AI Ethics & Responsible Technology

Why organisations work with Margarida Matos Rosa She has run a national competition regulator from the inside. Decisions on banking, telecoms, energy, health, digital services and advertising cartels passed across her desk between 2016 and 2023, giving her a working view of how cases are built, prioritised and defended. She has sat at the policy table that shapes EU and global competition rules, as ICN Vice-Chair for Growth and Recovery and as a Bureau member of the OECD Competition Committee. Few speakers can read the regulatory direction of travel from inside both bodies. Her background bridges competition policy and capital markets. Earlier roles at the Portuguese Securities Market Commission and at BNP Paribas, Santander Investment and UBS Bank mean she speaks credibly on the Savings and Investments Union, financial regulation and the cost of capital, not only antitrust. She translates regulation into board language. Boards leave with a sharper view of how competition enforcement, digital rules and capital markets integration affect their pricing, M&A pipeline and growth assumptions. Biography highlights President of the Portuguese Competition Authority, 2016 to 2023. Vice-Chair, International Competition Network (Growth and Recovery), 2022 to 2023. Bureau member, OECD Competition Committee, elected by peer authorities. Senior Consultant, Compass Lexecon International practice. Former Managing Director, Portuguese Securities Market Commission (CMVM), investment management supervision. Earlier career at BNP Paribas, Santander Investment and UBS Bank in economic research, investment banking and asset management. MPA, Princeton University. Economics degree, Université Catholique de Louvain. Fulbright scholar at MIT. Biography Competition policy used to sit in a corner of corporate strategy: a compliance file, occasionally a deal-breaker, rarely a board-level lens. That has changed. Digital markets rules, merger thresholds and cartel enforcement now move pricing, investment and M&A decisions across whole sectors, and the EU is moving on capital markets integration in parallel. Margarida Matos Rosa led Portugal’s competition regulator through that shift. As President of the Autoridade da Concorrência from 2016 to 2023, she oversaw enforcement decisions across banking, telecoms, energy, health, digital services and advertising, and built up the authority’s technical capability in AI and IT forensics for cartel detection. Her tenure is widely credited with raising the authority’s international standing. That national role sat alongside two international ones. She was elected by peers to the Bureau of the OECD Competition Committee, and was appointed Vice-Chair of the International Competition Network for Growth and Recovery in 2022, a portfolio focused on the interface between antitrust and macro-economic policy after the pandemic. She now advises clients of Compass Lexecon’s International practice as a Senior Consultant. Her earlier career gives her an unusually wide read of the regulatory landscape. Before competition policy, she ran investment management supervision at Portugal’s Securities Market Commission, and held roles at BNP Paribas, Santander Investment and UBS Bank covering economic research, investment banking and asset management. That financial markets grounding is what makes her credible on the Savings and Investments Union and on how capital allocation responds to a tighter EU regulatory perimeter. Key speaking topics Competition policy and antitrust enforcement EU single market and strategic autonomy Digital markets regulation Productivity and AI in regulated markets Savings and Investments Union and capital markets integration Financial regulation and capital markets oversight Institution building in economic regulators Ideal for Boards and executive committees of regulated firms in banking, telecoms, energy, digital and consumer markets General counsels, heads of strategy, heads of M&A and chief economists managing competition and digital regulation exposure CFOs and treasurers reading EU capital markets and Savings and Investments Union signals Policy and government affairs leaders shaping engagement with national and EU competition authorities Audience outcomes A clearer read on how EU and national competition enforcement is moving, and where it is likely to bite next A working understanding of how digital markets rules interact with innovation, pricing and platform strategy A view from inside a regulator on how cases are prioritised, built and resolved A sharper sense of how the Savings and Investments Union and capital markets integration affect cost of capital and cross-border deals A practical framework for engaging credibly with competition authorities, the European Commission and the OECD

Why organisations work with Didem Ün Ateş She has operationalised responsible AI inside three of the world’s largest organisations (Microsoft, Accenture, and Schneider Electric) as an executive with direct accountability, not as an external advisor. That gives her a precise understanding of where enterprise AI governance breaks down in practice. Her role as Advisor and Generative AI Council Member for Goldman Sachs Value Accelerator, working with over 300 portfolio companies, gives boards and investment teams a live investor-grade view of how AI strategy translates, or fails to translate, into commercial value and risk-adjusted returns. LotusAI’s documented methodology, running 60 co-creation workshops across more than 200 SVPs and VPs to identify and prioritise 200 generative AI use cases inside a single Fortune 500 company, is a concrete, tested model for enterprise AI adoption, not a conceptual framework. As an accredited algorithm auditor and former WEF AI Governance Alliance Fellow, she connects organisations to the governance principles emerging at the regulatory and multilateral level, including the responsible-AI debates shaping how the technology is regulated globally. Her dual degree from the University of Pennsylvania (BS in Engineering from the Moore School and BS in Economics from the Wharton School), combined with an MBA from Columbia Business School, means she can engage credibly at both the technical architecture and commercial investment layers of an AI decision, a combination that is genuinely uncommon. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of LotusAI Ltd, advising private equity firms, hedge funds, financial institutions, and Fortune 500 companies on AI strategy, responsible AI governance, and talent transformation Former Vice President, AI Strategy & Innovation at Schneider Electric, where she defined the company’s AI and generative AI strategy, innovation roadmaps, ecosystem partnerships, and responsible AI programme Former Head of Data & AI / General Manager, Data & AI at Microsoft (EMEA) and former Managing Director of Data & AI, Europe at Accenture’s Microsoft Business Group; earlier roles at Capgemini, EY, BT, and Motorola Advisor and Generative AI Council Member for Goldman Sachs Value Accelerator, working with the firm and over 300 portfolio companies Board member of the Edge AI Foundation, the Wharton AI Alumni Studio, the Columbia Business School Women’s Circle, and the Hg Foundation Technology Advisory Board Certified Algorithm Auditor and Executive Coach; former WEF AI Governance Alliance Fellow; Forbes Technology Council member TechWomen100 Champion and Trailblazer 50 honouree; 2025 recognition includes CEO of the Year Awards UK in the AI Advisory category, Responsible AI Innovation & Growth in Business Award, New Technology Consultancy of the Year, Best New Business of the Year, and British Business Excellence Award Alumna of the University of Pennsylvania (Management & Technology dual degree: BS in Engineering from the Moore School and BS in Economics from the Wharton School) and Columbia Business School (MBA) Biography Most enterprise AI strategies stall in the same place: at the gap between approved roadmap and accountable delivery. Didem Ün Ateş has worked on both sides of that gap inside organisations large enough for every failure to matter. As VP, AI Strategy & Innovation at Schneider Electric, she held direct accountability for the company’s generative AI strategy and innovation roadmap, its ecosystem partnerships, its responsible and sustainable AI programme, and the upskilling of its global workforce. Before that, she served as Head of Data & AI and General Manager, Data & AI at Microsoft EMEA, with revenue accountability of over $2.7 billion across more than 70 subsidiaries, and as Managing Director of Data & AI, Europe within Accenture’s Microsoft Business Group. She founded LotusAI Ltd to apply that operational depth where boards and investment teams need it most. Her advisory relationship with Goldman Sachs Value Accelerator, as Advisor and Generative AI Council Member, puts her in direct conversation with over 300 portfolio companies on AI value creation, governance, and risk. LotusAI’s engagements have included guiding a generative AI opportunity scan across more than 200 senior leaders in a Fortune 500 company, delivering a three-year use-case roadmap tied to the organisation’s strategic plan and regulatory requirements. Her work sits at the intersection of commercial strategy and institutional accountability. As an accredited algorithm auditor and former WEF AI Governance Alliance Fellow, where she has co-chaired sessions on AI and sustainability at WEF summits, she connects the boardroom conversation to the multilateral frameworks shaping how responsible AI is defined and regulated globally. She also sits on the Hg Foundation Technology Advisory Board, alongside senior leaders from ING, Google, McKinsey, and Accenture. She holds a dual degree from the University of Pennsylvania, in Engineering from the Moore School and in Economics from the Wharton School, and an MBA from Columbia Business School. Recent recognition includes the CEO of the Year Awards UK 2025 in the AI Advisory category, the Responsible AI Innovation & Growth in Business Award 2025, and the British Business Excellence Award 2025, alongside the earlier TechWomen100 Champion and Trailblazer 50 honours. Key speaking topics Enterprise AI strategy and governance Generative and agentic AI adoption at scale Responsible and sustainable AI AI for private equity, private credit, and financial services AI-driven workforce capability and talent transformation AI risk management and regulatory compliance Edge AI, physical AI, embedded AI, and tinyML AI leadership training and executive workshops Ideal for Boards and C-suite teams (CEO, CTO, CDO, CAIO) building or pressure-testing enterprise AI strategies Chief Data and AI Officers designing governance frameworks for generative AI adoption Private equity and investment leadership teams assessing AI value creation and risk across portfolios Transformation and innovation leaders in financial services, industrial, and consulting sectors navigating responsible AI operationalisation Audience outcomes Practical criteria for identifying, prioritising, and sequencing AI use cases, tools, platforms, and agents within a complex organisation A clearer model of where enterprise AI governance frameworks typically break down, and what structural conditions make them durable A sharper understanding of how responsible AI principles translate into investment-grade governance, not just compliance documentation A working language for talent transformation in the agentic AI era, including the workforce decisions board members need to be ready to make More confident language for board-level conversations on AI risk, sustainability, and value creation Awareness of inclusive AI design as both a reputational risk and a long-term commercial consideration

Why organisations work with Lara Lewington Fourteen years inside BBC Click gives her a first-hand catalogue of which AI and health-tech claims held up and which collapsed, useful for boards trying to triage vendor pitches. Hacking Humanity (Penguin, 2025) is a structured, sourced argument on the technologies extending healthspan, not a survey article, so audiences leave with a thesis rather than a topic tour. Formal study in the Ethics of AI at the London School of Economics, layered onto her broadcast work, makes her a credible voice in governance and risk conversations, not only product showcases. She is regularly trusted to host the main stage at AI Summit London, Founders Forum, London Tech Week and the Royal Academy of Engineering, which means she moves comfortably between keynote and high-stakes moderation in the same event. Long-form access to the people building this technology, from Silicon Valley founders to NHS clinicians, lets her describe what is actually being deployed rather than what is being announced. Biography highlights Co-presenter of BBC Click, the corporation’s flagship technology programme, for seven years until the show ended in March 2025; reporter on the programme from 