Artificial Intelligence & Generative AI

Why organisations work with Jochen Wirtz He wrote the textbook the global services marketing field teaches from. Services Marketing: People, Technology, Strategy, co-authored with Christopher Lovelock, has sold over a million copies and shaped how MBAs are taught the discipline in more than 26 countries. He has paired that academic authority with two operator-facing AI books, Intelligent Automation and Agentic Artificial Intelligence, written with Pascal Bornet. Few service strategy voices can speak as fluently to both a CMO and a Chief Automation Officer. His Christopher Lovelock Career Contributions Award from the American Marketing Association and the Gronroos Service Research Award are the two most senior honours in the global services research community. Boards get a recognised authority, not a generalist. He has been Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher in economics and business in 2022, 2023, and 2024, which means his frameworks are the ones other researchers and practitioners are actively building on. He spent fifteen years running the UCLA-NUS Executive MBA Programme as founding director, so the audiences he addresses most naturally are senior leaders, not students. Biography highlights Vice Dean of MBA Programmes and Professor of Marketing, NUS Business School, National University of Singapore. Co-author of Services Marketing: People, Technology, Strategy (9th edition) with the late Christopher Lovelock, adapted for over 26 countries. Co-author of Intelligent Automation (2021) and Agentic Artificial Intelligence (2025) with Pascal Bornet, with contributors including Thomas H. Davenport. Christopher Lovelock Career Contributions Award (AMA, 2019) and Christian Gronroos Service Research Award (2024). Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher in economics and business, 2022, 2023, and 2024; over 200 academic articles and six features in Harvard Business Review. Academic Scholar at Cornell Institute for Healthy Futures; International Fellow at Karlstad University Service Research Center; Global Faculty at Arizona State University Center for Services Leadership. Biography Service businesses are where AI is hitting the operating model first. Customer interactions, advisory work, claims handling, hospitality, healthcare reception, professional services delivery: all of it is being rewired around intelligent agents, and very few people on the academic side have stayed close to that shift in practical terms. Jochen Wirtz has. He is Vice Dean of MBA Programmes and Professor of Marketing at NUS Business School, and the co-author, with the late Christopher Lovelock, of Services Marketing: People, Technology, Strategy. The textbook is now in its ninth edition, has sold over a million copies, and has been adapted for more than 26 countries. It is the spine of the discipline globally. What makes him useful in a leadership room rather than a classroom is the second body of work. With Pascal Bornet he wrote Intelligent Automation in 2021 and Agentic Artificial Intelligence in 2025, with contributions from Thomas H. Davenport and others. Both are written for operators making real choices about where to put AI inside their service architecture and where not to. The credentials line up behind that: the Christopher Lovelock Career Contributions Award from the American Marketing Association, the Christian Gronroos Service Research Award, three consecutive years as a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher in economics and business, and fifteen years as founding director of the UCLA-NUS Executive MBA Programme. Boards get an academic with the authority to set the agenda and the operator literacy to follow it through. Key speaking topics Services marketing and service management AI agents and intelligent automation in service organisations Service strategy and organisational redesign Customer experience in AI-enabled service Platform business models Corporate digital responsibility and governance Cost-effective service excellence Ideal for CEOs, COOs, and CMOs of service-led businesses redesigning operations around AI agents. Chief Digital, Transformation, and Automation Officers building the AI-and-services roadmap. Boards and executive committees in financial services, professional services, hospitality, healthcare, and telecoms working through service productivity and customer impact at the same time. Audience outcomes A clearer view of where AI agents create durable advantage in a service business and where they create new risk. A working vocabulary for the service strategy choices behind automation programmes, drawn from the field’s leading textbook. Frameworks from Intelligent Automation and Agentic Artificial Intelligence that translate AI investment into service design decisions. A sharper sense of corporate digital responsibility as service interactions become increasingly machine-mediated. Confidence that the operating model conversation and the customer experience conversation are the same conversation.

