AI Ethics & Responsible Technology speakers

Why organisations work with Tan Le A working neurotech CEO. EMOTIV’s brainwear is used by researchers and enterprises in over 140 countries and cited across more than 4,000 peer-reviewed studies. Her view of where neurotechnology meets business is built on shipped products and enterprise pilots with companies like Dell and JLL. A defined thesis for the next decade. Her book The NeuroGeneration sets out how brain science, AI, and consumer-grade neurotechnology are converging into a new generation of human-machine integration. Leadership audiences leave with a structured way to think about a domain most have only encountered through headlines. Credibility at the level boards take seriously. She holds a board seat at ASX-listed QBE Insurance Group, sits on the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Neurotechnologies and Brain Science, and writes for the Forbes Technology Council. The cognitive workplace, made tangible. EMOTIV’s enterprise products measure attention and cognitive stress in everyday work settings. For leadership teams thinking about productivity and wellbeing as separate questions, she shows how cognitive measurement is starting to bring them together. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of EMOTIV, the Silicon Valley neurotechnology company whose EEG-based brain-computer interface technology is used in over 140 countries and validated across more than 4,000 peer-reviewed studies Author of The NeuroGeneration: The New Era in Brain Enhancement That Is Revolutionizing the Way We Think, Work, and Heal (BenBella/Simon & Schuster, 2020), endorsed by Klaus Schwab and David Eagleman Non-Executive Director of QBE Insurance Group, an ASX-listed multinational insurer with over 11,700 employees across more than 27 countries Member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Neurotechnologies and Brain Science, and a WEF Young Global Leader since 2009 Three-time TED speaker; her TEDxWomen talk “My Immigration Story” has been viewed more than 1.4 million times Recipient of the Industrial Research Institute Achievement Award (2018), Young Australian of the Year (1998), Fast Company Most Influential Women in Technology (2010), Forbes 50 Names You Need to Know (2011), and National Geographic Emerging Explorer (2013); her portrait is held in the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery of Australia Biography Wireless EEG technology has crossed out of the research lab into everyday environments. Offices, classrooms, and consumer products are starting to use brain data in ways that were impossible a decade ago. EMOTIV has been one of the companies opening that path. Tan Le founded EMOTIV in 2011 and runs it today. The company’s headsets and earbuds turn brain activity into usable data for researchers and enterprises in more than 140 countries, with citations across over 4,000 peer-reviewed studies. Pilots with Dell and JLL apply that measurement to attention and cognitive stress in real workplace settings. Her book The NeuroGeneration (Simon & Schuster, 2020) traces how brain-computer interfaces, neural stimulation, and AI are converging into human-machine integration that reshapes work, healthcare, and learning. The book carries endorsements from Klaus Schwab and David Eagleman. Le sits on the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Neurotechnologies and Brain Science. She also holds a board seat at ASX-listed QBE Insurance Group and writes for the Forbes Technology Council. That biographical arc adds to the institutional credibility. She arrived in Australia as a four-year-old refugee from Vietnam and was named Young Australian of the Year at 21. Today, she runs one of the most cited platforms in mobile EEG research. Her portrait sits in the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery of Australia. Key speaking topics Brain-computer interfaces and neurotechnology The future of work and human-machine integration AI, automation, and cognitive augmentation Workplace wellbeing and cognitive performance Innovation and entrepreneurship in deep technology The ethics and governance of neurotechnology Reinvention and outsider thinking Ideal for Boards and CEOs setting long-range technology strategy in financial services, healthcare, technology, and consumer industries Chief Technology Officers and Chief Innovation Officers are thinking about the convergence of AI, neurotech, and human performance CHROs and Chief People Officers looking for substantive content on cognitive workplace design beyond the wellness category Founders and growth-stage entrepreneurs working at frontier-technology intersections Audience outcomes A clear-eyed view of which neurotechnology and brain-computer interface applications are operating today and which are still emerging The argument behind The NeuroGeneration, with concrete examples from enterprise pilots and clinical research A practical frame for how cognitive measurement is starting to change how leaders think about workplace productivity and wellbeing A view of the ethical and governance questions board-level decision-makers will face as neurotechnology moves into enterprise use Sharper questions to ask vendors and internal teams making claims about brain-related products

Why organisations work with Taryn Southern She produced the first solo-artist pop album composed with AI in 2018, when most organisations were still asking whether generative tools could ship anything usable. The lessons on creative workflow integration are now several years ahead of most enterprise practice. She runs storytelling and external communications at Blackrock Neurotech, an implantable BCI company, which gives her a working view of the next technology layer beyond generative AI. Her documentary work, including «I AM HUMAN» at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival, gives her a rare ability to translate frontier neurotechnology into language a non-technical board can use. She has keynoted SXSW, Web Summit, the World AI Summit, and NY Times Future of Work, and has been booked by Google, Salesforce, Deloitte, and Gartner. Senior tech audiences treat her as a peer, not a populariser. Biography highlights Chief Storytelling Officer at Blackrock Neurotech since 2021, leading story strategy for funding rounds totalling over $230M led by Thiel Capital, Apeiron, and Tether Released «I AM AI» in 2018, the first solo-artist pop album composed and produced with AI tools including Amper, IBM Watson Beat, Google Magenta, and AIVA Directed and produced «I AM HUMAN,» premiered at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival; subsequent