AI Ethics & Responsible Technology

Why organisations work with Carme Artigas Access to the EU AI Act from the inside: as the Council Presidency’s chief negotiator when the Act was concluded in December 2023, she knows which provisions were contested, how they were resolved, and where enforcement questions remain open – clarity that no commentator or academic can replicate. A UN-level governance map built from the source: as Co-Chair of the UN High-Level Advisory Body on AI, she coordinated 39 experts across 33 countries to produce Governing AI for Humanity – the blueprint for global AI oversight that national strategies and multilateral institutions are now implementing. She co-chaired the body alongside Google Senior Vice President James Manyika. A regulatory perspective grounded in commercial reality: she co-founded Synergic Partners and built it to 150 data scientists before Telefónica acquired it in 2015. Her understanding of AI governance is not abstract – it is shaped by how data and AI deployments actually function inside commercial organisations. The only person to have designed a national AI governance system from the ground up: as Spain’s inaugural Secretary of State for Digitalisation and AI, she built the National AI Strategy, data economy strategy, digital rights charter, and the first AI supervision agency on the European continent – giving her unusually concrete insight into what governance implementation demands of organisations. An active research presence at the frontier: as a Senior Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center, she continues to work on current AI governance and technology policy questions alongside leading security and policy scholars – not recounting past decisions. Biography highlights Spain’s first Secretary of State for Digitalisation and Artificial Intelligence (2020–2023); simultaneously president of the National Cybersecurity Institute and the Spanish Agency for the Supervision of AI Chief Council negotiator for the EU AI Act, concluded under Spain’s Presidency of the Council of the European Union in December 2023 – the world’s first comprehensive legal framework for artificial intelligence Co-Chair, UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Advisory Body on Artificial Intelligence (2023–2024); co-produced Governing AI for Humanity with James Manyika (Google Senior Vice President) and 37 other experts from 33 countries Senior Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School; first Spanish woman to hold the position Co-founder and CEO, Synergic Partners – built to 150 data scientists, acquired by Telefónica in 2015; previously CEO of Ericsson Innova (Ericsson Group’s European venture capital fund) Women in Tech Global Awards 2025, Lifetime Achievement; Stanford University Ambassador for Women in Data Science; member of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) Biography The EU AI Act is the world’s first comprehensive legal framework for artificial intelligence. Its provisions determine which AI applications organisations can legally deploy, which require conformity assessments, and which are prohibited. Most executives know the regulation exists. Few understand its architecture. Carme Artigas did not comment on these negotiations – she led them. As Spain’s first Secretary of State for Digitalisation and AI, she was the Council Presidency’s chief negotiator when the EU AI Act was concluded in December 2023. She had already built the foundations from scratch: Spain’s National AI Strategy, digital rights charter, data economy strategy, and the first AI supervision agency on the European continent. In parallel, she co-chaired the United Nations High-Level Advisory Body on AI – a 39-member group spanning 33 countries, convened by Secretary-General Guterres in October 2023. The body’s final report, Governing AI for Humanity, published in September 2024, proposed the first architecture for inclusive global AI oversight. She co-chaired it alongside Google Senior Vice President James Manyika. Before government, she co-founded Synergic Partners – a big data consultancy she built to 150 data scientists before Telefónica acquired it in 2015, remaining as CEO through full integration into the Group. As a Senior Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center since 2023, she continues to engage with governance questions at the intersection of technology, security, and public policy. Key speaking topics EU AI Act implementation and strategic compliance Global AI governance frameworks AI governance and responsible AI deployment Data strategy and big data Digital transformation and national digital policy International technology cooperation and geopolitics of AI Women in technology and digital leadership Ideal for Boards and C-suites with active AI strategies navigating EU AI Act obligations and global regulatory exposure Chief Legal, Risk, and Compliance Officers mapping their organisation’s AI regulatory position Chief Digital and Technology Officers operating in or supplying to European markets Government and public sector leaders developing or stress-testing national AI governance frameworks Audience outcomes A clear understanding of what the EU AI Act actually requires – which AI applications are prohibited, which are designated high-risk, and what conformity assessment obligations apply Insight into how the global governance architecture is developing at UN level and how it intersects with European regulation A framework for elevating AI governance from a compliance function to a board-level strategic priority Understanding of where the regulatory fault lines remain open and where future enforcement is likely to concentrate Practical language and reference points to brief boards, regulators, and partners on AI governance obligations