Key speaking topics Human behaviour and artificial intelligence Organisational decision-making in the age of AI Human-centred AI strategy Cultural and behavioural impacts of emerging technologies Scenario planning and simulation for technology strategy AI and organisational transformation Data, culture, and organisational change Ideal for Senior leaders responsible for technology and digital strategy Organisations navigating AI adoption and transformation Technology and innovation conferences Corporate audiences exploring the human impact of AI Audience outcomes Clearer understanding of how AI affects human behaviour and organisational dynamics Practical perspectives on human-centred approaches to AI strategy Frameworks for interpreting cultural and behavioural shifts driven by technology Insight into scenario planning and simulation approaches for strategic decision-making Why organisations work with Ali Rebaie Combines AI analysis with human-science perspectives on behaviour and culture. Helps leaders interpret the organisational and societal implications of emerging technologies. Provides structured thinking on AI strategy, scenario planning, and decision-making. Brings international conference speaking experience across technology and industry contexts. Biography Ali Rebaie advises organisations on how artificial intelligence is reshaping human behaviour, culture, and decision-making inside modern enterprises. His work focuses on helping leaders interpret the organisational implications of AI and apply human-centred thinking to technology strategy. He is the Founder and President of Rebaie Analytics Group, a research and management consulting firm that explores the intersection of AI, human science, and organisational systems. Through this work, he supports organisations with AI strategy, scenario planning, and approaches designed to place human behaviour and cultural dynamics at the centre of technological change. Ali’s perspective combines analysis of emerging technologies with insights drawn from the study of culture, behaviour, and social systems. His work examines how organisations adapt to AI-driven disruption and how leaders can better understand the human factors that influence technology adoption and strategic decision-making. Alongside his advisory work, Ali contributes to education and training initiatives in the data and AI ecosystem. As a Senior School of Data fellow, he has delivered workshops and learning programmes focused on data and digital capability. He is also an international keynote speaker at technology and industry events, where he explores the relationship between artificial intelligence, organisational behaviour, and strategic decision-making. His speaking engagements include a presentation at Hannover Messe, one of the world’s major industrial technology exhibitions.

Why organisations work with Sharon Gai She offers a working model for redesigning teams and reporting lines when agentic AI absorbs the work middle management was paid to do. Her book How to Do More with Less (Wiley, 2026) maps the shift from task-based to capability-based org structures, with named roles for what humans do once execution is automated. Most AI adoption speakers describe what is happening to organisations from the outside. As Head of Global Key Accounts at Alibaba’s Tmall, Sharon worked inside the operating core of one of the world’s most AI-integrated commercial platforms. The vantage gives her authority on AI’s organisational effects that advisers and analysts cannot manufacture. Her practitioner depth on China’s ecommerce ecosystem, built into Ecommerce Reimagined (World Scientific, 2022), gives commercial and transformation leaders a primary source on consumer-to-manufacturer models and AI-integrated logistics via Cainiao. For European boards looking five years ahead, this is the live case study Western markets are still catching up to. Her “Culture Fluid” framework gives leadership teams a way to address the human side of AI adoption without falling into change-management cliché. It explains why two organisations with the same technology stack will get different results. Her client list spans UBS, Deloitte, Nestlé, Walmart, LVMH, and Lenovo, with platform exposure on Bloomberg, CNN, Reuters, TechCrunch, and Wired. Recognised as a LinkedIn Top AI Voice (2026) and a RETHINK Retail Top AI Leader. Biography highlights Author of How to Do More with Less: Future-Proofing Yourself in an AI-Driven Economy (Wiley, 2026) and Ecommerce Reimagined: Retail and Ecommerce in China (World Scientific, 2022) Former Head of Global Key Accounts at Tmall, Alibaba’s core commerce pillar, led omnichannel and ecommerce strategy for major international accounts including Adidas, P&G, H&M, and Xiaomi Selected for the Alibaba Global Leadership Academy, the internal programme designed to globalise Alibaba’s business units MS in Information & Knowledge Strategy, Columbia University; Honours BA in International Development, McGill University Former Global Shaper, World Economic Forum Named in AAE’s Top Keynote Speakers 2023; recognised as a RETHINK Retail Top AI Leader, LinkedIn Top Voice (2024), and LinkedIn Top AI Voice (2026) Media appearances on Bloomberg, CNN, Reuters, TechCrunch, Wired, CBC, and CCTV; keynote clients include UBS, Deloitte, Nestlé, Walmart, LVMH, and Lenovo Biography The work middle management