awards include Best Director at Oslo Film Fest Three-time Streamy Awards nominee; 2018 Geena Davis Award recipient for innovative female filmmaking Keynote speaker at SXSW, Web Summit, World AI Summit, Google’s AI Summit, VidCon, The Next Web, NY Times Future of Work Featured in Vanity Fair, Billboard, Fast Company, Wired, Forbes, Psychology Today, and Harvard Business Review Biography The first solo-artist pop album composed with AI was released in September 2018, before most enterprises had finished their first ChatGPT briefing note. «I AM AI» used Amper, IBM Watson Beat, Google Magenta, and AIVA, with the lead single «Break Free» reaching the Top 100 radio charts. The interest, for a serious audience, is not the novelty. It is what the project showed about how a working creative integrates these tools into a production workflow that ships. That production credibility is the spine of the work Taryn Southern now does with senior teams. She has produced more than 1,500 videos across more than a decade of digital media, advised early product teams at YouTube, Google VR, and Snapchat, and directed an award-winning Google VR series. The vantage point is unusual: she has built original commercial product with generative tools at every stage of their maturity. Since 2021 she has been Chief Storytelling Officer at Blackrock Neurotech, the implantable brain-computer interface company. She launched what the company describes as the world’s first BCI museum, oversaw a corporate rebrand and the formation of a BCI Ethics Advisory board, and led communications strategy for funding rounds totalling over $230M, with investors including Thiel Capital, Apeiron, and Tether. The role gives her a working view of the technology layer that arrives after generative AI, and the regulatory and ethical questions a board will be asked to take a position on within the next decade. Her directorial debut, «I AM HUMAN,» premiered at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival and followed three of the first patients to receive implantable brain-computer interfaces. The film is the practical bridge in her work with corporate audiences: it shows what the next frontier of human-machine technology looks like in a hospital, in a home, and in the conversations a serious organisation will need to have about it well before the technology becomes commonplace. Key speaking topics Generative AI in creative production AI-augmented workflows and creative practice Brain-computer interfaces and human-machine integration Frontier neurotechnology and ethics Storytelling for emerging technology companies The future of human and artificial intelligence Ideal for Boards and leadership teams setting AI strategy beyond initial pilots Chief Marketing Officers, Chief Communications Officers, and creative leadership integrating generative tools into production Innovation, R&D, and strategy leaders tracking neurotech and the post-AI technology stack Senior leadership conferences in technology, media, healthcare, and life sciences Audience outcomes A working understanding of how generative AI tools function inside a real production workflow, drawn from a practitioner who has shipped commercial product A grounded view of brain-computer interface technology, what it currently does, where it is going, and the questions boards will face A sharper sense of which categories of creative and knowledge work are most exposed to generative AI, and which remain durably human An informed perspective on the ethical and governance terrain emerging at the intersection of AI and neurotechnology

Why organisations work with Tawfik Jelassi He has run digital transformation from three vantage points most speakers only write about: as an IMD professor teaching the OWP programme, as a national minister responsible for ICT policy, and as the UNESCO executive overseeing the global agenda on information and knowledge societies. His textbook Strategies for e-Business, now in its fourth edition with Springer, is used in business schools worldwide, which means his frameworks on value creation and digital business models are not improvised for the stage, they are stress-tested in classrooms. The policy lens is hard to replicate. On questions of AI governance, disinformation, platform regulation and digital inequality, he speaks from inside the UN system, not as an outside commentator. His case-writing record, recognised repeatedly by the European Foundation for Management Development, the Society for Information Management and the Case Centre, produces sessions anchored in named companies and decisions rather than abstractions. He moves credibly across corporate, government and multilateral audiences, which is what most digital and AI briefs now require when the room includes a regulator or a chief of staff. Biography highlights Professor of Strategy and Technology Management at IMD Business School; Co-Director of IMD’s flagship Orchestrating Winning Performance programme UNESCO Assistant Director-General for Communication and Information, 2021 to 2025 Former Minister of Higher Education, Scientific Research and ICT in Tunisia’s Jomaa government, 2014 to 2015 PhD in Information Systems, New York University (Stern); former faculty at INSEAD and Indiana University (Kelley); former Dean of the Business School at École des Ponts ParisTech Co-author of Strategies for e-Business, Springer, fourth edition Multiple case-writing awards from EFMD, SIM and the Case Centre; two Tunisian national decorations for service in education and science Biography Digital transformation is no longer a technology programme. It is a choice about the business model, the regulator’s next move, and the kind of society an organisation wants to operate in. Tawfik Jelassi’s authority comes from having run that choice at three levels at which most leaders only experience one. He teaches it at IMD as Professor of Strategy and Technology Management and Co-Director of Orchestrating Winning Performance, the institute’s largest executive programme. Before IMD, he spent thirteen years as Dean of the Business School at École des Ponts ParisTech, with earlier faculty posts at INSEAD and Indiana University’s Kelley School, and a PhD in Information Systems from NYU Stern. His case writing on digital business and technology management has been recognised repeatedly by the European Foundation for Management Development, the Society for Information Management and the Case Centre. The co-authored Springer textbook Strategies for e-Business is in its fourth edition. The second stream is policy. Jelassi served as Minister of Higher Education, Scientific Research