Why organisations work with Elaine Kasket She is one of the few cyberpsychologists in Europe who is also a clinically trained, HCPC-registered counselling psychologist, which means her advice on digital wellbeing is grounded in clinical practice, not commentary. Her work covers technology across the full lifespan, from “sharenting” to digital afterlife, which gives leaders a coherent framework for thinking about the employee, the customer, and the citizen as the same person. She wrote the definitive trade book on digital death and digital legacy, All the Ghosts in the Machine, and now leads on the psychology of AI companions and grief bots, an area few executive audiences have heard explained well. She has consulted to organisations including Netflix, Santander, Deloitte, the NHS and Hill & Knowlton Strategies, so the work translates from research into board-level conversations about AI, attention and surveillance. Her newest book, Reset, gives leadership teams a practical vocabulary for agency over technology rather than the usual digital detox framing, which most senior buyers find too thin for adult professional audiences. Biography highlights BPS-Chartered Psychologist and HCPC-Registered Counselling Psychologist; Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society Visiting Professor at the Centre for Death and Society, University of Bath; formerly Honorary Professor of Psychology at the University of Wolverhampton Author of Reset: Rethinking Your Digital World for a Happier Life (Elliott & Thompson, 2024) and All the Ghosts in the Machine (Robinson, 2019) TEDx Oxford speaker; featured expert in the Netflix documentary The Future Of: Life After Death Regular contributor to BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour, CNN, BBC Ideas, The Guardian, New Scientist, Psychology Today and Stylist Keynote engagements include Santander, Deloitte, the NHS, Royal Society of Medicine, Congreso Futuro, re:publica and the International Baccalaureate global conference Biography Most organisations talk about digital wellbeing in the language of the wellness industry: detoxes, screen-time apps, mindful breathing. The actual psychological problem is structural. Attention is being extracted, identity is being recorded, and the costs are showing up in engagement, retention and clinical mental health caseloads. That gap between the corporate vocabulary and the clinical reality is the space Elaine Kasket works in. She trained as a counselling psychologist before cyberpsychology was a discipline, and is registered with the HCPC alongside her chartered psychologist status with the British Psychological Society. That clinical grounding is what separates her commentary from the commentary economy around technology. She led the Doctorate in Counselling Psychology at Regent’s University London, was Honorary Professor of Psychology at the University of Wolverhampton for five years, and is now Visiting Professor at the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath. Her first trade book, All the Ghosts in the Machine (Robinson, 2019), opened a serious public conversation about digital legacy: what happens to your data, your accounts and your image when you die, and what that means for the people who outlive you. Reset: Rethinking Your Digital World for a Happier Life (Elliott & Thompson, 2024) extends the argument across the full lifespan, from “digital gestation” and sharenting to surveillance, AI relationships and the digital afterlife. For leadership audiences, she connects four conversations executives often run as separate problems: employee mental health, AI adoption, brand trust and data governance. Her recent keynotes for Santander, Deloitte, the NHS, the Royal Society of Medicine and Congreso Futuro have moved leaders away from “digital detox” framing and toward agency, the design question of how a workforce uses AI without losing the cognitive and relational ground organisations actually run on. Key speaking topics Cyberpsychology and digital wellbeing Psychology of AI adoption at work AI companions, grief bots and the future of human connection Digital legacy, data privacy and digital afterlife Attention, surveillance and the extractive attention economy Technology across the lifespan, from sharenting to digital afterlives Ideal for CHROs and Chief People Officers designing wellbeing, engagement and AI-readiness programmes Chief AI Officers and transformation leads embedding AI into employee experience and customer-facing tools Brand, marketing and communications leadership teams working on trust, privacy and AI narratives Boards and risk committees considering the human and reputational dimensions of data, surveillance and AI Audience outcomes A clinically grounded read on what technology is actually doing to attention, identity and relationships at work A vocabulary for talking about digital wellbeing that holds up in front of clinicians, regulators and senior employees A clearer view of where AI companions, grief bots and synthetic relationships intersect with workforce mental health and brand risk A practical sense of what individual and organisational agency look like in an extractive attention economy A framework that connects digital legacy, data governance and employee trust as one coherent leadership question

Why organisations work with Ashlea Atigolo She has co-built a generative AI product, Finley AI, that has been recognised on the WealthTech100 2024 list, so the advice she offers boards is grounded in shipped technology rather than commentary. She brings a regulated-industry lens. Her work spans wealth management, private equity and fintech, where the question is not whether to deploy AI but how to do it without breaking trust, compliance, or customer relationships. She is a credible voice on women in AI without leaning on the topic alone. The named recognition (TechRound Top 64 Women in Tech, Great British Businesswoman finalist, Fintech Powerlist) sits alongside the technical and commercial credentials. She is equally fluent as a keynote speaker, panel host and workshop facilitator, which makes her a flexible fit for AI summits, leadership offsites and investor-facing events. Biography highlights Co-founder of INATIGO, a generative AI venture builder. Co-founder of Finley AI, listed on the WealthTech100 2024. Managing Partner at Consult Venture Partners, advising executives on generative and agentic AI adoption. Former Co-Founder and Co-Managing Director of City Wharf Private Wealth, awarded Europe’s Most Innovative Wealth Management Model at the 2021 WealthBriefing European Awards. Listed on TechRound’s Top 64 Influential Women in UK Technology (2022) and named on the Fintech Powerlist. Speaker and host at Fintech Week London, Fintech Connect and Chatbot Africa AI Summit. Biography Most organisations have an AI strategy. A much smaller number have AI in production, talking to customers, sitting inside regulated workflows and answering to a compliance function. Ashlea Atigolo works at that second layer. As co-founder