was paid to do is moving into systems. Reporting, status tracking, summarisation, performance feedback, project oversight: agentic AI now performs each of these to the standard a competent manager would have delivered five years ago. The org chart that organisations grew up with is becoming structurally redundant, and most leadership teams do not yet have a working model for what replaces it. That question is the centre of Sharon Gai’s recent work. Her book How to Do More with Less (Wiley, 2026) maps the shift from task-based org structures to capability-based ones, naming what concentrates in humans once execution is automated: judgement, taste, theory of mind, original problem definition. The book sits within an active body of writing on what she calls the Org Chart of the Future, drawing on the live restructures already underway at Meta, Microsoft, and others. Her authority on these questions comes from operational experience few AI speakers can claim. As Head of Global Key Accounts at Alibaba’s Tmall, she worked inside one of the world’s most AI-integrated commercial platforms, leading omnichannel and ecommerce strategy for Adidas, P&G, H&M, and Xiaomi. Selection for the Alibaba Global Leadership Academy, the internal programme tasked with globalising Alibaba’s business units, deepened that vantage. Her first book, Ecommerce Reimagined (World Scientific, 2022), remains the only practitioner account of China’s ecommerce ecosystem written from within Alibaba, examining how consumer-to-manufacturer models and AI-integrated logistics via Cainiao function inside the company. Her “Culture Fluid” framework addresses the parallel internal question: how to build the agility to compete across simultaneous cultural and technological shifts. The work connects the structural argument of the Org Chart of the Future to the human capability conditions that make any redesign executable. Without the second, the first remains an idea on a slide. Key speaking topics The Org Chart of the Future: AI-era team and role design AI adoption at organisational scale: from pilots to operating model The disappearing middle: agentic AI and management layers Future-proofing in an AI-driven economy China’s AI-integrated commerce ecosystem Culture Fluid: organisational agility across cultural and technological shifts Consumer-to-manufacturer (C2M) models and AI-integrated supply chains Ideal for CHROs, COOs, and transformation leads designing the operating model and workforce for an AI-augmented organisation Boards and executive committees confronting the structural implications of AI on management layers, headcount, and capability planning Chief Commercial Officers and heads of digital in retail, FMCG, luxury, and consumer brands looking at AI’s effect on platform commerce Leadership development programmes where AI adoption needs the perspective of someone who has worked inside an organisation operating at AI saturation Audience outcomes A structural model for redesigning teams and reporting lines when agentic AI absorbs the work middle management was paid to do Operating clarity on which AI use cases produce advantage and which produce vendor revenue A view of how China’s AI-integrated commerce platforms actually function, drawn from inside Alibaba, and what is genuinely replicable in Western markets A direct answer to the question of where human capability concentrates in an AI-driven organisation: judgement, taste, theory of mind, original problem definition A shared language, through the Culture Fluid model, for the human side of AI adoption

Why organisations work with Huy Nguyen Trieu Two decades inside tier-one banks (Citi, Royal Bank of Scotland, Société Générale) paired with co-founding CFTE, a capability platform that has reached more than 200,000 professionals across 130 countries, gives him a view neither pure bankers nor pure technologists can offer. His work names the specific mechanisms by which AI is reshaping institutions, drawing on frameworks developed at CFTE including the AI Capability Engine, the Performance Hexagon, the CDE Innovation Prism and the SHIME skills model. Boards and policymakers use him to pressure-test AI strategy against what is actually deployable, including a strategy briefing for the senior leadership of a top-five global financial institution and a full-day executive programme for a major central bank with over 100 senior leaders. Author of “The AI-fication of Jobs” (2024) and co-author of “The Fintech Job Report” (2022), both of which set out workforce impact in numbers executives can use for planning. Council Member of the ADI Foundation, Industry Fellow at Imperial College Business School, and former member of the World Economic Forum’s Fintech Advisory Board, so his work holds up in front of regulators and sovereign actors as well as operators. Biography highlights Co-founder, Centre for Finance, Technology and Entrepreneurship (CFTE), reaching more than 200,000 professionals across 130 countries. Council Member, ADI Foundation, contributing to sovereign blockchain infrastructure including national stablecoins and digital public infrastructure. Former Managing Director at Citi, with earlier roles at Royal Bank of Scotland and Société Générale; founding partner of Supercharger, one of Asia’s largest fintech accelerators; former CEO of Ukibi, a venture-backed US technology start-up. Graduate