2011. Author of Hacking Humanity: How technology can save your health and your life (Penguin, WH Allen, July 2025). Fronted BBC Panorama’s “Beyond Human: Artificial Intelligence and Us” and BBC One documentary “Forever Young?” on biological age reversal. AI Agony Aunt on ITV’s Lorraine since 2023; recurring technology commentator on Good Morning Britain, Woman’s Hour and BBC Radio 5 Live. Studied Ethics of AI at the London School of Economics; Senior Fellow at the John Schofield Trust mentoring early-career journalists. Host and moderator at AI Summit London, Founders Forum Global, LEAP Tech Arena, London Tech Week and the Royal Academy of Engineering. Biography Most boardroom conversations about artificial intelligence and health technology run aground on the same problem. The pace of announcement outstrips the pace of verification. Lara Lewington has spent 14 years inside the programme that, more than any other in British broadcasting, exists to do that verification on the public’s behalf: BBC Click. She reported for the show from 2011, co-presented from 2018 with Spencer Kelly, and stayed until the programme ended in March 2025. Hacking Humanity (Penguin, July 2025) takes the same instinct into book form. It examines the AI, gene editing and robotics now reshaping medicine, with a clear thesis: the meaningful prize is healthspan, the years lived in good health, not raw lifespan. Endorsed by Lorraine Kelly, Davina McCall and Dr Amir Khan, it draws on access from Silicon Valley founders to NHS clinicians, and frames where the science is real, where it is premature, and where the ethical exposure sits. The AI ethics work is anchored by formal study at the London School of Economics and a steady stream of fronted documentaries: Panorama’s “Beyond Human: Artificial Intelligence and Us”, BBC One’s “Forever Young?”, ITV’s “Tonight: Healthy Ageing”, and BBC Radio 4’s “A Documentary: By ChatGPT”. She is the AI Agony Aunt on ITV’s Lorraine, a regular voice on Good Morning Britain and Woman’s Hour, and a Senior Fellow at the John Schofield Trust. Event organisers book her for two distinct jobs. She delivers keynotes on AI ethics, the human impact of automation and the healthspan revolution. She also hosts and moderates the main stage at AI Summit London, Founders Forum Global, LEAP Tech Arena, London Tech Week and the Royal Academy of Engineering, where the brief is to interview a chief executive or scientist and keep the conversation honest in real time. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and its human impact AI ethics and responsible deployment Health technology and the healthspan economy Longevity science and biological age Wearables, diagnostics and consumer health data The role of robotics in care and clinical settings Technology hype versus evidence Ideal for Boards and executive teams setting AI policy and digital health strategy CHROs, chief medical officers and benefits leaders shaping workforce health programmes Health, life sciences and pharma leadership audiences tracking the AI inflection in their sector Conference organisers needing a credible host or moderator for AI, health-tech and innovation main-stage sessions Audience outcomes A clear read on which AI and health-tech claims are evidence-backed and which are still vendor narrative A working vocabulary for healthspan, longevity science and the technologies driving them Sharper questions to put to internal teams and external suppliers on AI ethics and data governance A grounded view of how rapidly diagnostic and preventive technology is moving from research into mainstream use

Why organisations work with Sol Rashidi She has personally led AI and data deployments inside Estee Lauder, Merck, Sony Music, Royal Caribbean, and Amazon Web Services, so the advice is field-tested rather than theoretical. She wrote Your AI Survival Guide (Wiley, 2024), the practical deployment playbook that boards and CIOs have started to use as a reference text for moving past pilots. As Senior Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Mossavar-Rahmani Center, she is shaping AI policy thinking at the level boards now have to engage with. She talks credibly to two audiences in the same room: technical leaders who need the architecture to be right, and executive teams who need the commercial and workforce implications spelled out. Her current role as Chief Strategy Officer for Data and AI at Cyera keeps her live inside the AI security and governance conversation that boards are being asked to own. Biography highlights Chief Strategy Officer for Data and AI at Cyera since April 2025. Senior Fellow 2025 to 2026 at Harvard Kennedy School’s Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government. Author of Your AI Survival Guide (Wiley, 2024), a Top 100 AI book of 2024. Former four-time Fortune 100 C-suite executive: Estee Lauder, Merck, Sony Music, Royal Caribbean. Division Head of Technology, Startups, North America at Amazon Web Services. Holds 10 patents in data and AI; named Forbes “AI Maverick of the 21st Century” and to multiple Top 100 AI Leaders and Top 50 Women in Tech lists. Biography Most enterprise AI programmes look identical from the outside and fail in different ways on the inside. The strategy decks are confident. The pilots run. Then the operating model, the data foundation, or the workforce conversation breaks the deployment before it scales. Sol Rashidi has spent a career on the operator side of that problem, and now advises the boards and executive teams who own it. She helped launch IBM Watson in 2011, then became the first Chief Data and AI Officer in a Fortune 500 company. Across the next decade she ran data, analytics, and AI organisations as a four-time C-suite executive at Estee Lauder, Merck, Sony Music, and Royal Caribbean, and led the Startups technology division for Amazon Web Services in North America. The result is a practitioner record measured in 30 to 200+ AI deployments inside large enterprises, not in conference panels. That record is now packaged in two formats. Your AI Survival Guide (Wiley, 2024) is the playbook for non-technical leaders running real deployments, structured around strategy, use case selection, design, implementation, and long-term operations. As Senior Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government, she is developing an ontological framework for AI policy aimed at aligning government and business on what the technology actually is and how it should be governed. Her current operating role as