of INATIGO and its flagship product Finley AI, listed on the WealthTech100 2024, she has built generative AI systems for personal finance rather than written about them. Her route into AI was operational, not academic. Before INATIGO she co-founded City Wharf Private Wealth, where her co-leadership won Europe’s Most Innovative Wealth Management Model at the 2021 WealthBriefing European Awards. That background gives her advisory work a distinctive cast. She understands wealth, private equity and fintech as live operating environments, not case studies, and her current role as Managing Partner at Consult Venture Partners is built on that. Her independent recognition is dense and recent. She has been named on TechRound’s Top 64 Influential Women in UK Technology, included on the Fintech Powerlist, and shortlisted as a finalist for the Great British Businesswoman Awards in technology. She has advised Adobe directly and has been engaged through GLG, AlphaSense and GuidePoint by executives in fintech, private equity and financial services. On stage she is most useful to organisations that need a builder’s view of generative and agentic AI: what to deploy, what to delay, how to govern it, and where the human still has to sit inside the workflow. She hosts and keynotes at Fintech Week London, Fintech Connect and Chatbot Africa AI Summit, and is equally credible in a board workshop as on a main-stage panel. Key speaking topics Generative and agentic AI in financial services AI product strategy and deployment in regulated industries Conversational and empathetic AI design Responsible AI, trust and governance Fintech and wealth management innovation Women in AI and inclusive technology teams Leadership through technological disruption Ideal for Boards and executive committees in financial services, wealth management, private equity and fintech sizing up generative or agentic AI investments. CIO, CTO, CDO and Head of Innovation audiences moving from AI pilots into operating deployment. Fintech, AI and wealth-management conferences looking for an operator-speaker rather than a commentator. Internal AI summits, leadership offsites and women-in-tech programmes inside large enterprises. Audience outcomes A clearer picture of where generative and agentic AI is genuinely production-ready in regulated industries, and where it is not. A working vocabulary for governance conversations: agents, guardrails, oversight, human-in-the-loop. A view of how a builder, not a vendor, sequences AI adoption inside a regulated business. Named examples of fintech and wealth-management deployments that buyers can take into their own strategy conversations.

Why organisations work with Elemi Atigolo He has put a generative AI product through UK financial regulation. Finley AI worked with the FCA Advice Unit on guidance models before evolving into an agentic financial AI agent that institutions integrate by API, which gives him a reference point on supervision and compliance that few AI speakers hold. He has handled the work he now advises on. A wealth manager at HSBC and a partner at St. James’s Place before he co-founded City Wharf Private Wealth, he has dealt with client suitability and adviser workflow first-hand. His thinking is on the record. His 2026 paper on the Agentic Profit Paradox sets out how agentic AI can improve client outcomes while weakening the human-bounded revenue that funds a firm’s margins, which reframes AI from an efficiency question into a question about the business model itself. He works at executive level, not only with technology teams. At Consult Venture Partners he advises boards on where generative and agentic AI changes the operating model and the economics, a conversation that needs someone who has carried both commercial and regulatory responsibility. Biography highlights Managing Partner and co-founder of Consult Venture Partners, advising boards on generative and agentic AI adoption. Founder of the Autonomy Economics framework and author of the 2026 paper “The Agentic Profit Paradox and the Reorganisation of Value Capture”. Co-founder of INATIGO (WealthTech100 2024, selected by FinTech Global from 1,300 companies) and lead developer of Finley AI, now an agentic financial AI agent delivered by API, which engaged the FCA Advice Unit on guidance models. Former HSBC Wealth Manager and former partner at St. James’s Place; co-founder of City Wharf Private Wealth, Highly Commended for Most Innovative Wealth Management Model at the 2021 WealthBriefing European Awards. Member of the Forbes Advisor Advisory Board (since October 2024) and the MIT Technology Review Global Insights Panel; named in the Powerlist Top 30 Tech Titans 2021 for Fintech and Data (Refinitiv/LSEG) and a UK FinTech Awards “Innovator of the Year” finalist. Contributor to FT Adviser and The Banker; featured by The Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, BBC, CNBC Africa, IBM, and Wealth Adviser; speaker at an Economist Impact summit (2023). Holds a BSc in Computer Science and Distributed Information Systems and an MA in Accounting and Finance. Biography Finley AI went through the UK Financial Conduct Authority’s Advice Unit before most banks had written an AI policy. Built by INATIGO, the company Atigolo co-founded, it began in 2019 as a conversational assistant. It now runs as an agentic financial AI agent that institutions integrate by API. That history anchors his work, at the point where AI in finance meets supervision and the realities of client suitability. His route into AI is unusual. He managed client portfolios at HSBC, became a partner at St. James’s Place, and co-founded City Wharf Private Wealth, a digital wealth firm recognised at the 2021 WealthBriefing European Awards. He has sat on both sides of the client relationship and the technology that now reshapes it. His current research turns that experience into an argument. In a 2026 paper he set out the Agentic Profit Paradox: firms adopt agentic AI to stay competitive, and in doing so erode the human-bounded revenue that produced their margins. He calls the wider field Autonomy Economics, the study of how value capture and commercial defensibility shift once work no longer needs continuous human direction. For a board, the question is rarely what AI can do, and almost always what to build, what to buy, what to govern, and what it does to the business model. Through Consult Venture Partners, where he