and ICT in Tunisia’s post-revolution government under Prime Minister Mehdi Jomaa. From 2021 to 2025 he was UNESCO’s Assistant Director-General for Communication and Information, responsible for the organisation’s global programmes on freedom of expression, digital transformation, AI governance, information integrity and ICT in education. Few academics working on digital strategy have held the pen on multilateral regulation of the platforms they teach about. That dual vantage point is the point of the work. Jelassi can tell a board how a generative AI deployment looks from the inside of a UN agency drafting rules for it, and tell a ministry how a platform chief executive reasons about compliance. For organisations whose strategy now runs through regulation, geopolitics and public trust as much as technology, that is an unusually useful seat at the table. Key speaking topics Digital business transformation and value creation AI governance and platform regulation Leadership in technology-driven organisations Information integrity, trust and freedom of expression Inclusive knowledge societies and the digital divide Public-private cooperation on technology policy Ideal for CEOs and executive committees setting direction on digital and AI strategy in regulated industries Boards and chairs working through the governance implications of AI, data and platform policy Government, multilateral and public-sector leadership teams shaping national digital agendas International conferences and cross-sector forums where business, policy and civil society share a room Audience outcomes A clearer read of how digital and AI strategy is being reshaped by policy and multilateral regulation in real time Practical frameworks for evaluating digital business models and value creation, drawn from the Springer textbook used in business schools worldwide Specific reference points from named corporate cases and from inside UN and ministerial decision-making A more confident vocabulary for discussing trust, information integrity and the social licence of technology in boardroom terms

Why organisations work with Jacinda Ardern Ardern made consequential governance decisions – not advisory ones – during a live-streamed act of mass terrorism, a major volcanic eruption, and a global pandemic, all within a single term in office. What she brings to organisations is a practitioner’s account of crisis governance under conditions of maximum accountability. She co-founded the Christchurch Call with French President Macron in 2019 and remains Patron of the Christchurch Call Foundation today. That initiative – a multi-government, multi-platform framework for eliminating terrorist content online – gives her grounded authority on AI governance, platform accountability, and digital regulation that most governance specialists cannot match. Her memoir A Different Kind of Power (Penguin Random House/Pan Macmillan, 2025), a New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller, develops the concept of “pragmatic idealism” – the argument, backed by her own record in office, that empathy and decisive institutional action reinforce each other rather than pull against each other. Her Harvard appointments span three distinct domains: public leadership (Hauser Leader, Center for Public Leadership), AI and platform governance (Knight Tech Governance Leadership Fellow, Berkman Klein Center), and women’s policy (Senior Fellow, Women and Public Policy Program). This breadth reflects genuine multi-domain institutional credibility. As board member of The Earthshot Prize and Arnhold Distinguished Fellow at Conservation International, she engages with climate accountability at the level of institutional design – not as a cause, but as a governance and measurement problem that boards increasingly own. Biography highlights 40th Prime Minister of New Zealand, 2017-2023; the world’s youngest female head of government at the time of her election, aged 37 Led the governmental response to the Christchurch mosque attacks (2019), the Whakaari White Island volcanic eruption, and the COVID-19 pandemic – each requiring real-time governance decisions at national scale Co-founded the Christchurch Call with President Macron (2019); Patron of the Christchurch Call Foundation, the NGO established by New Zealand and France in 2024 to coordinate global action on violent extremist content online Multiple Harvard fellowships across Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Law School’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, including the Angelopoulos Global Public Leaders Fellow, Hauser Leader at the Center for Public Leadership, and Knight Tech Governance Leadership Fellow Author of A Different Kind of Power (Penguin Random House / Pan Macmillan, 2025) – New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller; shortlisted for the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards Harvard Kennedy School Gleitsman International Activist Award (2020); Harvard 2022 Commencement speaker; Honorary Doctorate from Harvard University; twice named to Time Magazine’s Most Influential People list Board member, The Earthshot Prize; Arnhold Distinguished Fellow, Conservation International; founder of the Field Fellowship on empathetic leadership (2024) Biography New Zealand was four weeks past the Christchurch mosque attacks when Jacinda Ardern stood with French President Macron in Paris and co-launched the Christchurch Call – a commitment from governments and technology companies to eliminate terrorist and violent extremist content online. It was a governance response to a governance failure, assembled at pace, and it is still operating. That sequence captures what is most useful about Ardern’s perspective: she did not observe the intersection of crisis leadership, platform accountability, and public trust from the outside. She was accountable for it. Her concept of “pragmatic idealism” – developed across her term in office and set out in her memoir A Different Kind of Power (Penguin Random House/Pan Macmillan, 2025, a New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller) – makes the case that empathy is not a soft alternative to decisive leadership but a structural condition of it. Leaders who build genuine trust before a crisis hits have more to draw on when decisions must be made under pressure and incomplete information. Leaders who do not find that the crisis itself destroys the conditions needed to manage it. Since leaving office in early 2023, Ardern has held multiple fellowships at Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Law School’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, where