IEEE TechEthics Initiative, and founder of the Robotics & AI Governance Foundation. A named intellectual contribution. The “4 Robotic Revolutions” model, co-developed with Bernd Liepert and presented at IEEE IROS, gives audiences a working frame for where robotics sits today and what comes next. Policy-level reach into the UN system through the UN DESA expert group on AI and robotics for the Sustainable Development Goals, useful for boards weighing the regulatory direction of travel. Research that informs strategy rather than describing it: he leads the Robotics 2050+ Global Delphi Study, a long-range scenario programme supported by IEEE. Biography highlights Professor of Digital Sciences, Automation & Leadership, HDBW Munich; Adjunct Professor, TUM Institute for LifeLong Learning Founder, Robotics & AI Governance Foundation; founder and CEO, Innomancer Thinktank Former VP and Head of Robotics, Festo AG; former Principal Corporate Innovation Manager and VP Consumer Driven Robotics, KUKA AG Past VP for Industrial Activities, IEEE Robotics and Automation Society; past Global Chair, IEEE TechEthics Initiative Member of the UN DESA expert group on AI and robotics for the Sustainable Development Goals Co-author of the “4 Robotic Revolutions” framework (IEEE IROS 2016) and lead of the Robotics 2050+ Delphi Study Biography The collaborative robotics market did not exist as a commercial category until a small group of teams, including the one Boesl worked in at KUKA, navigated the LBR iiwa through the safety standards that made human-machine co-working legally and operationally viable. That kind of work, sitting at the join between engineering, regulation, and commercial deployment, is what informs the way he now advises boards. After KUKA he ran the robotics division at Festo, overseeing five international R&D centres and the development of the Festo BionicCobot, the first pneumatic collaborative robot. The combination of two senior operating roles at two of the most credible robotics businesses in Europe is unusual on its own. It becomes more so when paired with chair-level institutional work: VP for Industrial Activities at the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society, and Global Chair of the IEEE TechEthics Initiative for five years. His academic and policy work extends the same agenda. As Professor of Digital Sciences at HDBW Munich and an adjunct at the TUM Institute for LifeLong Learning, he leads the Robotics 2050+ Global Delphi Study, a long-range scenario programme on the future of robotics and AI. Through the Robotics & AI Governance Foundation and a seat on the UN DESA expert group, he contributes to how governments and standards bodies think about autonomous systems and the Sustainable Development Goals. What this means for buyers is straightforward. When a board asks where the line should sit between human and machine decision-making, or how to make AI deployment defensible to a regulator, Boesl is one of the few voices in Europe who can answer from the engineering side, the standards side, and the policy side at once. Key speaking topics Robotics and human-machine collaboration AI governance and technology ethics Industry 4.0 and operational deployment of automation Strategic foresight and long-range scenario planning Responsible innovation in regulated industries The future of work in robotic and AI-enabled organisations Ideal for Boards and executive committees setting AI and automation strategy in industrial, manufacturing, and engineering-led organisations Chief technology, chief digital, and chief AI officers responsible for moving from pilots to deployment Heads of innovation, R&D leadership, and corporate strategy teams in industrial groups and Mittelstand manufacturers Policy, public affairs, and ESG leaders tracking the regulatory direction of AI and robotics Audience outcomes A clearer map of where robotics and AI sit today against the “4 Robotic Revolutions” frame, and what the next phase actually demands of an operating business A working vocabulary for AI governance that a board can use with regulators, auditors, and internal risk functions Specific reference points from KUKA and Festo on what it takes to deploy collaborative robotics inside an industrial operation A perspective on long-range scenarios drawn from the Robotics 2050+ Delphi research, rather than commentary A sharper sense of where the human-machine boundary should sit for the organisation’s own workforce design