is Managing Partner, Atigolo answers it as someone who has both written the models and signed the client suitability forms. Key speaking topics Generative AI in financial services AI agents and conversational interfaces in wealth management AI, regulation, and the FCA AI product strategy for regulated firms Client experience and adviser workflow in an AI-enabled firm Fintech innovation and WealthTech AI adoption for finance leaders Ideal for CEOs, COOs, and boards in banking, wealth, asset management, insurance, and private capital setting AI strategy Chief Technology, Data, and AI Officers scoping generative and agentic AI deployment in regulated environments Heads of Advice, Distribution, and Client Experience reworking the adviser-client model Compliance, risk, and regulatory leads assessing AI governance, and executives weighing what autonomous systems do to margins and operating models Audience outcomes A clear view of where generative and agentic AI is already viable in regulated financial services, and where it is not A working vocabulary for AI agents, conversational interfaces, and the governance questions behind them A sharper read on what the FCA and comparable regulators expect when AI touches client guidance A realistic picture of what changes for advisers, clients, and operating models when AI moves from pilot to live A view of how agentic AI can strengthen client outcomes while undermining the revenue that historically funded them, and what that means for strategy

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

Why organisations work with Miranda Brawn She brings the perspective of a sitting non-executive director across an NHS Foundation Trust, FTSE 100 sustainability funds and AI start-ups, so her recommendations land as practitioner advice rather than commentary from outside the boardroom. The Brawn Review, launched at the House of Lords in October 2025, gives clients access to a named, evidenced governance framework with 50 specific recommendations, not a general lecture on why diversity matters. She is a barrister called to the Bar of England and Wales with an MBA and academic appointments at Roehampton and previously Oxford, which gives her credibility with general counsel, audit committees and regulators in equal measure. Her foundation has run the UK’s first diversity leadership lecture and scholarship programme since 2016, giving her a decade of evidence on what actually shifts representation, useful for clients tired of pledges that do not move numbers. She covers ESG, AI ethics and inclusive leadership from the same vantage point, which suits boards that no longer want three different speakers for three governance topics that have collapsed into one. Biography highlights Author of The Brawn Review: Boardroom Sustainability, Inclusion and Corporate Governance, launched at the UK House of Lords in October 2025. Honorary Professor in Business and Law, University of Roehampton; former Senior Visiting Fellow, University of Oxford. Barrister, Bar of England and Wales; MBA; Honorary Doctor of Letters (Brighton); Honorary Doctor of Laws (University of Law). Non-executive director, chair, trustee and advisor across an NHS Foundation Trust, FTSE 100 sustainability funds with over GBP 2 billion AUM, VC funds and AI start-ups including X0PA AI. Former Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan; founder and CEO of The Miranda Brawn Diversity Leadership Foundation (2016). Financial Times Top 30 Ethnic Minority Leaders; Prime Minister’s Point of Light; Woman of the Year, Women in Finance Awards. Biography The Brawn Review landed at the House of Lords in October 2025 with 50 recommendations on boardroom sustainability, inclusion and governance, drawn from contributions by 1,000 global board members and endorsed by Lord Davies of the 2011 Davies Review. It is the work of an author who sits on the boards she is writing about, not a researcher describing them from outside. Miranda Brawn is a barrister, MBA, honorary professor at the University of Roehampton and former Senior Visiting Fellow at Oxford, where the review began. Her board portfolio runs across the UK’s largest NHS Foundation Trust, FTSE 100 sustainability funds with more than GBP 2 billion in assets under management, venture capital funds and AI start-ups. Before the boardroom she traded for Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan. Most inclusion speakers offer advocacy. Her contribution is governance design: what a sustainability committee should actually do, how directors should oversee AI deployment, how inclusion outcomes should be measured against legal and fiduciary tests. The Miranda Brawn Diversity Leadership Foundation, which she founded in 2016, has run a decade of scholarship and mentoring programmes that give her a longitudinal view of what shifts representation in finance, law and technology. Her recognition reflects the breadth of that practice rather than a single domain: Financial Times Top 30 Ethnic Minority Leaders, Prime Minister’s Point of Light, Woman of the Year at the Women in Finance Awards, and Top 50 Afro-Caribbean Leadership Award presented at the House of Lords. Key speaking topics Boardroom governance of sustainability, inclusion and AI Inclusive and values-based leadership ESG strategy and board oversight AI ethics and responsible technology Non-executive director practice Diversity, equity and inclusion in regulated industries The Brawn Review recommendations Ideal for Boards, chairs and non-executive directors reviewing committee structure on ESG, AI and inclusion General counsel, company secretaries and heads of governance preparing for investor and regulator scrutiny CHROs and chief sustainability officers translating board commitments into operating practice Financial services, healthcare and professional services firms with concentrated DEI and governance exposure Audience outcomes A named governance framework, The Brawn Review, with specific recommendations on board composition, committee remits and oversight of AI and sustainability. A clearer view of where DEI commitments sit in fiduciary and regulatory terms, not only reputational ones. A practitioner reading of what NEDs are actually being asked to evidence on inclusion and ESG by investors and regulators. Evidence from a decade of scholarship and mentoring programmes on which interventions move representation in finance, law and technology.