her focus has been AI governance, algorithmic accountability, and platform regulation. She is board member of The Earthshot Prize, Patron of the Christchurch Call Foundation, Arnhold Distinguished Fellow at Conservation International, and founder of the Field Fellowship, a programme supporting political leaders in empathetic leadership practice. For boards navigating crisis preparedness, digital governance, or ESG accountability, Ardern brings a record of decisions taken, at national scale, under conditions that most leadership frameworks were not designed for. Key speaking topics Crisis decision-making and governance under pressure Trust, institutional credibility, and stakeholder communication Digital platform accountability and online safety AI governance and technology regulation Climate accountability and ESG leadership Empathetic leadership and values-based decision-making Women in leadership and inclusive governance Ideal for Board and C-suite audiences responsible for crisis response, reputation management, and stakeholder trust under public scrutiny Technology and digital governance leaders focused on platform accountability, AI regulation, and online safety policy ESG and sustainability officers translating climate commitments into credible, auditable, scrutiny-resistant action Public sector and government-adjacent leaders managing delivery under high institutional pressure Audience outcomes A practical decision-making framework developed through direct, accountable experience of national-scale crisis – not theoretical modelling A sharper understanding of how trust is built, maintained, and lost under crisis conditions – and what communication disciplines make the difference Grounded perspective on digital platform accountability and AI governance from someone who helped design one of the world’s first functioning multi-government frameworks in this space A working account of how “pragmatic idealism” operates as a leadership model: acting from values without sacrificing speed, coherence, or institutional effectiveness Concrete principles for maintaining organisational credibility when multiple stakeholder groups are applying conflicting pressure simultaneously

Why organisations work with Tia White Operator perspective from inside a hyperscaler. She runs go-to-market, product and engineering for an AWS AI portfolio tracking over USD 25M in profit, including some of the fastest-growing services at AWS. A track record of taking generative AI and personalisation from theory into customer-facing product. She led the introduction of Personalized Search, Next Best Action and generative AI capabilities into Amazon Personalize. Cross-sector enterprise fluency. Before AWS she held senior technology roles at Wells Fargo, Capital One and JPMorgan Chase, leading regulated digital transformation programmes in financial services. A specific point of view on what separates AI investments that compound from AI investments that stall, grounded in current AWS customer work rather than vendor abstraction. A credible voice on building the technical leadership bench behind AI, including women and Black technologists, that boards are now being asked to account for. Biography highlights General Manager, AI and Machine Learning, Amazon Web Services. First Black woman hired as a GM in Machine Learning, AI and Analytics at AWS. Director of Engineering at a Fortune 100 company before age 30. Prior senior technology roles at Wells Fargo, Capital One and JPMorgan Chase. Led the launch of new Amazon Personalize capabilities including Personalized Search, Next Best Action and generative AI features; speaker at AWS re:Invent 2022 on personalisation. Featured in Forbes; keynote and emcee credits include SXSW and the Grace Hopper Celebration. Board and advisory roles include Rewriting the Code. Biography Generative AI has moved faster than most enterprise operating models can absorb. Inside AWS, Tia White runs the AI and Machine Learning business that customers turn to when a pilot has to become a product. She owns go-to-market, product and engineering for an AI portfolio tracking over USD 25M in profit, including some of the fastest-growing services at AWS. Her work at AWS includes leading the next generation of Amazon Personalize, with features such as Personalized Search, Next Best Action and generative AI capabilities now used by enterprises to lift engagement and revenue. She has spoken at AWS re:Invent on personalisation as an operating discipline rather than a marketing feature, and is regularly cited by AWS as a voice on what Gen Y and Gen Z customers expect from personalised experiences. Before AWS she held senior technology roles at Wells Fargo, Capital One and JPMorgan Chase, including the leadership of public cloud migrations in financial services. She reached Director of Engineering at a Fortune 100 company before the age of 30. That financial services background gives her a working answer to the questions regulated industries are now asking about generative AI, data, privacy and risk. She was the first Black woman hired as a GM in Machine Learning, AI and Analytics at AWS, and uses that platform to address the harder question behind most AI roadmaps, which is whether the organisation has the talent and the leadership bench to deliver them. She has been featured in Forbes, has keynoted and emceed at SXSW and the Grace Hopper Celebration, and sits on boards including Rewriting the Code. Key speaking topics Generative AI in the enterprise Personalisation as a revenue and engagement discipline AI agents and agentic workflows Machine learning in regulated industries Cloud migration and digital transformation Responsible AI and bias mitigation Building diverse technical leadership in AI and engineering Ideal for CTOs, CIOs and Chief Data and AI Officers moving from AI pilots into production CMOs and Chief Customer Officers investing in personalisation, recommendation and customer engagement Boards and executive committees in financial services, retail and regulated industries setting AI strategy CHROs and DEI leads responsible for the technical talent pipeline behind AI Audience outcomes A clearer read on which generative AI use cases pay back and which do not, drawn from live AWS customer patterns. A working view of personalisation as an operating capability that touches data, product and engineering, not a marketing campaign. Sharper questions for the board on AI risk, privacy and the operating model around generative AI. A concrete sense of what the technical leadership bench behind a serious AI roadmap looks like, and where most organisations are short.