Why organisations work with David Hanson He built Sophia. Few speakers on AI can point to a single, globally recognised artefact of their work that has been granted citizenship by a nation state and appointed the UN Development Programme’s first Innovation Champion. His perspective combines sculpture, materials science and AI in a way almost no other robotics founder can credibly claim. RISD-trained, Disney Imagineering-trained, PhD from UT Dallas, peer-reviewed in IEEE and SPIE. He has built and run a robotics company through the commercial reality of hardware, not just the AI software conversation. That grounds his view of where human-facing AI actually works and where it does not. The 2005 AAAI first-place prize for open AI system interaction, Tech Titans Innovator of the Year, and Sophia’s 2018 Edison Award give the innovation claim a named, credible track record rather than a marketing line. He is one of the small group of AI voices who can hold a serious conversation about ethics, emotional design and commercial deployment in the same session. That is what executive audiences increasingly want from the topic. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Hanson Robotics, Hong Kong Creator of Sophia, the first robot granted honorary citizenship (Saudi Arabia, 2017) and UN Development Programme’s first Innovation Champion Sophia awarded a 2018 Edison Award in robotics Co-recipient of the 2005 AAAI first-place prize for open interaction of an AI system PhD, Interactive Arts and Technology, University of Texas at Dallas; BFA, Rhode Island School of Design Co-author, “The Coming Robot Revolution” (Springer, 2009); author, “Humanizing Robots” Former Walt Disney Imagineer; earlier design and robotics roles at Universal Studios and MTV Featured in the New York Times, WIRED, Scientific American, Popular Science, BBC and CNN Biography Sophia was activated in February 2016 and made her first public appearance weeks later at SXSW. Within eighteen months she had honorary Saudi Arabian citizenship and a UN title, and David Hanson’s company, Hanson Robotics, had become the reference point for what a human-facing robot could look like. The artefact was the argument. The background behind that artefact is unusual. Hanson trained at the Rhode Island School of Design in film, animation and video, then spent years as a sculptor and material researcher inside Disney Imagineering before taking a PhD in Interactive Arts and Technology at the University of Texas at Dallas. The skin materials, the expression mechanisms and the facial architecture on his robots come from that rare combination of arts practice and engineering. The research record sits alongside it. Papers in IEEE, SPIE, IROS, AAAI and AI Magazine. A Springer-published co-authored book, “The Coming Robot Revolution”. A 2005 AAAI first-place prize for open AI system interaction. NASA and NSF awards. Tech Titans Innovator of the Year. His own company, founded in 2013 and scaled out of Hong Kong, building robots now deployed in research, therapy and education. For executive audiences, the value is a founder who can speak with authority about where human-facing AI is heading, how ethical and emotional design choices get made inside a real robotics programme, and what changes for industries from healthcare to customer experience when the machine has a face. Sophia is the headline. The argument behind her is why leadership teams book him. Key speaking topics Humanoid robotics and social AI Human-robot coexistence in work and everyday life AI ethics and responsible development The design and engineering behind Sophia Science fiction, storytelling and the shaping of real-world robotics The future of AI in healthcare, education and customer-facing industries Ideal for Executive teams and boards setting strategy for AI-mediated customer, patient or citizen interaction Innovation, R&D and technology leadership in healthcare, education, hospitality and customer experience Corporate conferences, industry summits and innovation festivals seeking a founder-level voice on human-facing AI Audiences exploring AI ethics, emotional design and the societal consequences of humanoid machines Audience outcomes A grounded view of where humanoid AI is today, told by the person who built the most visible example of it A clear read on the commercial sectors most likely to be reshaped by social robotics over the next decade The ethical questions serious robotics programmes are actually wrestling with, not the media version of them A sense of how arts, materials science and engineering combine to produce AI that people trust and engage with Direct exposure to Sophia when the format permits, and an informed discussion of what that interaction implies for their own organisation