Why organisations work with Sina Kahen He has shipped a regulated, complex technology product into a sceptical market. Commercialising Celito, named publicly as the UK’s first orthopaedic robot, gives him operator credibility that very few AI speakers carry. He runs a generative AI company today. VAICE, where he is co-founder and CEO, builds workplace productivity software, which means his views on enterprise AI come from active build decisions, not commentary. His book “The Promised Land of AI” gives leaders a usable strategic playbook for AI adoption, structured around use-case discovery, data readiness, and the build, buy or partner question that most boards stall on. He teaches AI strategy at Imperial College Business School, so the material is tested against MBA cohorts and senior executives every term, not assembled for the stage. He brings a working language for ethics, philosophy and human judgement in AI, drawing on his published philosophical work, without drifting into abstraction that leaves an operating team with nothing to do on Monday. Biography highlights MBA, Imperial College Business School; degree in Biomedical Sciences Guest Lecturer in AI, healthcare and corporate innovation, Imperial College Business School Co-founder and CEO, VAICE, building generative AI software for workplace productivity Former Innovation Business Manager at DeSoutter Medical; led commercialisation of Celito, publicly described as the UK’s first orthopaedic robot Author of “The Promised Land of AI: A Practical Guide to AI for Business” and “Brief Insights on Medical Robotics” Engagements and clients include Google, Amazon, BBC, O2, Shell, Imperial College, InterSystems, Juniper Networks, Ipsen Pharma and Novateur Ventures Biography Celito was the UK’s first orthopaedic robot. Sina Kahen, then Innovation Business Manager at DeSoutter Medical, was the person responsible for bringing it through commercialisation into operating theatres. That work, taking a regulated, high-stakes technology from concept into the hands of surgeons, is the experience he now applies to a different problem: enterprise adoption of generative AI. The current vehicle for that work is VAICE, a company he co-founded and runs as CEO, building generative AI software for workplace productivity. Around it sits his book “The Promised Land of AI: A Practical Guide to AI for Business”, a Guest Lectureship at Imperial College Business School, and engagements with organisations including Google, Amazon, BBC, O2, Shell, InterSystems and Ipsen Pharma. The argument running through all of it is operational. Most companies have proved AI can do something useful. The harder questions, which buyers are now ready to confront, are about strategy: which use cases actually compound, whether to build, buy or partner, how to make data and people ready, and how to govern decisions that cannot be fully explained. Kahen has trained as a Biomedical Scientist and holds an MBA from Imperial, which is one reason his framing of these questions feels closer to medicine than marketing: rigorous about evidence, blunt about what is not yet known. He is also the author of several books on Jewish philosophy, and that interest shows up in the AI work as a refusal to let the human and ethical questions float free of operating practice. Boards do not need another AI ethics policy. They need a way to make defensible AI decisions inside their existing governance, and to take their workforce with them. That is the territory Kahen occupies. Key speaking topics Generative AI strategy for enterprise AI adoption and operating performance AI in healthcare and life sciences Responsible AI and AI governance Build, buy or partner decisions in AI sourcing Innovation and intrapreneurship inside large organisations Philosophy, ethics and the human side of AI Ideal for Boards and executive committees commissioning enterprise-wide AI strategy CIOs, CTOs, Chief Data Officers and Chief AI Officers translating pilots into operating systems Healthcare and life sciences leadership confronting AI, robotics and regulated innovation Heads of Innovation and transformation leads structuring AI portfolios across business units Audience outcomes A working framework for moving AI from pilot into measurable operating performance A clearer view on when to build, buy or partner for AI capability Sharper questions to ask of internal teams and external vendors on data readiness, governance and use-case selection A practical position on AI ethics that holds up inside real operating decisions, not slide decks Language and reference points senior leaders can use to bring the rest of the organisation with them

Why organisations work with Mark van Rijmenam He gives boards a named decision framework, WAVE (Watch, Adapt, Verify, Empower), drawn from his book Now What?, now built into an operating diagnostic that scores a leadership team’s AI readiness against its own industry and regulatory context. The framework translates futurist material into something a planning cycle can actually use. His research base spans AI, blockchain and the metaverse across six books, so the technology view is not a single-trend pitch but a structured map of how these layers interact for an operating business. Salesforce named him one of 16 human voices shaping the future of AI, which gives buyers an external credibility marker beyond bureau ranking. He has built and run technology platforms himself, Datafloq and Futurwise, and has turned the WAVE framework into the Intelligence Age Scorecard, so the perspective is informed by building the tools, not only commenting on them. Format range is unusually wide for a futurist: he delivered the first TEDx talk in virtual reality and a TEDx in Athens via digital twin, and runs sessions in person, virtually and as holographic delivery when the brief calls for it. Biography highlights PhD in