of MIT and École Polytechnique; first Fintech Resident at Oxford Saïd Business School; Industry Fellow at Imperial College Business School; former member of the World Economic Forum’s Fintech Advisory Board. Author of “The AI-fication of Jobs” (2024); co-author of “The Fintech Job Report: Technology is eating Finance” (2022). Commentary on AI in financial services featured in international business media including the Financial Times, Bloomberg and CNBC. Biography Most banks have been running digital transformation programmes for a decade. The harder question now reaches further than banking. Governments, central banks and financial institutions all face the same problem: translating AI from pilots into operating capability that holds up under regulation and talent constraints. That is the terrain Huy Nguyen Trieu has worked on from both sides. He spent years at Citi, finishing as a Managing Director, with earlier roles at Royal Bank of Scotland and Société Générale. Before banking he was CEO of Ukibi, a venture-backed US technology start-up, and was later a founding partner of Supercharger, one of Asia’s largest fintech accelerators. The mix means he reads an institution’s P&L the way an operator does and reads a technology bet the way an investor does. He co-founded CFTE, the Centre for Finance, Technology and Entrepreneurship. It now reaches more than 200,000 professionals across 130 countries and works with governments, central banks and financial institutions on AI capability at scale. CFTE’s frameworks, including the AI Capability Engine, the Performance Hexagon, the CDE Innovation Prism and the SHIME skills model, are the spine of that work. He was the first Fintech Resident at Oxford Saïd Business School and is an Industry Fellow at Imperial College Business School. He also serves as a Council Member of the ADI Foundation, contributing to sovereign blockchain infrastructure for emerging markets. Recent engagements illustrate the scope. He delivered a keynote on the third wave of AI in the presence of H.E. the President of the Republic of Cyprus. Other engagements include a strategy briefing for a top-five global financial institution and a full-day executive programme for a major central bank with more than 100 senior leaders. His book “The AI-fication of Jobs” (2024) explains why AI breaks the historical assumption that new technology creates more jobs than it destroys. Key speaking topics Fintech and the future of financial services AI in banking and capital markets Digital business models in regulated industries Platform economics and hyperscalable finance Future of work in financial services Digital assets and tokenisation Venture capital and fintech investment trends Ideal for Governments and central banks building AI capability across regulated sectors Bank and insurer boards setting AI and fintech strategy CEOs, COOs and CIOs of financial institutions running transformation agendas Heads of innovation, strategy and HR grappling with workforce impact of AI Audience outcomes A clearer read on which fintech and AI shifts are structural and which are overstated. Specific examples of business-model change from inside banks, fintechs and big tech, not generic case studies. A workforce view: which roles in finance shrink, which expand, and what skills leaders should build now. A sharper frame for board-level conversations on AI risk, digital assets and platform strategy.

About Tim Cortinovis Tim’s talks are entertaining and you can tell that he has already captivated the audiences as a television host and novelist. His keynotes are energizing, full of excitement, colorful stories and topical examples. Highly interactive, sometimes challenging, and grounded like a good BBC documentary. According to feedback from participants, Tim’s talks are regularly given the highest rating. Tim Cortinovis has been dealing with all these questions for almost twenty years. The enthusiasm for it was aroused immediately after his studies of German and Spanish language and literature by responsible positions in international sales and marketing, many of them in the area of IT and automation technologies. What awaits you listening to Tim Cortinovis? In any case, the latest findings on digital transformation in the field of B-to-B sales. And a sympathetic and exciting lecture. When asked why the participants are motivated, cheerful and lively afterwards, Tim Cortinovis replies: “Maybe it’s because I’ve already worked as a television presenter and novelist. Even before my studies, I moderated a daily news program on a private television station, wrote a novel and read it as the first German-language podcast novel and published it in sequels.” He penned ‘This is Marketing Automation! This is Sales Automation!‘, a well-received guide on scalable growth and sales automation, initially published in the USA in 2020. Its 2021 re-release, titled ‘This is Sales in the Future: How robotics and AI are changing sales in SMEs,’ further extends its impact. His latest book, ‘Homo Automaticus: Embracing Our AI-Driven Evolution,’ offers a roadmap to a future brimming with possibilities. It presents AI not merely as a distant sci-fi concept but as a transformative tool shaping modern human potential. This book challenges perceptions, ignites imaginations, and lays out a blueprint for a reality built on silicon and human innovation.

