AI Ethics & Responsible Technology

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

Why organisations work with I. Stephanie Boyce She led a 200-year-old national professional body through regulatory change, constitutional debate, and sector-wide reform. Her argument for accountable governance is drawn from operational experience, not advisory distance. Her AI ethics position is governance-first: as Law Society President, she led the development of a published set of principles for the ethical use of AI in legal practice, connecting AI adoption directly to legal accountability, bias mitigation, and public trust, among the earliest profession-led frameworks to do so. On inclusion, she does not argue from the outside. She held the most senior elected role in a major regulated institution as its first Black president and first person of colour, which gives her a precise read on the structural distance between a diversity commitment and a genuinely diverse institution. She connects topics most organisations treat separately, AI accountability, DEI governance, reputational integrity, crisis leadership, through the single governance question boards most often defer: when an institutional decision causes harm, who is responsible? The PUSH framework (Persevere Until Something Happens) gives leadership teams a named, teachable approach to resilience grounded in her own documented professional journey through institutional exclusion and resistance at every level of a major profession. Biography highlights 177th President of the Law Society of England and Wales (2021-2022); sixth woman, first Black office-holder and first person of colour to hold the role in the institution’s 200-year history LLM in Public Law and Global Governance, King’s College London; King’s Alumna of the Year 2022 CBE (2026 New Year Honours) for services to the Legal Profession, Diversity, and Access to Justice Commissioner, National Preparedness Commission; Commissioner, Shinkwin Commission; member, HM Treasury and BEIS independent taskforce on socio-economic diversity in UK financial and professional services Named in the Power List 100 Most Influential Black People in the UK in 2021, 2022, and 2023; Governance Hot 100 Board Influencer (2020) Paris Bar Medal from the Ordre des avocats de Paris (2024), awarded for contributions to human rights and the rule of law Fellow of the Chartered Governance Institute; Fellow of King’s College London; Fellow of the RSA Biography It took the Law Society of England and Wales two centuries to elect its first Black president. I. Stephanie Boyce became the 177th in March 2021, with 20 years of practising solicitor experience and an LLM in Public Law and Global Governance from King’s College London, qualifications that gave her both the legal standing and the governance framework for what the role required. Her presidency ran through the pandemic, sharp parliamentary attacks on the legal profession, and the most significant solicitor qualification reform in 30 years. During that time, she led the development of the Law Society’s published lawtech principles, a governance framework for the ethical use of AI in legal practice. The framework connected AI adoption to legal accountability and bias governance at a time when most profession-led work in this area had not advanced beyond aspiration. Boyce’s governance argument rests on an experience most governance advisers do not hold. As the first Black president of a 200-year-old institution, she has encountered the structural gap between stated values and leadership composition from inside the institution itself. That shapes her work on DEI accountability: framing inclusion not as a moral commitment but as a governance question: who decides, and who is responsible when structural inequality persists? She holds a CBE and the Paris Bar Medal from the Ordre des avocats de Paris, awarded for contributions to human rights and the rule of law. She is a commissioner of the National Preparedness Commission and was named in the Power List 100 Most Influential Black People in the UK in 2021, 2022, and 2023. She now works with boards and executive teams across regulated industries through Stephanie Boyce Consulting. Key speaking topics Governance and institutional accountability Ethical AI and responsible technology adoption Inclusion, representation, and belonging at leadership level Rule of law and public trust in regulated environments Social mobility and access to professional careers Resilience and leadership under scrutiny Crisis leadership and institutional change Ideal for Boards, governance committees, and general counsel in regulated industries Executive teams in financial services, legal, and public sector organisations CHROs and DEI leadership navigating the gap between policy and structural change Professional services firms managing reputational risk and stakeholder accountability Audience outcomes A clearer framework for assessing whether governance structures are built for ethical accountability rather than regulatory compliance alone Board-level questions to test whether AI adoption decisions have genuine accountability assigned, not just policy language A more precise read of the structural distance between a DEI commitment and a measurably inclusive institution Practical thinking on what institutional trust requires from those at the top, particularly during crisis and reputational pressure The PUSH framework as a named, teachable approach to institutional resilience for leaders navigating complex or high-scrutiny environments