Management, University of Technology Sydney Author of six books, including Step into the Metaverse (Wiley) and Now What? How to Ride the Tsunami of Change Founder of Datafloq and of Futurwise, an AI-powered insights platform Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) and Global Speaking Fellow Recognised by Salesforce as one of 16 human voices shaping the future of AI Delivered the first TEDx Talk in virtual reality (2020) and a TEDx talk in Athens via digital twin (2023) Biography The hardest question for a board right now is not whether AI matters. It is what to commit to, when most of the technology in front of them will be obsolete in eighteen months. Van Rijmenam works on that question. His latest book, Now What? How to Ride the Tsunami of Change, sets out the WAVE framework: Watch, Adapt, Verify, Empower. The framework is built to be used by an executive team in a planning cycle, not admired from a stage. The credibility behind that work is structural. A PhD in management from the University of Technology Sydney sits alongside six published books that span big data, blockchain, the metaverse and now generative AI. Step into the Metaverse was published by Wiley in 2022. Future Visions, written in five days as an experiment in human-AI co-authorship with ChatGPT, came the following year. The body of work treats each technology layer as part of a connected operating reality, not as standalone trends. He builds the tools he talks about. Datafloq curates emerging-technology intelligence for executives. Futurwise is an AI-powered learning environment he founded to give organisations a structured way to track signal across technology, regulation and culture. He has since turned WAVE into the Intelligence Age Scorecard, a diagnostic that scores a leadership team’s AI readiness, surfaces the gap between what the C-suite believes and what management experiences, and returns a 90-day action plan. Salesforce named him one of 16 human voices shaping the future of AI, and the Global Speakers Federation has admitted him as a Global Speaking Fellow, a designation held by fewer than fifty people worldwide. The format choices reinforce the argument. He delivered the first TEDx Talk in virtual reality in 2020, and a TEDx in Athens in 2023 through a digital twin. For a buyer, the relevant signal is not the novelty. It is that the speaker is using the technologies he is asking leadership teams to make decisions about. Key speaking topics Generative AI and enterprise deployment Strategic foresight and scenario planning Decision architecture under exponential change The metaverse and immersive business models Blockchain and distributed-ledger applications AI ethics and governance Future of work and human-machine collaboration Ideal for Boards and executive committees setting AI and emerging-technology strategy Strategy, innovation and transformation leaders moving from pilots to operational deployment CTO, CIO and Chief Digital Officer audiences Leadership offsites and planning cycles where a structured foresight method is needed Audience outcomes A working decision architecture (WAVE) that an executive team can apply to its own AI and technology bets, with the option of a structured readiness diagnostic that benchmarks the team against its industry A structured map of how AI, blockchain and immersive technologies interact across the operating model A clearer view of where to commit capital now and where to keep optionality A read on where leadership perception and operational reality diverge on AI, including early preparedness for AGI-level systems Specific examples of organisations that have moved from technology pilots into operational advantage

Why organisations work with Miriam Meckel She runs the leadership academy that European boards turn to when they need their executive layer fluent in AI, quantum and adjacent technologies, which gives her a live read on where senior teams actually get stuck. Her 2024 book with Lea Steinacker, “Alles uberall auf einmal”, is one of the most cited German-language treatments of generative AI for business audiences, anchored in regulation, labour markets and governance rather than hype. She combines a serious academic chair at the University of St. Gallen with two decades inside business media, including the editorship of WirtschaftsWoche, so her framing is built for executive audiences rather than translated for them. Her work on brain-computer interfaces and cognitive enhancement gives her unusual range when the conversation moves from current AI deployment to the next horizon of human-machine integration. She holds the 2025 Rudolf-Diesel-Medaille for Best Media Communication, a recognition explicitly tied to making complex future technologies practical for executive audiences. Biography highlights Co-founder and CEO of ada Learning GmbH, the AI and transformation academy spun out of Handelsblatt Media Group with Lea Steinacker and Verena Pausder. Professor of Communication Management and Director of the Institute for Media and Communication Management, University of St. Gallen. Co-author of “Alles uberall auf einmal” (Rowohlt, 2024) on artificial intelligence; author of “Mein Kopf gehort mir” (Piper, 2018) on brain-computer interfaces. Former editor-in-chief and publisher of WirtschaftsWoche, the first woman to lead the title. Faculty Associate at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society; board member of Swiss media group Tamedia. Recipient of the Rudolf-Diesel-Medaille (2025), Ernst Schneider Prize, Cicero Speaker’s Prize for Science, Eisenhower Fellowship and John F. Kennedy Memorial Fellowship. Biography Generative AI sits on most executive agendas and inside very few operating models. The space between those two facts is where European leadership teams currently lose months. Miriam Meckel works in that gap, professionally and intellectually. As co-founder