Why organisations work with Alessandro Lanteri The CLEVER Framework and the Innovation Pyramid are named, peer-reviewed tools – not proprietary consulting models – giving leadership teams a shared analytical language for strategy in technology-disrupted markets that can be used well beyond the event itself. His PhD in Philosophy and Economics from Erasmus University Rotterdam brings disciplinary rigour to AI ethics and strategic decision-making that management-trained advisors rarely provide; his arguments sit at the intersection of decision theory, ethics, and competitive strategy – a combination that is demonstrably scarce in this speaker category. Two commercially published books – CLEVER (Amazon #1 bestseller in Italy and the UK) and Innovating with Impact (The Economist Books, 2023) – confirm that his frameworks have been validated by mainstream leadership audiences, not just academic peer reviewers. Teaching engagements at Saïd Business School (Oxford), London Business School, and ESCP mean his content has been stress-tested against senior executive cohorts in multiple institutional contexts before it reaches the conference stage. His TEDx talk “Why Driverless Cars Need Philosophers” – over 200,000 views – demonstrates an ability to make the ethics and competitive logic of emerging technology land with audiences who are not technical specialists, which is precisely the audience most organisations need to bring along. Biography highlights Full Professor of Strategy and Innovation, ESCP Business School (Turin campus) Author of the CLEVER Framework (CLEVER: The Six Strategic Drivers for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, Amazon #1 bestseller in Italy and the UK) and the Innovation Pyramid (Innovating with Impact, The Economist Books, 2023, with Ted Ladd) Contributing writer to Harvard Business Review, MIT Technology Review, World Economic Forum Agenda, and Forbes TEDx speaker – “Why Driverless Cars Need Philosophers” (TEDxHultAshridge), over 200,000 views Executive education faculty, Saïd Business School (University of Oxford) and London Business School PhD in Philosophy and Economics, Erasmus University Rotterdam; MSc in Economics, Bocconi University Biography The gap between technology adoption and competitive strategy is one of the most consistent failure points in corporate innovation – organisations make significant investments in AI, digital platforms, and emerging technologies without the strategic architecture to turn those investments into competitive position. Alessandro Lanteri’s body of work is a direct response to that problem. Lanteri is Full Professor of Strategy and Innovation at ESCP Business School, where his research and teaching focus on how organisations compete in environments shaped by technological disruption. He also contributes to executive education at Saïd Business School (University of Oxford) and London Business School. His PhD in Philosophy and Economics from Erasmus University Rotterdam gives his strategic frameworks an analytical foundation that is uncommon in management education – his thinking on AI ethics, decision-making under uncertainty, and competitive logic draws on disciplines that sit well outside the standard strategy canon. His two books give organisations structured tools for navigating this terrain. CLEVER: The Six Strategic Drivers for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, an Amazon #1 bestseller in Italy and the UK, identifies the deep forces reshaping competitive advantage in technology-driven markets and provides a diagnostic framework for leadership response. Innovating with Impact – co-authored with Ted Ladd and published in the Economist Edge series – introduces the Innovation Pyramid, a model that sequences the cultural foundations, methods, and strategic themes organisations need to move from isolated innovation experiments to systematic, measurable impact. His practitioner writing appears in Harvard Business Review, MIT Technology Review, the World Economic Forum Agenda, and Forbes. A TEDx talk on the ethics and strategic implications of autonomous AI decision-making has been viewed over 200,000 times – evidence of an unusual capacity to make complex arguments about technology and strategy accessible to the leadership audiences that most need to hear them. Key speaking topics Innovation strategy and competitive advantage The CLEVER Framework and the Fourth Industrial Revolution Artificial intelligence and business strategy The Innovation Pyramid: from innovation experiments to strategic impact Digital transformation and emerging technologies AI ethics and responsible technology adoption in organisations Strategic foresight and scenario planning in uncertain markets Ideal for Strategy directors and C-suite leaders defining competitive positioning in technology-disrupted markets Corporate innovation and digital transformation leads Executive education cohorts at business schools and senior leadership development programmes Boards reviewing innovation governance and technology investment strategy Audience outcomes A named, structured framework (CLEVER) for diagnosing how AI, digital platforms, and emerging technologies affect their specific competitive environment A step-by-step model (the Innovation Pyramid) for building the organisational cultures, processes, and strategic themes needed for consistent, high-impact innovation Clarity on which technology investments are likely to yield strategic advantage – and the diagnostic tools to distinguish those from investments that produce activity without impact A framework for approaching AI and digital transformation through a competitive strategy lens, rather than a purely technical one Practical methods for aligning innovation activity with long-term strategic positioning