Why organisations work with Bruno Giussani His book Our Minds Under Siege (2026) gives leadership teams a structured framework for understanding how AI systems reshape human judgment from within; a diagnosis of a risk that most governance frameworks do not yet address and that most AI ethics conversations skip entirely. Nearly twenty years as TED’s Global Curator, working with more than 1,000 speakers, including His Holiness Pope Francis (twice), Prince William, and UN Secretary-General António Guterres, gives him a practitioner’s map of how ideas move through organizations and societies, and what stops them. He operates at the intersection of AI, geopolitics, and economics rather than inside any single discipline, which allows him to frame cognitive risk as a question of power and governance, not a technology-management problem. His analytical position is explicitly non-alarmist: shaped by three decades of pragmatic, no-hype technology journalism across the New York Times, The Economist, and Wired UK. Organizations that have moved past the introductory AI conversation find this register useful. Biography highlights Former Global Curator and European Director, TED (2005–2024); curated more than 1,000 TED Talks, including two by His Holiness Pope Francis and one by Prince William Author, Our Minds Under Siege: How to Avoid Being Manipulated in the Age of AI (University of Chicago Press / Scheidegger & Spiess, 2026); also author of Roam: Making Sense of the Wireless Internet (Random House, 2001) Host, Deftech Podcast («La menace cognitive»), 2025 – six episodes on cognitive sovereignty and the threats posed by AI and neurotechnology JSK Fellow, Stanford University; Affiliated Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies Wired UK «Wired 100» (100 most influential Europeans): 2011, 2012, 2014, 2015; SwissAward Person of the Year 2015, Economy category Internet columnist, New York Times (1996–2000); contributor to The Economist, Wall Street Journal Europe, and Wired UK Biography The dominant AI conversation in most organizations is about automation, efficiency, and competitive disruption. The question of whether the same technology is simultaneously reshaping the judgment of the people making those decisions has largely been set aside. Bruno Giussani challenges that omission. Its argument: cognitive sovereignty – the capacity to think and decide independently – is the governance challenge organizations are not yet naming. Giussani was TED’s Global Curator and European Director for nearly twenty years, curating more than 1,000 talks, including two by His Holiness Pope Francis and one by Prince William, as well as leading figures in geopolitics, economics, and climate. That curatorial role, at the centre of the global ideas economy, built a practitioner’s understanding of how information environments shape what people believe and how they decide: not through force, but through design. Before TED, he wrote about technology for the New York Times (as its European internet columnist), The Economist, the Wall Street Journal Europe, and Wired UK. The consistent position across that work was pragmatic and non-alarmist; skeptical of both utopian and panic framings of technology. That editorial discipline anchors Our Minds Under Siege, which treats AI manipulation not as a consumer protection question but as a structural challenge to organizational thinking and governance. His Deftech Podcast (2025), produced in French, German, and Italian, explored cognitive threats from AI and neurotechnology before the book appeared in print. He advises public organizations and private companies and brings this analysis to boards and leadership teams where technology strategy, geopolitical risk, and organizational decision-making converge. Key speaking topics Cognitive sovereignty and AI manipulation The social and political impacts of algorithmic technologies How ideas spread in organizations and societies Technology, geopolitics, and the future of power AI governance beyond automation and compliance Curation and knowledge management in an era of information abundance The intersection of AI, neurotechnology, and human decision-making Ideal for Boards and senior leadership teams examining AI governance beyond operational and compliance risk CEOs, CSOs, and Chief AI Officers building strategic frameworks for AI’s cognitive and societal impacts Corporate affairs and communications leaders whose organizations operate in algorithmically shaped information environments Executive conferences and thought leadership forums requiring a moderator or host with demonstrated experience interviewing heads of state, Nobel laureates, and global institutional leaders Audience outcomes A clear framework for distinguishing operational AI risk (automation, disruption) from cognitive AI risk (the manipulation of judgment and belief) A working vocabulary for cognitive sovereignty; what it means at the organizational level, how it differs from AI ethics, and why it is becoming a governance issue Insight into how information environments are architecturally designed to shape attention and belief, drawn from twenty years of curating the world’s most-watched ideas platform A practitioner’s understanding of how consequential ideas are built, communicated, and adopted, and what makes organizations resistant or receptive to them A non-alarmist, analytically grounded perspective on AI’s social and political impacts, suited to senior teams that have already moved past the introductory conversation