Why organisations work with Tim Cole He began writing about the commercial internet in 1995, when he started one of the first online diaries in Germany, before the word blog existed. A thirty-year record of covering technology cycles is what lets him tell an inflection point from a sales pitch. AI Means Business and Digitale Transformation are written for non-technical managers, which is the constituency most companies actually need to move. He pitches at the board, not at the engineering org. As editor-in-chief of Smart Industry, he has continuous visibility into how Industry 4.0, IoT and cognitive computing are being deployed inside European manufacturers, which makes his examples concrete rather than aspirational. Wild Wild Web compares today’s platform giants to the monopolists of the 19th-century American frontier and argues for a code of digital ethics. It gives boards a usable vocabulary for GAFA dependency, regulation and digital sovereignty. He works in English and German, and has covered the German Mittelstand since the 1990s. On identity and access management he has operator standing, having co-founded the European analyst firm KuppingerCole in 2004. Biography highlights Editor-in-chief, Smart Industry – the IoT Business Magazine, since 2016. Editor-in-chief of the internet business magazine Net Investor; long-running columnist for FAZ, VDI-Nachrichten, Der Standard and IX. Author of around a dozen books on the digital economy, including Success Factor Internet (Econ, 1999), Digital Enlightenment Now! with Ossi Urchs, Digitale Transformation (Vahlen, 2015), Wild Wild Web (2018) and AI Means Business (2020). One of the first journalists in Germany to cover the internet; began writing an online diary in 1995, before the word blog existed. American-born, resident in German-speaking Europe since 1961 and now based in Austria; anchored the technology programme eTalk for n-tv and N24. Co-founder in 2004 of KuppingerCole, the European analyst firm for identity and access management, and a Distinguished Fellow of the firm; appointed in 2010 to run its US operation from Boston. Biography Success Factor Internet came out in 1999, four years after Tim Cole began writing an online diary, before the word blog existed. The books that followed, Digitale Transformation and AI Means Business among them, keep returning to the same question. How does a real company, with a real cost base and real customers, actually change? That long record is the asset. As editor-in-chief of Smart Industry, the IoT business magazine, Cole reports on European manufacturers moving from connected sensors to operating advantage, and on where those programmes stall. The magazine covers IIoT, Industry 4.0, cognitive computing and predictive analysis, which keeps his examples close to what companies are actually running. His audience is the non-technical manager. The books are written for executives who make capital allocation calls on AI, IoT and platform strategy without being engineers. They need a clear account of what the technology cannot do as well as what it can. He writes from inside the European debate on identity and security. In 2004 he co-founded KuppingerCole, the analyst firm that made identity and access management its speciality, and in 2010 he took charge of its US operation from Boston. Wild Wild Web, published by Vahlen in 2018 and in English the same year, sets the argument out at full length. It compares Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple to the monopolists of the 19th-century American frontier. The argument is that the digital society needs its own rule of law, a code of digital ethics that companies write and hold themselves to. Key speaking topics Digital transformation for non-technical leaders Artificial intelligence in business Industrial IoT and Industry 4.0 Digital ethics and the social contract of the internet Platform power, GAFA and digital sovereignty IT security and digital identity management Cognitive computing and predictive analysis The future of the European Mittelstand in a digital economy Ideal for Boards and executive committees of European industrial and Mittelstand companies confronting AI and IoT investment decisions CIOs, CDOs and transformation leads who need a credible non-technical voice to align the rest of the executive team CISOs and identity-management functions briefing boards on cyber and digital sovereignty Industry conferences on manufacturing, IoT, Industry 4.0 and applied AI Audience outcomes A grounded read on which AI and digital transformation moves are real operating advantage and which are still vendor narrative. A working vocabulary for board-level conversations about platform power, digital ethics and digital sovereignty. Examples drawn from European industrial and Mittelstand companies that Smart Industry has reported on. A clearer sense of where IoT and Industry 4.0 investment is actually paying back, and where it is stuck in pilot. A frame for talking about AI’s limits as well as its potential, in language a non-technical executive team can use.