Why organisations work with Tabitha Goldstaub She chaired the UK Government’s AI Council for five years – a formal, operational appointment made by two Secretaries of State – which means she understands AI governance from the inside of the policy process, not from commentary on it. Her book How to Talk to Robots (HarperCollins, 2020) made a specific and publicly documented argument: that AI systems inherit the biases of those who build them, and that who governs AI is a governance question, not a diversity exercise. The argument travels directly into boardroom and leadership settings. As co-founder and Festival Director of CogX – which grew to 6,500 delegates and over 370 speakers at its peak – she has an unusually accurate read on how organisations across sectors are actually navigating AI adoption, rather than how they say they are. She sits on the board of Luminate, the international organisation focused on ensuring Big Tech and AI platforms respect human rights – giving her live insight into how civil society and regulators are evaluating the conduct of AI companies. Biography highlights Former Chair, UK Government’s AI Council (2018–2023); appointed AI Business Champion by the Secretary of State for DCMS MBE in the 2022 New Year Honours for services to the artificial intelligence sector Author of How to Talk to Robots (HarperCollins, 2020); reviewed in the Financial Times Co-founder and Festival Director of CogX, which grew to 6,500 delegates and 370+ speakers Co-founder of Rightster (now Brave Bison), which floated for £20.4 million in 2013 Amy Johnson Inspiration Award, Women’s Engineering Society, 2018 Named in Computer Weekly’s Most Influential Women in Technology (2023) and London Evening Standard Progress 1000 Board member, Luminate; Non-Executive Director, Innovate Cambridge Biography Boards are being asked to sign off on significant AI investment while carrying little of the institutional knowledge needed to govern it responsibly. Tabitha Goldstaub MBE chaired the UK Government’s AI Council from 2018 to 2023 – the expert body that advised government on national AI strategy, responsible adoption, and societal impact. That appointment, made by two Secretaries of State, put her at the operational centre of the UK’s AI policy architecture at the moment it was being built. Her book How to Talk to Robots (HarperCollins, 2020), reviewed in the Financial Times, made a specific argument: that AI systems inherit the biases of those who design and govern them, and that widening who holds those roles is not a diversity initiative but a governance imperative. The Women’s Engineering Society gave her its Amy Johnson Inspiration Award in 2018 for advancing that case through her public roles. As co-founder and Festival Director of CogX, she built one of Europe’s largest annual AI leadership summits – growing it from 1,500 delegates at its founding in 2017 to over 6,500 in 2018, with more than 370 speakers on programme. That scale gave her a consistently clear view of where organisations across sectors are actually struggling with AI adoption, as distinct from the positions they present publicly. She now serves on the board of Luminate – the international organisation working to ensure that Big Tech and AI platforms respect human rights – and as Non-Executive Director of Innovate Cambridge. Named in Computer Weekly’s Most Influential Women in Technology in 2023, she is one of the few speakers in this space who has operated across government policy, commercial technology, and civil society governance at the same time. Key speaking topics AI governance and organisational accountability Responsible AI and ethics in practice AI policy and the regulatory landscape AI bias, inclusion, and structural risk Leadership decision-making in the age of AI Building AI literacy at board and executive level Technology entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystems Ideal for Boards and audit or risk committees developing AI governance frameworks C-suite and senior leadership teams setting or reviewing AI strategy Public sector and regulated industry leaders navigating emerging AI policy Technology and digital transformation leads in organisations deploying AI at scale Audience outcomes A clearer framework for understanding what responsible AI adoption requires at leadership and governance level Greater confidence discussing AI accountability with technical teams, regulators, and boards Practical understanding of the policy and regulatory environment shaping AI deployment in the UK and Europe Sharper awareness of where AI bias risks arise and what governance mechanisms are available to address them Context for evaluating AI proposals, investments, or vendor relationships with more informed scrutiny