Why organisations work with Brett Johnson He built ShadowCrew, the forum widely credited as the template for modern darknet marketplaces, and can walk a security team through the attacker logic he once ran at scale. The U.S. Secret Service publicly named him “The Original Internet Godfather” and embedded him in Operation Anglerphish; that cooperation history gives his sessions a provenance no academic or vendor speaker can match. He translates criminal tradecraft into board-level language: why a particular control matters, which fraud type is about to spike, where identity verification actually breaks down. Named advisory and client work spans the FBI, Microsoft, Visa, LexisNexis, and AARP, which means his examples are not theoretical and his audience references are checkable. He is comfortable with the awkward part of his own story, which is what makes him credible to senior security and fraud leaders who have heard every generic “hacker keynote” already. Biography highlights Co-founder and administrator of ShadowCrew (2002-2004), widely cited as the precursor to modern darknet fraud marketplaces. Convicted of 39 felonies, placed on the US Most Wanted list, escaped federal custody, recaptured and served a federal sentence. U.S. Secret Service confidential informant under Operation Anglerphish, embedded on ScandinavianCarding and CardersMarket. Founder of Anglerphish Security, advising Fortune 500 financial services, retail, and technology firms on fraud and darknet intelligence. Host of The AnglerPhish Podcast on cybercrime, scams, and identity theft. Featured in Kevin Poulsen’s “Kingpin” and covered by The New York Times, NBC, CNN Money, Wired, and Vice. Biography ShadowCrew went live in August 2002 and ran for barely more than two years before the Secret Service shut it down. In that window it wrote the operating manual that darknet marketplaces still use. Brett Johnson, under the handle GOllumfun, was one of three co-founders and an administrator on the forum. After the 2004 takedown he avoided the first wave of arrests, was picked up in 2005 on separate charges, agreed to cooperate with the Secret Service, then continued committing tax fraud while working as an informant. He was placed on the US Most Wanted list, recaptured, sent to federal prison, escaped, recaptured again, and eventually served out a federal sentence. What separates him from the standard former-hacker speaker is the specificity of what he built. Modern identity theft, account takeover, card-not-present fraud, and organised tax-refund fraud all trace back through methods he helped industrialise. Security and fraud leaders at banks, payment networks, and retailers book him because he can describe, step by step, how an attacker selects a target and defeats controls the defenders thought were working. He now runs Anglerphish Security and advises named clients including the FBI, Microsoft, Visa, LexisNexis, AARP, and Neustar. His story has been told in Kevin Poulsen’s “Kingpin” and across The New York Times, NBC, CNN Money, Wired, and Vice, which is a useful external check for buyers who want to verify the biography before the contract. Key speaking topics Cybercrime and the modern fraud economy Identity theft and account takeover Social engineering and phishing Darknet marketplaces and threat intelligence Insider perspectives on financial crime Fraud prevention for banks, payment networks, and retail Ideal for CISOs, heads of fraud, and heads of financial crime at banks, card networks, and fintechs Retail, e-commerce, and payments leadership teams exposed to card-not-present and account takeover fraud Boards and audit committees seeking an unvarnished attacker-side briefing Government and public-sector programme leaders responsible for benefits, tax, or identity systems Audience outcomes A clear picture of how organised cybercriminals select targets, test defences, and cash out. Named examples of where existing fraud and identity controls tend to fail in practice. A sharper sense of which internal signals to take seriously and which to stop paying for. Concrete language to brief a board or executive committee on fraud exposure without resorting to vendor slides.