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

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

Why organisations work with Toju Duke Ten years inside Google, including three running Responsible AI programmes across product and research teams on large-scale models. The framework she teaches is the one she ran. A published, structured Responsible AI framework covering fairness, transparency, safety, privacy and robustness across the full ML lifecycle, available to leadership teams as a shared reference point. Operator credibility on the question boards actually ask: how do we deploy AI at pace without inviting regulatory, reputational or human-rights exposure. Independent of any platform or model vendor. With no product to sell, her advice on governance and deployment answers only to the organisation buying it. Biography highlights Author of Building Responsible AI Algorithms (Apress, 2023), a structured framework for fairness, transparency, safety, privacy and robustness across the machine learning lifecycle. Co-author with Prof Paolo Giudici of Responsible AI in Practice (Apress/Springer Nature). Ten years at Google. Final three years as Responsible AI Programme Manager working across product and research teams on large-scale models. Founder and CEO of Diverse AI, a community interest organisation running education and research programmes for groups underrepresented in AI, including a project to build a dataset documenting the cultures of communities without internet access. Media contributor including BBC One Sunday Morning Live, Sky News, Al Jazeera, CGTN America, El Pais, La Vanguardia and Sifted. Biography Most organisations now have an AI policy. Very few have the operating mechanisms to make it real. Toju Duke spent the final three years of a ten-year career at Google building exactly those mechanisms, as a Responsible AI Programme Manager working across product and research teams on large-scale models. That work became Building Responsible AI Algorithms, published by Apress in 2023. The book takes Responsible AI out of principles documents and into the machine learning lifecycle: how to define a problem, audit data, evaluate fairness, document a model, and decide whether to ship. A second volume, Responsible AI in Practice, co-authored with Prof Paolo Giudici, extends the framework into regulation, risk taxonomies and assessment. She advises boards and executive teams on governance, AI readiness, and deployment, and sits on the programme committee for the AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics and Society. Through Diverse AI, the community interest organisation she founded, she runs education and research programmes for groups underrepresented in the field, including a project to build a dataset documenting the cultures of communities the internet has left out. Governance and inclusion are the same question seen from two sides of the model. She speaks and writes for serious outlets, including BBC One Sunday Morning Live, Sky News, Al Jazeera, CGTN America, El Pais, La Vanguardia and Sifted. For a board weighing how to govern an AI programme it does not fully understand, she brings the rare combination of operator experience inside a frontier-model team and a published framework to organise the conversation around. Key speaking topics Responsible AI frameworks and governance AI ethics and accountability Generative AI risk and oversight AI regulation and policy Fairness, bias and inclusion in AI systems Diversity in AI talent and design Implementing AI principles across the machine learning lifecycle Ideal for Boards and executive committees commissioning or governing AI programmes Chief AI officers, CTOs, CIOs and chief data officers building Responsible AI operating models Risk, audit, legal and compliance leaders translating AI regulation into controls DEI and people leaders working on inclusion in technical organisations Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for Responsible AI grounded in a published framework rather than vendor marketing. A view of where AI risk actually sits in the machine learning lifecycle, from problem definition through deployment. A reference model for translating AI principles into review processes, documentation and accountability structures. A sharper read on how regulation, fairness and human-rights considerations intersect for organisations deploying large-scale models.