Why organisations work with Cristina Criddle A direct line into the AI story as it is being reported, from a journalist who breaks news on OpenAI, Google, Meta and TikTok for the FT, not a commentator reading the same coverage as the audience. First-hand authority on platform power and data governance: in 2022 ByteDance admitted its staff used her personal account data to try to identify her FT sources, which gives her an unusually concrete view of how large platforms actually behave. Award-recognised reporting credentials, including gold at the 2023 MHP Group 30 To Watch Journalism Awards for technology coverage. Translates frontier AI development into language a non-technical executive can act on, drawing on a decade across the BBC’s Today Programme, BBC Breakfast and BBC Three, in addition to the FT. Works as keynote, panellist, host and moderator, which makes her useful as both a content voice and a credible chair for senior internal AI conversations. Biography highlights Technology Correspondent, Financial Times, San Francisco, covering Artificial Intelligence. Previously the FT’s Technology Correspondent in London for three years. Former BBC technology reporter across the Today Programme, BBC Breakfast, TV, radio and online. Producer of the BBC Three documentary “The Instagram Effect” (2022) on the platform’s impact on user wellbeing. Gold winner, MHP Group 30 To Watch Journalism Awards 2023, Science, Environment & Technology category. Subject of ByteDance’s admitted 2022 internal surveillance operation, in which staff accessed her location data via her personal TikTok account to try to identify her FT sources. Biography The frontier AI story is being written from a small number of buildings in San Francisco, and most boards are reading it second-hand. Criddle reports it first-hand. As the Financial Times’s Technology Correspondent specialising in AI, she covers OpenAI, Google, Meta and the other labs setting the pace, and the regulators and rival platforms trying to keep up. Before the San Francisco posting, she spent three years as the FT’s Technology Correspondent in London, breaking stories on TikTok, Meta and the wider platform economy. Her reporting record was recognised with gold at the MHP Group 30 To Watch Journalism Awards in 2023 in the Science, Environment & Technology category. Her earlier career at the BBC, across the Today Programme, BBC Breakfast, TV, radio and online, included producing the 2022 BBC Three documentary “The Instagram Effect”, which used insider testimony to examine the platform’s effect on younger users. That mix of investigative reporting and broadcast experience is why she works as both a keynote voice and a chair for senior internal AI conversations. In December 2022, ByteDance admitted that four of its staff had used Criddle’s personal TikTok data to try to identify her FT sources. The company dismissed the staff and restructured its internal audit team. The episode is one of the few publicly confirmed cases of a major platform surveilling a named journalist, and it gives her a concrete point of view on platform governance, data access and trust that boards are increasingly being forced to take seriously. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and the frontier labs Enterprise AI adoption and workplace impact AI regulation and governance Big Tech platform power Data privacy and platform surveillance Social media’s effect on users and society Future of technology and consumer adoption Ideal for Boards and executive committees making capital allocation decisions on AI CTOs, CIOs and Chief AI Officers tracking the frontier labs and policy environment Communications, policy and legal leaders responsible for AI risk and platform exposure Conference programme chairs looking for an FT-credentialled AI host or moderator Audience outcomes A current, named-source view of what is happening inside the major AI labs and how it is likely to land commercially A working understanding of the regulatory pressure on AI and large platforms, and where it is likely to bite Sharper questions to ask internal AI teams, vendors and platform partners about data, governance and safety A clearer sense of what is signal and what is noise in the AI news cycle

Why organisations work with Anne-Marie Imafidon She has run the experiment at scale. Stemettes has engaged more than 60,000 young women and non-binary young people across the UK, Ireland and Europe since 2013, giving her a live evidence base on what moves technical participation and what does not. Her technical credibility is not borrowed. Master’s in Mathematics and Computer Science from Oxford at 20, Honorary Fellow of Keble College, and guest arithmetician on Channel 4’s Countdown for 60 episodes, so technical audiences engage her as a peer rather than an advocate. She sits inside the UK policy conversation on digital skills. Co-Chair of the Institute for the Future of Work, 2022-2023 President of the British Science Association, and DSIT Women in Tech Envoy, which gives leaders a direct line to how regulation and industrial strategy are likely to land. She has a published thesis. She’s In CTRL (Transworld, 2022) argues that women need to take back tech as users, builders and decision-makers; that frame is portable into strategy conversations about product, customer and workforce. She is comfortable in front of non-technical boards. Her broadcast work and Chancellorship of Glasgow Caledonian University mean she translates between technical reality and senior decision-maker vocabulary without losing either. Biography highlights Co-founder and CEO of Stemettes, social enterprise founded in 2013 that has reached 60,000+ young women and non-binary young people across the UK, Ireland and Europe. Master’s in Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Oxford, aged 20; Honorary Fellow of Keble College, Oxford. Appointed MBE in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to young women and