Chief Strategy Officer for Data and AI at Cyera keeps her inside the AI security and governance debate that boards are now expected to lead. She holds 10 patents, has been named Forbes “AI Maverick of the 21st Century,” and has been recognised across multiple Top 100 AI and Top 50 Women in Tech rankings. The reason senior buyers keep coming back is simpler than the credentials: she has shipped this work, and she will tell a room what actually happens when you try. Key speaking topics Enterprise AI deployment and operating model AI governance, security, and responsible deployment Workforce redesign in the age of AI Data strategy and enterprise data readiness AI for boards and executive teams Post-AI organisational design Innovation discipline inside large enterprises Ideal for Boards and executive committees deciding how to own AI strategy and risk CDOs, CIOs, CTOs, and Chief AI Officers moving from pilots to enterprise deployment CHROs and transformation leads redesigning the workforce around AI capability CISOs and risk leaders building AI governance and security frameworks Audience outcomes A clearer view of where their AI programme actually sits on the path from pilot to enterprise deployment. A workable mental model for AI governance and security at board level, not a compliance checklist. A direct read on what the workforce conversation looks like once AI starts to land in operations. Specific deployment lessons drawn from named Fortune 100 environments, not abstract case studies. Confidence in deciding what to build, what to buy, and what to leave alone.

Why organisations work with Mira Murati She led the teams that built ChatGPT, DALL-E and Sora at OpenAI. Few speakers can describe frontier AI development from the operational seat; most describe it from the outside. She is the active founder and CEO of Thinking Machines Lab, currently raising capital, hiring researchers, building infrastructure and shipping product against the same labs leaders read about in the news. The view she offers is current. She has spoken publicly on AI governance from the position of someone who has actually shipped the systems being regulated, including at Dartmouth’s Thayer School of Engineering and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg Center. That changes the credibility of the conversation in a boardroom. Thinking Machines Lab is structured as a public benefit corporation. The trade-offs between commercial pressure and societal responsibility are written into how the company is governed, which is rare among frontier AI labs. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Thinking Machines Lab, an AI public benefit corporation that raised $2 billion at a $12 billion valuation in July 2025, the largest seed round in venture capital history. Former Chief Technology Officer of OpenAI, with leadership across research, product and safety teams behind ChatGPT, DALL-E, Codex, Sora and GPT-4. Briefly named interim CEO of OpenAI during the November 2023 board transition. Senior product roles at Tesla on the Model X programme and at Leap Motion before joining OpenAI in 2018. Recognised in TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in AI (2024), TIME 100 Next (2023), Fortune’s 100 Most Powerful Women in Business (2023) and CNBC Changemakers (2026). Honorary Doctor of Science from Dartmouth College (2024); Bachelor of Engineering from Dartmouth’s Thayer School of Engineering and Bachelor of Arts from Colby College. Biography The decisions about how today’s frontier AI systems would be deployed were made inside small research labs, largely closed to outside scrutiny. The most consequential of those decisions, around ChatGPT, DALL-E, Sora and the GPT series, were made in rooms most boards still cannot see into. Mira Murati was in those rooms. She was Chief Technology Officer at OpenAI from 2022 until 2024, leading the research, product and safety teams behind the systems that brought generative AI into mainstream use. Her tenure included the November 2023 board episode, when she was named interim CEO during the brief removal of Sam Altman, returning to the CTO role within days. She left OpenAI in September 2024, by which point the products her teams had shipped were in everyday use by hundreds of millions of people. In February 2025 she founded Thinking Machines Lab, a public benefit corporation based in San Francisco. The company raised $2 billion at a $12 billion valuation in July 2025, led by Andreessen Horowitz with Nvidia, AMD, Cisco, Accel and Jane Street participating. It was the largest seed round in venture capital history. The lab’s first product, Tinker, launched in October 2025 as an API that lets researchers fine-tune frontier open-weight models without managing the underlying compute. Princeton, Stanford and Berkeley were among the early users. For senior audiences, this is unusual access: a builder’s view of frontier AI from someone still building. Murati has written for Daedalus, the journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, on the language and creativity of large models. She has spoken publicly on AI governance at Dartmouth’s Thayer School of Engineering and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg Center. Just over a year after she left OpenAI, Thinking Machines Lab was reportedly in early talks to raise capital at a $50 billion valuation. Key speaking topics Frontier AI development and deployment Generative AI and large language models AI safety, governance and responsible deployment AI product leadership at scale Public benefit corporation models for frontier technology Fine-tuning and model customisation AI strategy and adoption for senior leaders Ideal for Boards and senior executive teams setting AI strategy and capital allocation CTOs, CIOs and chief AI officers responsible for technology platform decisions Public-sector and policy audiences engaging with AI regulation Technology investors and corporate development teams evaluating AI exposure Audience outcomes A direct read on how frontier AI labs actually make development and deployment decisions, drawn from someone who made them. A grounded view of where current AI capability sits and how far the field is from the frontier claims circulating in headlines. A working understanding of governance trade-offs from a builder’s perspective, including how a public benefit corporation structures them. A sharper view of which AI investments and adoption decisions deserve board-level attention over the next 18 to 36 months.