Why organisations work with Brad Templeton He has sat inside the Google self-driving car program as a strategy and technology consultant since 2010, giving him a read on the robotaxi industry that armchair analysts cannot match. He holds 21 patents across self-driving cars and telephony, so claims about what is technically possible come from someone who has actually built in the space. As founder of ClariNet in 1989, the first company built to do commercial business on the internet, he has a forty-year pattern of calling commercial shifts before the market sees them. Twenty years on the board of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, including a decade as Chairman, means he speaks credibly on the privacy, surveillance and civil-liberties consequences of AI and autonomy. He is a founding faculty member and Chair for Computing and Networks at Singularity University, where the brief is to frame exponential technology change for senior decision-makers. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of ClariNet Communications (1989), the first company established to conduct commercial activity over the internet. Chairman Emeritus of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Chairman from 2000 to 2010, board member since 1997. Founding faculty and Chair for Computing and Networks at Singularity University since 2009. Strategy and technology consultant on the Google self-driving car project, now Waymo, since 2010. Inventor on 21 patents in autonomous vehicles and telephony. Forbes contributor on robocars; publisher of Robocars.com and the long-running Brad Ideas blog. Board member of the Foresight Institute; plaintiff in Reno v. ACLU. Biography ClariNet went live in June 1989 and sold the first commercial subscription on the internet to Stanford University. The founder was Brad Templeton. That single contract is the practical birth of the dot-com economy, and it sets the pattern for the rest of his career: spotting the commercial shape of a technology before the market has language for it. Two decades later the same instinct took him into Google’s self-driving car program. Since 2010 he has consulted on strategy and technology for what is now Waymo, while also writing a reference column on the industry for Forbes and at Robocars.com. His 21 patents in autonomous vehicles and telephony make the commentary load-bearing; he is not narrating the robotaxi race from the outside. Alongside the commercial work, Templeton spent twenty years on the board of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a decade of that as Chairman, and was a named plaintiff in Reno v. ACLU, the Supreme Court case that struck down the Communications Decency Act. That record is why boards bring him in when the question shifts from “does the AI work” to “what fights over privacy, surveillance and liability will shape who gets to deploy it.” At Singularity University, where he has been Chair for Computing and Networks since the founding faculty, the job is translating exponential technology curves for executives who need to plan against them. Few speakers combine an operator record in autonomous vehicles, a founder’s claim on the commercial internet, and two decades of civil-liberties advocacy in the same briefing. Key speaking topics Autonomous vehicles and the robotaxi industry Exponential technology and Moore’s Law thinking Artificial intelligence deployment and strategy Privacy, surveillance and civil liberties in a connected economy Internet history and the pattern of commercial technology shifts Future of mobility and urban transportation Cybersecurity and technology policy Ideal for Boards and executive teams sizing investment or partnership decisions in autonomous vehicles, mobility or AI. CTOs and chief innovation officers testing internal assumptions about exponential technology timelines. General counsel, chief privacy officers and policy leads working through AI and surveillance exposure. Automotive, insurance, logistics and urban-planning leadership teams preparing for autonomous deployment. Audience outcomes A sharper read on which autonomous-vehicle timelines are grounded and which are vendor marketing. A working mental model for exponential technology curves and what they mean for planning horizons. Specific case material from inside the Google and Waymo programs that is hard to source elsewhere. A clearer view of the privacy, liability and civil-liberties questions that will shape AI and autonomy regulation. Named examples drawn from forty years of commercial internet history, used to pressure-test current assumptions.