Why organisations work with Tom Gruber He shipped the first mainstream intelligent assistant. When he speaks about what AI deployment actually requires inside a product organisation, it is from the inside of a system Apple now runs across its entire device base. He authored the foundational definition of an ontology in computer science. Boards wrestling with AI governance, knowledge representation and explainability are talking to the person whose 1993 paper their technical teams still cite. His Humanistic AI framework gives leadership a usable language for AI design choices. It moves the conversation from “should we use AI” to “what does this system do for the human using it”, which is the question regulators and employees are now asking. He chooses his advisory portfolio around AI applied to assistive neurotech, mental health and clinical accuracy. The examples he brings to a keynote are concrete deployments, not hypotheticals. He is one of very few speakers who can credibly walk a room from ontology engineering to product design to ethics in a single talk, without losing either the technical audience or the executive one. Biography highlights Co-founder, CTO and head of design of Siri Inc., acquired by Apple in 2010. Led Siri’s Advanced Development Group at Apple for eight years following the acquisition. Author of the foundational 1993 paper defining ontology in AI, the highest-cited article in the history of the International Journal of Human-Computer Studies. Main-stage TED 2017 speaker on Humanistic AI. Co-founder and CTO of LifeScore, an adaptive AI music company backed by Octopus Ventures. Advisor to the Ocean Plastics Leadership Network on organisational intelligence and technology. Biography Siri began as a research project, became a startup, and was acquired by Apple in 2010, the same year it launched. Tom Gruber was its co-founder, CTO and head of design. The product now runs across Apple’s device base and processes more than a billion interactions a day. Most of what users now expect from a voice assistant was decided inside the small team he helped lead. Before Siri, the foundation. In 1993, working at Stanford’s Knowledge Systems Laboratory, Gruber published the paper that gave AI its working definition of an ontology: “an explicit specification of a conceptualization”. It became the highest-cited article in the history of the journal it appeared in, and it remains the reference point for anyone building systems where machines have to share knowledge cleanly. The shipping product and the citation history are connected. Siri worked because the underlying representation was right. After eight years leading Apple’s Advanced Development Group for Siri, Gruber stepped out to focus on what he calls Humanistic AI. The argument, set out in his 2017 TED talk, is that AI design is a choice between automation that competes with people and augmentation that collaborates with them. He puts the framework to work as co-founder and CTO of LifeScore, an adaptive music company, and as advisor to AI ventures in assistive neurotechnology, mental health, and clinical decision support. The Humanistic AI lens is what leadership teams find most useful from him. It reframes AI deployment as a design decision with named consequences for customers, employees and society, rather than a procurement decision about which model to license. For boards approving AI strategy and CEOs explaining it, that reframing is doing work no other AI keynote does. Key speaking topics Humanistic AI and human-centred design AI governance, ethics and trust Intelligent assistants and conversational AI Ontology engineering and knowledge representation AI in assistive technology and healthcare AI for collective intelligence and ocean conservation Building AI products from research to scale Ideal for Boards and CEOs setting AI policy and accountability Chief Technology Officers and Chief AI Officers shaping enterprise AI deployment Heads of product and design building AI into customer-facing systems Healthcare, financial services and public-sector leaders deploying AI in high-stakes contexts Audience outcomes A working definition of Humanistic AI that distinguishes augmentation from automation in their own operating context A clearer framework for evaluating AI design choices against customer, employee and societal impact Concrete reference points from Siri and from current AI deployments in healthcare, assistive tech and creative industries A language for leadership conversations about AI ethics that goes beyond compliance and into product design Recognition of where their own AI roadmap is making automation choices it should be making augmentation choices

Why organisations work with Tyler Cohen Wood She brings the threat picture a board actually needs: thirteen years inside the Department of Defense, including roles as Deputy Cyber Division Chief at the DIA and the Directorate’s named Cyber Subject Matter Expert, translated into language a non-technical executive can act on. She has run cyber risk at commercial scale. As Director of Cyber Risk Management at AT&T she built defences across one of the largest customer bases in the world, so her advice maps onto P&L decisions, not just policy. She is operator, not pundit. As co-founder of Dark Cryptonite (patent-pending zero-trust encryption) and CEO of MyConnectedHealth (AI in clinical diagnostics), she is currently building in the two domains she speaks on. Her work on social engineering and deepfakes draws on a digital forensics career at NASA’s Office of Inspector General and the DoD Cyber Crime Center, where she investigated major crimes and intrusions. That gives the deepfake material specific case grounding rather than headline commentary. She holds multiple US provisional patents for cyber capabilities and is a regular expert voice on Good Morning America, CNN, The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg, so she lands in front of executive audiences who recognise her from crisis coverage. Biography highlights Former Senior Intelligence Officer and Deputy Cyber Division Chief, Special Communications Division, US Defense Intelligence Agency. Former Director of Cyber Risk Management, AT&T. Co-founder, Dark Cryptonite (patent-pending zero-trust encryption); Founder and CEO, MyConnectedHealth Inc. Author of Catching the Catfishers (Career Press); co-author of Alternate Data Storage Forensics (Syngress). Holder of multiple US provisional patents for cyber capabilities. Regular commentator for Good Morning America, CNN, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and GovInfoSecurity. Biography The cyber threat picture has changed shape. Adversaries now use generative AI to scale phishing, clone executive voices and produce convincing video. The defensive vocabulary that worked in 2018, perimeter, patch, password, no longer covers the surface area a modern board is responsible for. Tyler Cohen Wood spent thirteen years inside the US Department of Defense working on exactly that surface