Why organisations work with Lolita Taub She runs a working venture fund built on the community-as-moat thesis, so the argument is tested against capital decisions every week, not theorised from the outside. She has sat on both sides of the cap table: $50M-plus in enterprise tech sold at IBM and Cisco, then 100-plus pre-seed and seed investments through Backstage Capital, The Community Fund and Ganas Ventures. She built Ganas Ventures as the first Latina-led traditional VC fund using a public fundraising structure under SEC Rule 506(c), which gives her direct experience of investor access as a design problem, not a diversity slogan. Her audience network of 90,000-plus founders, funders and operators, plus a 22,000-subscriber newsletter, is itself proof of the playbook she teaches. Biography highlights General Partner and founder, Ganas Ventures, investing pre-seed and seed across the US and Latin America. Co-founder of The Community Fund with Jesse Middleton and Flybridge, a $5M vehicle backing community-driven startups. Forbes 30 Under 30 Finalist; World Economic Forum Global Shaper across San Diego, Madrid and New York hubs. 2x TEDx speaker; keynote stages at Meta, Zoom, Stanford and Harvard. 2025 Stella Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award; 2025 ¡HOLA! Latina Powerhouse in the Disrupters category. MBA, IE Business School; BA International Relations, University of Southern California. Biography Most early-stage companies are built on a marketing assumption that no longer holds. Distribution channels are saturated, paid acquisition costs keep climbing, and customers move on the moment a cheaper alternative appears. The companies that survive are the ones whose users, contributors and earliest believers feel ownership over the product, and that is a structural design choice, not a campaign. Ganas Ventures was built around that observation. As General Partner and founder, Taub invests pre-seed and seed cheques into community-driven companies across the US and Latin America, and runs the fund itself as a community of operators, angels and LPs rather than a closed institutional vehicle. Before Ganas, she co-founded The Community Fund with Jesse Middleton and Flybridge, a $5M fund seeding the same thesis into 100 startups. The argument has weight because she sold the technology stack before she invested in it. Seven-plus years at IBM and Cisco produced the first US Cloud sale at QAD and the first Cisco IoT Connected Cities project, and a track record across data analytics, security and cloud. She then moved through Backstage Capital, Indie.VC, K Fund and NextGen Venture Partners, and now sits on more than 100 portfolio cap tables. Outside the fund, she is a 2x TEDx speaker and World Economic Forum Global Shaper who has keynoted at Meta, Zoom, Stanford and Harvard. The 2025 Stella Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award and a place on ¡HOLA!’s Latina Powerhouse list recognise a working venture practice, not a personal story. Key speaking topics Community as commercial moat Early-stage venture strategy Building investor and founder networks Underestimated founders and capital access Latin America and US cross-border tech Responsible AI and bias in product Inclusive investing and Rule 506(c) fund design Ideal for Founders and operating teams at pre-seed through Series A Corporate venture, innovation and ecosystem leads building community plays CMOs and growth leaders rethinking brand around customer ownership LP and family office audiences allocating to emerging-manager strategies Audience outcomes A working definition of community moat that can be applied to a specific product, not a generic brand claim A view of how early capital is actually allocated to community-driven companies, from a GP writing those cheques Practical reference points from 100-plus portfolio investments, including what separates a real community from an audience A grounded reading of how inclusion shows up in commercial strategy and fund design, away from political signalling Direct exposure to the US and Latin America early-stage landscape from an investor active on both sides

Why organisations work with Neil Sahota He was an operator inside the IBM Watson Group when cognitive computing first met enterprise budgets, which gives him a deployment vocabulary most AI speakers lack. As co-founder of the UN’s AI for Good Initiative, he has helped scope and govern AI projects across the Sustainable Development Goals, giving boards a credible reference point on responsible deployment. His book “Own the A.I. Revolution,” named a Soundview Best Business Book of 2019 and published by McGraw Hill, sets out a buyer-side framework for AI investment that holds up in front of a commercial executive committee. He sits at the intersection of enterprise AI and capital allocation through Tech Coast Angels and advisory roles with Miramar and CerraCap, so he reads AI strategy through an investor lens as well as an engineer’s. As Chief Innovation Officer at UC Irvine’s Samueli School of Engineering, he keeps a continuous line into university research, which means his keynote content moves with the field, not behind it. Biography highlights IBM Master Inventor and former World Wide Business Development Leader, IBM Watson Group United Nations Artificial Intelligence Advisor and co-founder of the UN’s AI for Good Initiative Chief Innovation Officer, Samueli School of Engineering, UC Irvine Author of “Own the A.I. Revolution” (McGraw Hill), Soundview Best Business Book of 2019 Forbes contributor; featured in the Wall Street Journal, BBC, Wired, Fast Company and Business Insider CEO of ACSI Labs; member of Tech Coast Angels; advisor to Miramar Ventures and CerraCap Ventures Co-host of the “AI for All” podcast Biography Inside the IBM Watson Group, in the years between the Jeopardy! Grand Challenge and Watson’s first commercial healthcare deployments, a small group of business development leaders had to teach Fortune 500 buyers what cognitive computing was actually for. Neil Sahota was one of them. That experience, building enterprise AI cases when the category did not yet exist, is the foundation of everything he now offers a senior audience. He carried that operator perspective into the United Nations as an AI Advisor and co-founder of the AI for Good Initiative, where the work shifted from selling AI capability to governing it. The Initiative now coordinates AI projects