Why organisations work with Bernard Marr His frameworks for data strategy and AI adoption are grounded in peer-reviewed academic research from Cambridge and Cranfield – which means they hold up to internal scrutiny in ways that practitioner opinion rarely does. Business Trends in Practice, winner of the 2022 Business Book of the Year Award, gives executive audiences a shared, structured vocabulary for decisions that are otherwise made in fragmented, jargon-heavy conversations. His Forbes column reaches approximately one million readers a month – meaning his conceptual framing is often already in the room before he arrives, which accelerates rather than starts the conversation. He advises organisations across the full spectrum of sectors – from Google and Microsoft to the Bank of England, NATO and the NHS – which gives him a pattern-recognition advantage that single-sector specialists cannot replicate. Where most AI speakers address technology adoption as an IT problem, Marr consistently frames it as a governance and leadership problem – which is what boards and C-suites are actually wrestling with. Biography highlights Research Fellow, Cambridge Judge Business School; subsequently at Cranfield School of Management – before founding Bernard Marr & Co in 2006 Author of more than 20 books on AI, data strategy and digital transformation, published in over 20 languages Business Trends in Practice named Business Book of the Year 2022; additional awards include the CMI Management Book of the Year, Axiom Book Award and WHSmith Best Business Book Award Ranked by LinkedIn as one of the top 5 business influencers in the world Regular contributor to Forbes and the World Economic Forum; media presence includes BBC News, Sky News, the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal and HBR Advisory clients include Amazon, Google, Microsoft, the Bank of England, NATO, the NHS, Shell and the United Nations Biography Bernard Marr spent his early career as a research fellow at Cambridge Judge Business School and then at Cranfield School of Management, where his published work – cited more than 5,400 times – focused on business performance, intellectual capital and strategic measurement. In 2006 he left academia to found Bernard Marr & Co, taking that analytical infrastructure into advisory work with some of the world’s most complex organisations. His books – more than twenty of them, translated into over twenty languages – are not airport business books. Data Strategy, AI Strategy, Generative AI in Practice and Future Skills each address a specific executive decision: how to treat data as a governed asset, how to build an AI adoption roadmap, how to prepare a workforce for automation. Business Trends in Practice won the 2022 Business Book of the Year Award. His writing for Forbes, published at a rate of around three articles per week, gives those frameworks sustained reach into executive audiences between engagements. What makes Marr useful to a board is not that he explains technology well – many speakers do that. It is that he consistently reframes technology questions as governance questions: who owns the data strategy, how do we assess AI risk, what does leadership fluency in this area actually require? These are the questions that stall transformation programmes, and they sit above the pay grade of a CTO. His advisory work spans Google, Microsoft, Amazon, the Bank of England, NATO, the NHS, Shell and the United Nations – a range that gives him cross-sector pattern recognition that sector-specific specialists cannot replicate. The organisations that benefit most from his work are those where the executive team is technically literate enough to know they don’t know enough, and needs a structured way to close that gap. Key speaking topics AI strategy and adoption for executive leadership Data strategy and data governance Generative AI and its organisational implications Digital transformation and business performance Future of work and future skills Emerging technology trends and business impact Strategic performance management Ideal for C-suite and board-level audiences navigating AI and data investment decisions Chief Digital Officers, Chief Data Officers and technology transformation leads Senior leadership teams ahead of major digital transformation programmes Corporate and enterprise conference audiences requiring clarity on technology without technical fluency as a prerequisite Audience outcomes A working framework for evaluating AI and data investments – not just a description of what they are Clearer language for discussing technology strategy at board level, with less dependence on specialist intermediaries Understanding of which emerging technology trends carry genuine near-term organisational implications versus which are still speculative A more structured approach to data governance and the conditions under which data generates strategic advantage Insight into the skills and capabilities organisations will need to build – and which to acquire versus develop internally

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.