Why organisations work with Marcel Pesch He runs a structured AI executive education programme, MMAI, with practitioner faculty drawn from Deutsche Bahn, E.ON, Strategyzer, and academic and legal specialists. Few keynote speakers come with their own curriculum. His material covers the full operating stack: generative AI, data science, AI Act compliance, automation and agents, and leadership in the AI era. Audiences leave with a managerial map, not a tour of tools. He treats fairness, bias, and equality of opportunity as operating problems for organisations deploying AI, not as a separate ethics conversation. Fifteen years of coaching practice underpins the keynote register. Sessions translate into how managers behave on Monday, not just what they understood on Friday. Active member of the German AI Association (KI Bundesverband), with a stated engagement in AI standards and ethical guidelines. Biography highlights Founder of academy4.ai, an AI education and training organisation Designer of the MMAI (Master Management with AI) programme, a nine-module cohort-based course covering AI strategy, compliance, and deployment Faculty network on MMAI includes Prof. Dr. Johannes Stübinger (HS Coburg), Dr. Kristina Schreiber (LOSCHELDER), and practitioners from Deutsche Bahn, E.ON, and Strategyzer Member of the German AI Association (KI Bundesverband) Over 15 years of professional coaching experience with individuals and organisations Keynote topics include “AI on Steroids”, “AI & Diversity and Inclusion”, “AI & Inequality of Opportunity”, and “AI & the Workforce of Tomorrow” Biography Most companies have already bought into AI. The harder question is whether their managers can use it well: govern its decisions, interrogate its outputs, and redesign work around it. That is the gap Marcel Pesch built academy4.ai to close. Through the MMAI (Master Management with AI) programme, Pesch and his faculty take working professionals through nine modules covering generative AI, data science, AI Act compliance, marketing and sales applications, automation and agentic systems, sustainability, project management, and leadership in the AI era. Faculty draw on academic specialists, legal experts at LOSCHELDER, and practitioners from Deutsche Bahn, E.ON, and Strategyzer. Alongside the curriculum, Pesch speaks publicly on the harder political content of AI deployment: bias in algorithmic systems, equality of opportunity, and the way AI is reshaping who gets which jobs. He is a member of the German AI Association (KI Bundesverband), engaged in standards and ethical guidelines for the field. Fifteen years of coaching shape his keynote register. Sessions are designed to leave senior audiences with a managerial map of where AI changes their work, where it does not, and where the next governance and fairness decisions will sit. Key speaking topics AI literacy for managers and executives Operationalising AI beyond pilots AI Act and regulatory compliance for business leaders Bias and equality of opportunity in algorithmic systems Automation and agentic systems in the workplace The AI-era workforce and future skills Leading teams in AI-augmented organisations Ideal for C-suite teams and senior managers preparing to deploy AI across operations Heads of HR, transformation, and learning planning AI workforce upskilling Boards seeking a structured view of AI governance, compliance, and risk DEI and ethics leads working with technical teams on algorithmic fairness Audience outcomes A practical map of where AI changes managerial work and where it does not Sharper language for governing AI decisions, model outputs, and vendor claims A clearer view of bias and equality-of-opportunity questions in algorithmic systems A workable next step for AI literacy across leadership and team levels

Why organisations work with Michelle K. Lee A rare three-sided view of AI: senior executive inside Google, Vice President of Amazon Web Services’ Machine Learning Solutions Lab, and a presidentially appointed agency head responsible for national IP and technology policy. Board-room credibility built on board service. Current director at MassMutual, Unity Technologies and The MIT Corporation, so audiences hear a peer, not a presenter. AI governance grounded in the law and the operating reality. Founder and CEO of Obsidian Strategies, advising on AI opportunity selection and the governance that goes with it. A track record of running AI at scale. Led a global AWS team that built machine learning into operations, customer experience and new revenue lines for clients across industries. Federal-scale execution. Ran the 10,000-person USPTO as the first woman to direct the agency, including its own AI strategy and digital modernisation. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, Obsidian Strategies, advising Fortune-class companies and boards on AI opportunities and AI governance. Former Vice President, Machine Learning Solutions Lab and Computer Vision, Amazon Web Services. Former Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the first woman in the role. Former Deputy General Counsel and Head of Patents and Patent Strategy at Google. Board director: The MIT Corporation, MassMutual, Unity Technologies. Co-founder of ChIPs. MIT-trained computer scientist (B.S., M.S., EECS) and Stanford Law graduate (J.D.). Featured by the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, NPR, MIT Sloan Management Review, CES, SXSW, the World Knowledge Forum and the National Association of Corporate Directors. Biography Most boards have moved past the question of whether AI matters. The harder problem is which AI decisions belong with the board, which belong with the operators, and how to govern a technology whose capabilities and regulatory picture keep moving. Michelle K. Lee has worked that problem from every side of the table. At Google she spent eight years inside one of the most consequential technology companies of the era, ending as Deputy General Counsel and Head of Patents and Patent Strategy. At Amazon Web Services she ran the Machine Learning Solutions Lab and Computer Vision businesses as a Vice President, leading a global team that helped clients across industries build machine learning into operations, customer experience and new revenue lines. Few AI advisors have actually shipped AI at that scale. Between those roles she was appointed by the President to serve as Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the first woman to hold the position. She ran a 10,000-person agency, set its own AI strategy, and was the principal advisor to the President on intellectual property policy. That public-sector vantage point is what makes her boardroom counsel on AI regulation and governance unusually grounded. Today she runs Obsidian Strategies, advising Fortune-class companies and their boards on where to deploy AI for material return and how to govern it credibly. She sits on the boards of MassMutual, Unity Technologies and The MIT Corporation, so the people she advises know she is making the same decisions in her day job. Key speaking topics AI strategy for the board and the executive team AI governance, ethics and regulation Generative AI: opportunities and operational risks Machine learning in customer experience and operations Digital transformation and innovation Intellectual property in the age of AI Director-level technology oversight Ideal for Boards and audit, risk or technology committees framing AI oversight and governance. CEO, CIO, CTO, Chief AI Officer and General Counsel audiences moving AI from pilot to production. Senior leadership offsites on AI strategy, regulation and competitive positioning. Industry events convening regulated sectors (financial services, insurance, healthcare, public sector) navigating AI policy. Audience outcomes A clearer view of where AI investment produces measurable return and where it does not. A practical board-level framework for AI governance, risk and accountability. A read on where AI regulation is heading and what it means for current strategy. A more honest conversation about generative AI: what to deploy, what to defer, and what to refuse. Confidence that the speaker has personally built, operated and regulated the technology under discussion.