against the Sustainable Development Goals, and Sahota’s role gives him a working view of how AI behaves at scale, across jurisdictions, and under public scrutiny. Few keynote speakers in the AI category hold both an enterprise deployment credential and a multilateral governance seat. His book “Own the A.I. Revolution,” published by McGraw Hill and named a Soundview Best Business Book of 2019, sets out an investment logic for AI that a commercial executive committee can actually use: where to play, how to assemble the team, how to evaluate vendors and partners. As Chief Innovation Officer at UC Irvine’s Samueli School of Engineering, and as a contributor to Forbes and a regular voice in the Wall Street Journal, BBC and Wired, he keeps that argument current as the technology and the regulatory perimeter both move. The buyer test is simple. A leadership team that wants a serious conversation about turning AI ambition into operating advantage, with someone who has built it, governed it, and written the framework, gets one in the room. Key speaking topics Enterprise AI strategy and deployment Responsible AI and governance Generative AI and the future of business AI for social impact and the UN Sustainable Development Goals Innovation, entrepreneurship and emerging technology The future of work in the age of AI Ideal for Boards and executive committees setting AI investment priorities CIOs, CTOs and Chief AI Officers moving from pilot to production Heads of innovation and corporate venture leads scoping AI partnerships Public sector and multilateral audiences working on AI governance and public-good applications Audience outcomes A clearer read on where AI investment produces commercial advantage and where it produces sunk cost A practical view of AI governance from someone who has helped shape it at the United Nations Specific reference cases drawn from IBM Watson-era enterprise deployments and current UN AI for Good projects A sharper internal language for AI strategy that a board, a finance committee and an engineering function can all use

Why organisations work with Dona Sarkar She runs the program that lets enterprise developers extend Microsoft Copilot onto their own data, so the practical content of her sessions is what she ships day-to-day at Microsoft, not commentary about it. She brings a track record of building global technical communities at scale, including the Windows Insider Program of around 20 million members, which informs how she advises leaders on adoption inside large workforces. Her work on accessibility and inclusive AI gives organisations a substantive position on responsible AI that goes beyond policy statements into product design and developer practice. She codifies her experience into named frameworks her audiences can use, including the SHENANIGANS approach to solving business problems and a structured method for tackling non-promotable work. She speaks credibly to the human side of AI transformation, from imposter syndrome in technical careers to mental health conversations at work, drawing on her own published books rather than borrowed material. Biography highlights Chief Troublemaker, Microsoft AI and Copilot Extensibility Program. Former Director of Technology for Microsoft Accessibility, leading inclusive design across the company. Led the Windows Insider Program from 2016 to 2019, a global community of around 20 million members. Author of The Imposter Syndrome Banishing Spell, Model 47: A Startup Storybook and You Had Me at Hello World, alongside three young-adult novels published by Harper Collins. Featured in Fast Company’s 100 Most Productive People; profiled in Fast Company and Microsoft’s own publications. Founder of Prima Dona, an ethical fashion line based in Seattle, alongside her engineering career. Biography Microsoft built Copilot, then had to answer the harder question: how do enterprises actually deploy generative AI on their own data, inside their own workflows, without losing the accessibility, governance and developer discipline that make software trustworthy. That is the program Dona Sarkar runs as Chief Troublemaker for Microsoft’s AI and Copilot Extensibility Program, working directly with the developers and IT leaders responsible for moving AI from pilot to production. Before this remit she was Director of Technology for Microsoft Accessibility, a role that shaped her view that inclusive design is engineering, not policy. She led the Windows Insider Program from 2016 to 2019, growing it into a global community of around 20 million members who tested early Windows builds, and she has run developer advocacy across HoloLens and Power Platform. Each of those roles required her to translate engineering decisions for non-technical leaders and to turn vague ambitions into concrete adoption. Outside Microsoft she has published books on imposter syndrome, startup methodology and mentorship, alongside three young-adult novels with Harper Collins. She founded Prima Dona, an ethical fashion line in Seattle, and has coached founders in emerging markets in East and West Africa. Fast Company has named her one of its 100 Most Productive People and profiled her approach to managing complex parallel careers. For senior buyers, her value is operational credibility on the enterprise AI question boards keep asking. She is not describing a market she observes. She runs the platform inside it. Key speaking topics Enterprise generative AI and Copilot deployment Inclusive AI and accessibility in product design Developer community and adoption at scale The future of work alongside AI agents Innovation frameworks for large organisations Career advancement and non-promotable work Mental health and imposter syndrome in technical careers Ideal for CIOs, CTOs and chief data officers planning enterprise AI deployment CHROs and heads of talent designing workforces around AI capability Heads of accessibility, DEI and responsible AI Engineering and developer relations leaders building internal AI fluency Audience outcomes A clearer view of where Copilot and generative AI add operating value on proprietary data, and where they do not A working vocabulary for inclusive AI that connects accessibility decisions to product and engineering practice Named frameworks for innovation and career progression that audiences can apply inside their teams A more honest conversation about imposter syndrome, mental health and burnout in technical organisations A read on Microsoft’s direction of travel on Copilot extensibility from someone responsible for delivering it