and CEO of ada Learning, she runs the academy that puts senior managers from major European companies through structured programmes on AI, quantum and the technologies reshaping their industries. The work is concrete: how a CFO should think about model risk, how an HR leader should redesign roles around AI capability, how a CEO should commission and challenge an AI strategy. Her 2024 book with Lea Steinacker, “Alles uberall auf einmal”, argues that AI is best understood as a data-driven human amplifier, a framing that cuts through both utopian and apocalyptic readings of the technology. Her authority comes from holding two distinct positions at the same time. She is Professor of Communication Management at the University of St. Gallen and Director of its Institute for Media and Communication Management, with research credentials reaching back to Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center. She is also a working operator who edited WirtschaftsWoche, sits on the Tamedia board, and has built ada into a recognised institution in the German-speaking executive market. Her 2018 book “Mein Kopf gehort mir” took the same operator-academic approach to brain-computer interfaces, with first-person experiments inside the laboratories developing them. For boards confronting AI, she offers something the consultancy reports cannot: a researcher who teaches the technology to executives every week and reports back what they understand, what they resist, and what actually moves once they leave the room. Key speaking topics Generative AI in business strategy AI governance, regulation and ethics The future of work in an AI-enabled economy Brain-computer interfaces and human enhancement Quantum computing for executive audiences Digital transformation and leadership Media, communication and information overload Ideal for Boards and executive committees commissioning AI strategy and asking whether their AI position has any operational substance. CHROs and chief learning officers redesigning workforce capability around AI. CEOs and strategy leaders in regulated European industries balancing AI ambition with the EU AI Act and national supervision. Senior leadership programmes and executive offsites at the point of confronting AI seriously rather than in passing. Audience outcomes A working mental model of where generative AI is already operational, where it remains pilot, and where it is still speculative. A clear read on the EU, US and Chinese regulatory environments and what they mean for European firms. Sharper questions to ask vendors, internal AI teams and consultants, grounded in how the technology actually behaves. An honest sense of what AI will do to roles, teams and decision rights inside their own organisation over the next three to five years. A bridge between today’s deployment questions and the next horizon of human-machine integration, including neural interfaces and quantum.

Why organisations work with James Poulter Operator credibility. He built and sold a voice AI company (Vixen Labs to House 337, 2023) before becoming a speaker. The frameworks come from running the work, not commenting on it. A named implementation model. The AI Nervous System framework, published in AI @ Work (Bloomsbury, 2026), gives leadership teams a structure for embedding AI across functions rather than treating it as a tools procurement question. Inside view of how a global brand actually adopts emerging tech. As Head of Emerging Platforms at LEGO, he led LEGO Life and the GIPHY partnership at consumer scale, so the case material is concrete. Comfortable with the ethics conversation without losing the commercial argument. He has advised the Church of England Digital Board alongside corporate clients, which signals range when the AI question shifts from productivity to governance. Biography highlights Founder and former CEO of Vixen Labs, acquired by House 337 in December 2023. Founder of ThreePoint Labs; Head of AI at Dunham & Company, Dallas. Former Head of Emerging Platforms, The LEGO Group, leading LEGO Life and the LEGO GIPHY channel. Author of AI @ Work: Rewire your team and yourself for the AI Revolution (Bloomsbury, August 2026). Advisor to the Church of England Digital Board; board roles with Christian Aid and Raiser. Client and advisory work cited with Amazon, Verizon, Bosch and Universal Music. Biography The hard part of corporate AI is rarely the model. It is what happens once a leadership team agrees to use one. Procurement, legal, brand, product, and people functions each have a stake, and most organisations have no shared structure for resolving the trade-offs between them. This is the territory James Poulter has worked in for the past decade. At The LEGO Group, as Head of Emerging Platforms, he led LEGO Life and managed the brand’s GIPHY partnership, learning at consumer scale how a heritage business absorbs new technology without breaking its existing one. He then founded Vixen Labs, a UK voice and conversational AI consultancy, scaled it through the pandemic, and sold it to House 337 in December 2023. His current work sits inside that operator lineage. Through ThreePoint Labs and as Head of AI at Dallas-based Dunham & Company, he advises leadership teams on how to move from isolated AI pilots to a coherent operating capability. His forthcoming book, AI @ Work: Rewire your team and yourself for the AI Revolution (Bloomsbury, August 2026), sets out the AI Nervous System framework, a model for connecting model choice, team design, ethics, and decision rights across the business. The client list spans Amazon, Verizon, Bosch and Universal Music, alongside advisory work with the Church of England Digital Board. The range matters: Poulter is comfortable when the conversation is about productivity gains, and equally comfortable when it shifts to governance, values, and what an organisation should refuse to automate. Key