Why organisations work with Zack Kass He built the commercial engine inside OpenAI that translated frontier research into deployed products, which is a different vantage point from any external futurist or consultant. His “Unmetered Intelligence” framework gives boards a concrete way to plan for AI as infrastructure, not as a vendor decision, and it travels into capital allocation conversations rather than staying inside the IT function. He works directly with the leadership teams of named global organisations, including Coca-Cola, Morgan Stanley, Microsoft, Deloitte, and Amgen, so the room recognises that the playbook has been pressure-tested against companies they compete with. His Wiley book, The Next Renaissance, is a USA Today, Publishers Weekly, and LA Times bestseller, which gives a CHRO or CIO a coherent reference for their executive team and not only a keynote. He is a recurring voice on Bloomberg and CNBC on AI risk, capital, and workforce impact, so the credibility check a buyer does after the call confirms the brief. Biography highlights Former Head of Go-To-Market at OpenAI; built the sales, partnerships, and customer success teams. Author of The Next Renaissance: AI and the Expansion of Human Potential (Wiley, 2026); USA Today, Publishers Weekly, and LA Times bestseller. Executive-in-Residence, University of Virginia McIntire School of Commerce. Founder of ZKAI LLC; author of the “Unmetered Intelligence” white paper. Advisor to Fortune 1,000 leadership teams including Coca-Cola, Morgan Stanley, Microsoft, Deloitte, PayPal, MetLife, TikTok, Amgen, and The Hartford. Recurring AI commentator for Bloomberg and CNBC; bylined contributor to Fortune. B.A., University of California, Berkeley. Biography OpenAI’s research only became a market because someone had to translate model weights into contracts, support, and adoption inside the world’s largest companies. That commercial scaffolding was built by the team Kass led as Head of Go-To-Market, and it is the unusual seat that shapes what he now offers to boards. The proposition is operational. Most leadership teams have approved AI pilots. Few have made the harder decisions about where intelligence sits in the workflow, who is accountable for outcomes, and what gets reorganised when cognitive capacity stops being scarce. Kass writes about that shift in his Wiley book, The Next Renaissance, and codifies it in his “Unmetered Intelligence” framework, which treats AI as infrastructure on the order of electricity rather than as a product category. The advisory base is concrete. Coca-Cola, Morgan Stanley, Microsoft, Deloitte, PayPal, MetLife, TikTok, Amgen, and The Hartford have all worked with him directly, and the case studies that surface in his keynotes are drawn from those rooms. Bloomberg and CNBC use him as a recurring voice on AI risk and capital allocation, and his Fortune writing pushes the same argument into wider business debate. He is also Executive-in-Residence at UVA McIntire, which keeps the research and the boardroom work on the same circuit. What boards take from him is a sharper read on the next two to three years of AI deployment, written in the language of operating decisions rather than technical features. The choices around workforce, capital, and capability sequencing are no longer theoretical for most executive teams, and Kass is one of the few voices who has watched them get made from the inside of the company that triggered them. Key speaking topics Applied AI strategy for Fortune 1,000 leadership teams The Unmetered Intelligence thesis AI deployment beyond pilots Workforce redesign in the age of AI The Next Renaissance: AI and human potential AI risk, regulation, and board governance Capital allocation and AI infrastructure Ideal for CEOs, CIOs, CTOs, and CHROs setting enterprise AI strategy Boards and audit committees pressure-testing AI risk and governance posture Senior leadership offsites focused on AI deployment and workforce redesign Industry conferences for financial services, technology, healthcare, and consumer goods Audience outcomes A clearer line between AI experimentation and the operating decisions that follow it A board-ready framing for AI as infrastructure, drawing on the Unmetered Intelligence thesis Specific reference points from named Fortune 1,000 deployments rather than generic case studies A defensible position on AI risk, capital allocation, and workforce impact to take back to executive teams