Why organisations work with Aubrey Blanche-Sarellano She built the Balanced Teams Diversity Assessment used inside the Atlassian Team Playbook, giving People teams a measurement framework they can run themselves rather than a workshop they have to repeat. She has held the senior internal seat twice, at Atlassian and Culture Amp, so her recommendations come from running the function at scale, not from observing it. Her work on AI ethics is grounded in current academic study at Cambridge’s Leverhulme Centre, which means the responsible-AI content is current with regulation rather than recycled from 2021 DEI decks. She treats equity as a product and operations problem. That makes her useful to CHROs, Heads of Product, and AI leads, not only to DEI specialists. She speaks credibly to the post-DEI-backlash context: how to keep inclusion outcomes when the political signalling has to come down. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of The Mathpath, advising on equitable operations, responsible AI, and ESG. Former Global Head of Equitable Design & Impact, Culture Amp. Former Global Head of Diversity & Belonging, Atlassian. Built the function from scratch. Inventor of the Balanced Teams approach and the Balanced Teams Diversity Assessment in the Atlassian Team Playbook. Master’s candidate in AI Ethics and Society, Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, University of Cambridge. Board director at Circle of Blue and the Culture Amp Foundation; limited partner at Operator Collective. Featured in Wired, Wall Street Journal, Australian Financial Review, and USA Today. Biography Diversity programmes were designed for a political environment that no longer exists. Budgets are smaller, scrutiny is sharper, and the language that worked five years ago now invites litigation in some markets and ridicule in others. The companies that still want inclusion outcomes have a problem: they need the results, but they cannot keep running the programme in its original form. Aubrey Blanche-Sarellano works on that problem from the operations side. She built Atlassian’s Diversity & Belonging function from scratch and scaled it across the company’s international expansion, then joined Culture Amp as the first Global Head of Equitable Design & Impact. The Balanced Teams Diversity Assessment she developed at Atlassian became part of the company’s public Team Playbook, which is why her frameworks are familiar to People teams who have never met her. Through The Mathpath, her consultancy, she now advises leaders on the same question at a higher altitude: how to embed equity into talent processes, product decisions, and AI deployment so that the outcomes survive without the political infrastructure. Her current academic work at Cambridge’s Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence sits behind the responsible-AI content, which has become a larger share of her client engagements. She is direct about what does not work. Unconscious bias training is not, in her reading, a solution. Equitable design is. Her audiences leave with a clearer view of where inequity is actually produced inside their organisation and which operating levers, talent process, product practice, AI tooling, will move it. Key speaking topics Equitable operations and organisational design Responsible AI and algorithmic bias Talent process redesign and ERG programmes Inclusion in a post-DEI-backlash context Equitable product development ESG and ethical business operations Ideal for CHROs and Heads of People rebuilding inclusion strategy under new constraints Heads of Product and AI leads embedding fairness into model deployment and product practice ERG sponsors and DEI leads under pressure to demonstrate operating impact, not activity Executive teams reviewing where to take DEI investment next Audience outcomes A clearer map of where inequity is produced inside your own talent and product systems A working definition of equitable design, with examples of where it replaces conventional DEI activity Specific guidance on evaluating AI tools for fairness risk before deployment A read on how to keep inclusion outcomes when the political signalling has to come down Language for talking about equity that holds up in front of a sceptical board

Why organisations work with Brian Brackeen He has run a face recognition company at commercial scale and publicly refused to sell that technology to law enforcement, which gives his arguments on AI governance a credibility most consultants cannot match. He can speak to algorithmic bias from inside the engineering stack, not from the outside as a critic, because he has shipped the models and seen where the failure modes sit. As General Partner of a $50M fund backing underrepresented founders, he brings a capital-allocation lens to questions of inclusion that boards typically hear framed only as workforce or culture issues. His 2018 TechCrunch op-ed against police use of facial recognition shaped industry debate ahead of formal regulation. Boards weighing AI policy get a practitioner who set a market precedent, not a commentator describing one. Biography highlights Founder and former CEO of Kairos, a face recognition AI company named to the Wall Street Journal’s Top 25 Startups list in 2013. General Partner at Lightship Capital, a $50M Cincinnati-based venture fund backing women, founders of colour, LGBTQ+ founders, and founders with disabilities. Author of a June 2018 TechCrunch op-ed arguing that commercial facial recognition should not be sold to government or police use. Returned to Kairos in 2021 as chair of the scientific advisory board, focused on eliminating racial bias in face recognition datasets. Earlier career: Senior Project Manager at Apple and Senior Managing Consultant at IBM. Co-founder of Lightship Foundation, which owns Black Tech Week. Biography Face recognition is one of the few AI categories where a founder has publicly walked away from a commercial market on principle. In June 2018, the CEO of Kairos published an op-ed in TechCrunch refusing to sell the company’s technology to law enforcement, citing the accuracy gap for people of colour and the consequences of misidentification. The argument landed before the broader regulatory conversation caught up. That founder is Brian Brackeen. He had built Kairos from 2012, with