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 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 Jerry Kaplan He has built the technology he now teaches. Two of his four startups went public, his team at GO Corporation produced the first commercial tablet operating system, and he co-founded the first internet auction site five months before eBay. He teaches the social and economic impact of AI at Stanford and writes the Oxford University Press primers that policymakers and boards actually cite. That sits between technical depth and decision-grade clarity. His framing of AI’s labour market consequences in Humans Need Not Apply was selected by The Economist as a top ten science and technology book of 2015, well before generative AI made the question urgent. He approaches AI as a question of competitive advantage, regulation, and capital allocation, not as a feature roadmap. Boards leave with a sharper view of what they are actually deciding. Biography highlights Adjunct Lecturer, Stanford University (Ford Dorsey Master’s in International Policy; Department of Computer Science) Fellow, Centre for Legal Informatics, Stanford Law School Founding CEO, GO Corporation (PenPoint OS, tablet computing) Co-founder, Onsale Inc., the first internet auction site (IPO 1997) Author, Generative Artificial Intelligence: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press, 2024) and Humans Need Not Apply (Yale University Press, 2015), an Economist top ten book PhD in Computer and Information Science, University of Pennsylvania; inventor on more than a dozen patents; over twenty peer-reviewed papers across ACM and IEEE journals Biography Tablet computing, online auctions, expert systems, and one of the first commercial personal information managers were all built in Silicon Valley before most people had heard of them. Kaplan was inside each of those stories. He was founding CEO of GO Corporation, the company whose PenPoint operating system anticipated the iPad by two decades, and he co-founded Onsale, the first internet auction site, five months before eBay. That operating history is the reason his current work on artificial intelligence is taken seriously by board-level audiences. He teaches the social and economic impact of AI at Stanford and is a Fellow at the Centre for Legal Informatics at Stanford Law School. The Oxford University Press primers he writes, including Generative Artificial Intelligence: What Everyone Needs to Know, are designed for readers who need to decide, not just to understand. His 2015 book Humans Need Not Apply, published by Yale University Press and named one of The Economist’s top ten science and technology books that year, argued that AI’s labour market effects would arrive faster than most institutions were preparing for. The argument has aged unusually well. It now reads as a brief on the question every executive committee is asking about generative systems. The combination of a working technologist, a serial founder with two IPOs, and a current Stanford lecturer is rare. Kaplan uses it to translate AI from a procurement conversation into a strategic one, and to tell senior audiences where they are exposed. Key speaking topics Generative AI and the executive agenda AI and the future of work AI regulation and public policy Competitive advantage in an AI-led economy Industry-specific AI disruption AI risks, dangers, and safety Silicon Valley entrepreneurship and innovation Ideal for Boards and executive committees weighing capital allocation to AI C-suite leaders setting AI strategy, governance, and workforce policy Policy and regulatory audiences confronting AI rules and competition Industry leadership offsites in financial services, technology, healthcare, and professional services Audience outcomes A working mental model of what generative AI can and cannot do, stripped of vendor framing A sharper read on where AI will reshape the workforce and on which timelines A view of the regulatory and geopolitical pressures shaping AI competition Specific questions a board should be asking management about its AI exposure A historical perspective on technology adoption cycles, from someone who has run several

Why organisations work with Ayesha Khanna Her named “pilot purgatory” diagnostic (the finding that over 88% of AI pilots never scale) gives leadership teams a precise frame for why their programmes stall, and a structured path to production. This is a field-tested argument with a clear strategic implication. She brings board-level fiduciary exposure most AI advisors do not hold: Johnson Controls (smart buildings), NEOM Tonomus (national smart city infrastructure in Saudi Arabia), Mercy Healthcare (US), and L’Oréal’s Scientific Advisory Board. She has governed AI strategy, not only advised on it. Her advisory work spans both national AI strategy: she helped shape Singapore’s SkillsFuture programme and served on the IMDA board. Organisations get a strategist who has worked both sides. Her previous board position on AVEVA and her current role at Johnson Controls give her direct insight into how AI and digital transformation are reshaping critical infrastructure, highly relevant to sectors where technology adoption