area. At the Defense Intelligence Agency she served as Senior Intelligence Officer and Deputy Cyber Division Chief in the Special Communications Division, and was designated the Cyber Subject Matter Expert for the DIA Science and Technologies Directorate. Her remit covered the White House, the DoD, federal law enforcement and the wider intelligence community. Before that, as a digital forensic examiner at NASA’s Office of Inspector General and the DoD Cyber Crime Center, she worked intrusion and major-crimes cases at evidentiary level. She then took that fluency into the commercial world as Director of Cyber Risk Management at AT&T, where the question shifts from intelligence reporting to defending revenue, customers and brand at scale. She now co-leads Dark Cryptonite, a venture building patent-pending zero-trust encryption for governments and enterprises, and is founder and CEO of MyConnectedHealth, an AI platform for clinical diagnosis. She holds multiple US provisional patents in cyber. What that combination gives an executive audience is a speaker who is currently building the technology she discusses, has carried the threat picture at state level, and has owned commercial cyber accountability inside a Fortune 10 business. Her writing reflects the same range: Catching the Catfishers on social engineering and online identity, and the co-authored Alternate Data Storage Forensics textbook used inside the forensics community. Key speaking topics Cybersecurity as a board-level risk AI and deepfake-driven social engineering Emerging technology strategy for executives Digital transformation and cyber risk management The innovation mindset for technical and non-technical leaders AI in healthcare and connected health Women in technology and senior leadership Ideal for Boards and executive committees treating cyber as a strategic, not IT, agenda item CISOs, CIOs and CTOs briefing non-technical leadership on AI-era threat posture Risk, audit and compliance leaders preparing for AI-driven fraud and identity attacks Industry conferences in financial services, healthcare, defence and critical infrastructure Audience outcomes A clearer board-level model for where cyber risk now sits in the operating model Specific examples of how AI is changing social engineering, deepfakes and intrusion tactics A grounded view of what zero-trust and encryption actually mean for procurement and architecture decisions A working understanding of how AI is being deployed in regulated environments such as healthcare Confidence to ask sharper questions of internal security leaders and external vendors

Why organisations work with Ulrich Walter He brings the credibility of a flown astronaut and a sitting university chair to AI and robotics conversations that usually rely on consultants or vendor analysts. He works on AI from both ends a board cares about: national policy, through the Bavarian Ethics Council, and live corporate implementation, as a supervisory board member responsible for AI and transformation at the Die Bayerische insurance group. Disruptive-innovation content drawn from NASA mission cases and his own IBM project-management work, not from secondhand business literature. A working researcher in geriatronics and service robotics, which gives him a concrete view of what AI-assisted hardware can and cannot do today, beyond the generative-AI conversation. Comfortable in technical depth and broad audience formats. Eleven books, a weekly TV programme on Welt TV, and a Spiegel bestseller indicate a speaker who can carry a non-specialist room without softening the science. Biography highlights Payload Specialist, NASA Space Shuttle Columbia, Spacelab D-2 mission (STS-55), 1993. Chair of the Institute of Astronautics, Technical University of Munich, 2003 to 2023, now emeritus. Member, Bavarian Ethics Council on robotics and artificial intelligence. Member of three supervisory boards within the Die Bayerische insurance group, responsible for the group’s AI implementation and transformation programme. Senior Executive Advisor, Deloitte Space, Germany. German Professor of the Year 2008 in engineering sciences and informatics. Author of eleven books including the Spiegel bestseller Im Schwarzen Loch ist der Teufel los, and host of the weekly Welt TV documentary Spacetimes. Biography Most leadership teams are asked to make decisions about AI and robotics without a working understanding of how the underlying systems behave. That gap is where Ulrich Walter does his most useful work. Trained as a physicist at the University of Cologne, with postdoctoral years at Argonne National Laboratory and UC Berkeley, he combines an active scientific career with a policy seat that few keynote speakers can match. In 1993 he flew Spacelab D-2 aboard Space Shuttle Columbia as Payload Specialist, running 89 experiments across materials science, life sciences and robotics in just under ten days in orbit. After the mission he managed satellite imaging programmes at the German Aerospace Center, then ran development projects at IBM, before being appointed to the Chair of Astronautics at TU Munich in 2003. At TUM he led research on service robotics, geriatronics, and the systems engineering behind human spaceflight. He also sits on the Bavarian Ethics Council on robotics and AI, advising on where the operational and moral limits of these technologies should fall. The work is technical, and it is current. For corporate audiences, the most useful translation is the one between high-risk technical environments and ordinary business decision-making. How does NASA assess disruptive change? How does a project manager at IBM apply mission-grade discipline? What does a working scientist on Germany’s AI ethics body actually think a board should worry about? Walter is unusually direct on all three. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and ethics Disruptive innovation Space technology and the NewSpace economy Robotics and geriatronics Systems engineering and project management The future of human spaceflight Science communication for non-specialist audiences Ideal for Boards and executive teams setting governance on AI and emerging technology Engineering, R&D and innovation leadership at industrial and aerospace firms Senior project and programme managers in complex, high-risk environments Conferences and offsites looking for a substantive technology keynote that can also carry a non-technical room Audience outcomes A working view of where AI and robotics genuinely change the operating picture, and where the hype runs ahead of the science. A practical translation of NASA-style risk management and project discipline into commercial settings. A clearer sense of how European regulators and ethicists are framing the limits of AI deployment. Exposure to the NewSpace economy and what it signals about the next generation of commercial technology. A reset of perspective on long-horizon strategic thinking from someone who has spent ten days looking at the planet from orbit.