prior operating roles at Apple as a Senior Project Manager and at IBM as a Senior Managing Consultant. Under his leadership, Kairos was named to the Wall Street Journal’s Top 25 Startups list in 2013 and positioned alongside Microsoft and Face++ in the global face recognition market. A board dispute removed him as CEO in 2018; he returned in 2021 to chair the scientific advisory board, with a specific mandate on algorithmic bias. The work since has been about capital, not code. As General Partner at Lightship Capital, a $50M fund he runs with co-founder Candice Matthews Brackeen, Brackeen invests in underrepresented founders and in regions outside the coastal venture hubs. Lightship Foundation, the family’s parallel non-profit, owns Black Tech Week. The investing thesis treats inclusion as a market inefficiency, not a values exercise. For senior leaders, the value of his perspective is the combination of these two operating experiences. He can describe where bias enters an AI system at the dataset level, why a vendor might be the wrong place to outsource that judgement, and what the capital signal looks like when an entire founder population is being underwritten by the same narrow set of pattern-matching investors. Key speaking topics AI ethics and algorithmic bias Facial recognition and surveillance technology Responsible AI governance Venture capital and underrepresented founders Diversity in technology Entrepreneurship and scale-up leadership Ideal for Boards and executive teams setting AI governance policy CTOs, CDOs, and Chief AI Officers responsible for deployment decisions Investors, LPs, and corporate venture teams reviewing portfolio inclusion Innovation and DEI leaders working at the intersection of product and people Audience outcomes A practitioner’s account of where bias actually enters AI systems, and why surface-level audits miss it A defensible framework for deciding which AI use cases an organisation should refuse, not just constrain A clearer view of how capital allocation patterns shape which technologies get built and by whom Direct exposure to the trade-offs faced by founders deploying AI in regulated and sensitive contexts

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

Why organisations work with Byron Reese He places today’s AI moment inside a 100,000-year arc of technology shifts, giving senior leaders a framework for long-range decisions that vendor briefings cannot supply. As CEO of Gigaom, he sits at the intersection of independent technology analysis and operating leadership, which lets him speak to both the engineering reality and the boardroom question. His five books, published by Simon & Schuster and BenBella, take positions on machine consciousness, automation, and the future of work that are specific and contestable, not generic optimism. He addresses AI without the doom-or-hype binary that dominates the speaking circuit, which is what most leadership audiences are quietly asking for. Biography highlights CEO and publisher of Gigaom, an independent technology research firm. Author of five books, including The Fourth Age (Simon & Schuster, 2018), described by The New York Times as “entertaining and engaging”. Founder of multiple technology companies, with two NASDAQ IPOs and several US patents to his name. Hosts podcasts on artificial intelligence, including Voices in AI and The Agora Podcast. Featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, Bloomberg Businessweek, USA Today and the Financial Times. Bloomberg Businessweek credited him with “quietly pioneer[ing] a new breed of media company”. Biography Most futurists work in five-year horizons because that is what corporate planning cycles demand. The cost is that the most important question, which is what AI actually does to the human story, gets answered by analogy and anecdote rather than by argument. Byron Reese works in a different timeframe. In The Fourth Age, published by Simon & Schuster in 2018, he argues that technology has reshaped humanity three times: fire and language, agriculture and cities, the wheel and writing. Artificial intelligence and robotics, he argues, are now driving the fourth. The book reframes machine consciousness, automation and the future of work as questions of philosophy and history rather than software roadmaps, and The New York Times called it “entertaining and engaging”. His credibility is operational as well as intellectual. As CEO and publisher of Gigaom, he runs one of the better-known independent technology research firms. Before that he founded and sold multiple companies, took two through NASDAQ IPOs, and built consumer internet platforms that Bloomberg Businessweek described as “a new breed of media company”. He holds several US patents in crowdsourcing and content technology. Reese is, by his own description, the “Future of” guy: he has written and spoken on the future of AI, work, banking, education, agriculture, and the planet. His later books, Stories, Dice, and Rocks That Think and We Are Agora, extend the same long-range argument into how humans forecast and how human collectives behave. The thread that connects all of it, and the reason boards keep booking him, is that he is willing to take a position on where this is going. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and the future of work The long arc of technology and human civilisation Automation and workforce redesign Machine consciousness and AI ethics Innovation in conditions of rapid technological change Reasoned optimism as a leadership stance on technology The future of education, banking and agriculture Ideal for Boards and executive teams setting long-range AI and automation strategy CHROs and workforce planners redesigning roles around AI capability Innovation and strategy leaders in financial services, education and industrial sectors Conference audiences looking for a substantive counterweight to AI hype and AI doom Audience outcomes A clearer mental model of where AI sits in the longer history of human technology Sharper questions for internal AI strategy conversations, particularly on workforce and capital allocation A credible counter-position to the dominant doom-or-hype framing of AI in the press A specific account of how automation reshapes employment, drawn from Reese’s published argument rather than generic forecasts Renewed confidence that leadership decisions on technology can be made with intellectual rigour, not faith