has long tail consequences. As the author of the forthcoming Gamechanger, a practical business strategy guide to generative AI, she is building the intellectual framework for the current adoption challenge while it is happening, not retrospectively. Biography highlights Co-Founder and CEO, Addo AI; a global AI solutions firm whose clients have included Singtel, SMRT, Pfizer, Sompo Holdings, Habib Bank, and Smart Dubai Board director: Johnson Controls (NYSE: JCI); NEOM Tonomus, Saudi Arabia; previously AVEVA (FTSE100, prior to Schneider Electric acquisition) Scientific Advisory Board, L’Oréal; Consumer Committee, Mercy Healthcare; Singapore HTX (homeland security technology) Member, World Economic Forum Global Future Councils; formerly on Singapore IMDA board and Ministry of Education SkillsFuture steering committee Named one of Southeast Asia’s groundbreaking female entrepreneurs by Forbes; Edelman Top 50 AI Creators (2025); Salesforce 16 AI Influencers to Know (2024) Author of Straight Through Processing (2008) and co-author of Hybrid Reality (TED Books, 2012); forthcoming Gamechanger on generative AI business strategy Published and quoted in The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, Forbes, TIME, Foreign Policy, and Strategy+Business PhD, Information Systems (digital innovation in smart cities), London School of Economics; MS, Columbia University; BA (Honours), Harvard University Biography Ayesha Khanna has spent two decades at the point where AI strategy meets the decisions boards have to make. Her argument is specific: most organisations do not fail at AI because they lack ambition or budget. They fail because they build pilots without the business-outcome architecture to scale them, what she calls “pilot purgatory,” a state that traps over 88% of enterprise AI programmes. Ayesha works with large corporations and governments on the full adoption journey, from strategy through deployment, with clients that have included Singtel, SMRT, Pfizer, Sompo Holdings, Habib Bank, and Smart Dubai. Khanna has spent more than a decade on Wall Street developing large-scale trading, risk management, and data analytics systems. Her PhD from the London School of Economics focused on digital innovation in smart cities, grounding her practical work in a rigorous analytical framework. What sets Khanna apart from most AI strategists is the nature of her board exposure. She currently holds directorships at Johnson Controls (smart building technology, NYSE: JCI), NEOM Tonomus (the technology infrastructure body for Saudi Arabia’s $500 billion NEOM smart city project), and Mercy Healthcare, and sits on L’Oréal’s Scientific Advisory Board. She previously sat on the board of AVEVA when it was an FTSE100 company. These are not advisory relationships, they are governance roles in which she has been responsible for technology strategy at fiduciary level, across healthcare, infrastructure, and consumer science simultaneously. Her forthcoming book, Gamechanger, extends this practitioner perspective into a structured business playbook for generative AI. Her two earlier books, Straight Through Processing (2008) and the TED book Hybrid Reality (2012), co-authored with Parag Khanna, established her early argument that the human-technology relationship was shifting from coexistence to co-evolution. That argument has aged well. Khanna has been recognised by Forbes as one of Southeast Asia’s groundbreaking female entrepreneurs, named to Edelman’s Top 50 AI Creators in 2025, and quoted across The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, and Foreign Policy. Key speaking topics Generative AI strategy and enterprise adoption AI governance and risk frameworks Smart cities and urban technology infrastructure AI in financial services and healthcare Future of work in an AI-driven economy National AI strategy and public-private collaboration The Hybrid Age: human-technology co-evolution Ideal for CEOs and C-suite leadership teams building or scaling enterprise AI programmes Board directors and non-executive directors responsible for technology governance and digital risk oversight Government and public sector leaders developing national AI strategies or smart city initiatives Financial services, healthcare, and infrastructure sector organisations at advanced stages of AI deployment Audience outcomes A named diagnostic for why AI pilots stall before scaling, and a framework for building the business-outcome architecture needed to move from experimentation to production Practical understanding of what AI governance looks like at board level: what boards need to own, what they need to delegate, and what risks require a formal framework Sector-specific examples of organisations generating measurable revenue and operational impact through AI, drawn from a client base across telecoms, finance, healthcare, and infrastructure A structured perspective on the “Hybrid Age” – the shift in how humans and AI systems operate together – and what it means for workforce strategy and organisational design Criteria for prioritising AI investment by business outcome rather than technology capability, applicable across industries at different stages of digital maturity