speaking topics AI implementation across the enterprise The AI Nervous System framework Conversational and voice AI in commercial strategy AI ethics and responsible deployment Innovation culture inside established organisations The future of work in an AI-native business Emerging platforms and consumer technology adoption Ideal for CEOs and executive teams sponsoring an enterprise AI agenda CTOs, CIOs and Chief AI Officers moving from pilots to operating capability CHROs and people leaders redesigning teams around AI capability Boards and advisory groups grappling with AI ethics and governance Audience outcomes A structured way to assess where their organisation actually is on AI adoption, rather than where the vendor deck claims it is A working vocabulary for the AI Nervous System framework and how its components map to real decisions Worked examples from LEGO, Vixen Labs and named enterprise clients, not generic case studies A clearer position on the ethics calls leadership has to own rather than delegate to a working group

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

Why organisations work with Robert Smith He is a working AI researcher with more than 100 peer-reviewed papers, not a consultant translating other people’s science. When a board asks how a model actually behaves, he can answer at the level of the maths. His book Rage Inside the Machine sets out a specific thesis on why algorithmic bias is structural rather than incidental. It gives leadership teams a shared vocabulary for the risk before they have to defend a hiring, credit, or pricing decision. He has built and deployed AI inside organisations where failure is expensive: NASA, Boeing, Airbus, the Bank of England, the UK Competition and Markets Authority. The reference points are operational, not theoretical. He led AI and data science at Digital Catapult, the UK government’s deep tech innovation centre. He has seen what separates the firms that move beyond pilots from the ones that stall. As a Founding Trustee of We and AI and a Senior Fellow at UCL, his independence on responsible AI is institutional, not positional. That matters when the audience needs a voice that does not sell the technology. Biography highlights Author, Rage Inside the Machine: The Prejudice of Algorithms and How to Stop the Internet Making Bigots of Us All (Bloomsbury Business). Shortlisted, UK Business Book Awards, Specialist category. Former Director of AI and Data Science, Digital Catapult. Senior Honorary Fellow, Computer Science Faculty, University College London. Co-founder, UCL Centre for Decision-Making Uncertainty. Founding Trustee, We and AI. Author of over 100 peer-reviewed papers in artificial intelligence, with a focus on evolutionary computation, knowledge representation, and machine learning. Applied AI work for NASA, Boeing, Airbus, BT, the European Union, the Bank of England, the UK Competition and Markets Authority, and US national laboratories. Biography The history of artificial intelligence is older than most boardrooms assume, and so are the design choices that made today’s models prone to bias. That is the argument running through Robert Smith’s work as a complexity scientist, and it is the reason serious organisations book him when they need an AI conversation that holds up under scrutiny. Smith spent more than three decades inside applied AI before the current wave of public attention. He built systems for NASA, Boeing, Airbus, BT, the Bank of England, the UK Competition and Markets Authority, the European Union, and US national laboratories at Los Alamos and Oak Ridge. He went on to lead AI and data science at Digital Catapult, the UK’s deep tech innovation centre, where the question shifted from research to deployment at scale. His book Rage Inside the Machine, published by Bloomsbury Business and shortlisted for the UK Business Book Awards, traces algorithmic bias back through the intellectual history of computing. The case is technical, not rhetorical: apparently neutral data and models can encode prior injustice across hiring, credit, insurance, policing, and content moderation. He gives leadership audiences a way to interrogate their own systems without needing to read the code. Smith holds a PhD, is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a Senior Honorary Fellow at UCL Computer Science where he co-founded the Centre for Decision-Making Uncertainty, and a Founding Trustee of We and AI. He has more than 100 peer-reviewed papers to his name and has presented at Google, the UK Financial Conduct Authority, and corporate, academic, and policy venues internationally. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and generative AI AI ethics and responsible technology Algorithmic bias and governance Digital transformation Data analytics Future of technology Risk management Ideal for Boards and executive committees signing off on enterprise AI strategy CTOs, CIOs, Chief Data Officers, and heads of AI looking for a credible external voice on governance and bias Risk, compliance, and regulatory leaders in financial services, insurance, healthcare, and public sector Senior HR and people leaders deploying AI in hiring, performance, or workforce decisions Audience outcomes A clearer view of where bias actually originates inside their AI systems, with examples drawn from peer-reviewed research and operational deployments. A working language for board-level conversations about AI risk, beyond the vendor pitch and the headline. Specific questions executives can put to their data science teams and external suppliers to test whether claims about model behaviour are defensible. A grounded sense of where AI is genuinely creating value in regulated environments, and where it is creating exposure. A perspective on responsible AI that comes from a working scientist and trustee of an independent charity, not from a platform vendor.