STEM. Chancellor of Glasgow Caledonian University; 2022-2023 President of the British Science Association; Co-Chair of the Institute for the Future of Work. Author of She’s In CTRL: How Women Can Take Back Tech (Transworld, 2022). Guest arithmetician on Channel 4’s Countdown across 60 episodes (2021-2022), first Black woman to take the Countdown board; voted Computer Weekly’s Most Influential Woman in UK Tech (2020); Forbes Top 50 Women in Tech. DSIT Women in Tech Envoy, co-chairing a UK government Taskforce with the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology (2025). Biography Stemettes was set up in 2013 after its co-founder returned from the Grace Hopper Celebration in 2012 and decided the UK needed its own infrastructure for girls in STEM. More than 60,000 young women and non-binary young people have passed through its programmes since, across the UK, Ireland and Europe. That operating record is the spine of Anne-Marie Imafidon’s authority on technology talent. The technical credentials are unusual. Imafidon took her Master’s in Mathematics and Computer Science at Oxford at 20, is an Honorary Fellow of Keble College, and was the guest arithmetician on Channel 4’s Countdown for 60 episodes in 2021 and 2022, the first Black woman to run the Countdown board. She was appointed MBE in 2017 for services to young women and STEM. Her public roles put her inside the UK conversation on digital skills and industrial strategy. She is Chancellor of Glasgow Caledonian University, Co-Chair of the Institute for the Future of Work, served as President of the British Science Association in 2022-2023, and in 2025 was appointed the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology’s Women in Tech Envoy, co-chairing a Taskforce with the Secretary of State. Her book She’s In CTRL, published by Transworld in 2022, argues that women should treat technology as something to take control of, not just consume or be represented within. For senior leaders it reframes the DEI-in-tech conversation as a product and capability question: who builds the tools, who governs them, and whose problems they get designed to solve. Key speaking topics Women and underrepresented groups in STEM Technology talent pipelines and digital skills Future of work and AI Inclusive product and technology design Social entrepreneurship at scale UK digital policy and industrial strategy Responsible and inclusive AI Ideal for CHROs, CPOs and heads of talent building technology hiring pipelines beyond the usual funnel. CTOs, CDIOs and engineering leaders under pressure to improve retention and representation in technical teams. Boards and ExCos setting policy on AI, digital skills and workforce strategy, particularly in regulated sectors. Corporate foundations, ESG leads and public-sector partners designing STEM and social mobility interventions. Audience outcomes A sharper read on why conventional diversity-in-tech programmes under-deliver and where the real intervention points sit. A working vocabulary for discussing inclusive AI and technology design at board level without defaulting to platitudes. Concrete examples, drawn from Stemettes and UK policy work, of what moves technical participation and retention. A reframe of women-in-tech as a product, governance and capability issue, not only a hiring issue. A sense of how UK digital skills policy and regulation are likely to shape talent strategy over the next cycle.

Why organisations work with Alec Ross He has advised both a US Secretary of State and a global venture capital firm on the same question: where power is moving as technology, capital and national interest collide. Boards get a single read across all three. The Industries of the Future sold into 24 languages and remains a reference text for executive teams framing long-range technology strategy. That gives him a shared vocabulary with global leadership audiences before he opens his mouth. The Raging 2020s offers a specific thesis, not a survey: the social contract between government, business and citizens is broken, and companies that misread the rebalancing will lose licence to operate. Leaders leave with a framework for where regulatory and political risk is actually heading. He built and sat inside the first serious technology policy function at the State Department, then moved to the investor side at Amplo. He speaks to both the regulator’s logic and the cap table’s logic, which most commentators cannot. Named to Foreign Policy’s Top 100 Global Thinkers and awarded the State Department’s Distinguished Honor Award. Credentials buyers can cite when justifying the booking internally. Biography highlights Senior Advisor for Innovation to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, 2009 to 2013, in a role created specifically to modernise the practice of diplomacy. Author of two New York Times bestsellers: The Industries of the Future (Simon and Schuster, 2016) and The Raging 2020s (Henry Holt, 2021). Distinguished Professor at the Business School of the University of Bologna; previously Distinguished Senior Fellow at Johns Hopkins University and Senior Fellow at Columbia SIPA. Board Partner at Amplo, a global venture capital firm, with director roles across technology, finance, manufacturing, human capital and cybersecurity companies. Co-founder of One Economy, a nonprofit that expanded broadband access for low-income households before broadband policy was a political issue. Named to Foreign Policy magazine’s Top 100 Global Thinkers and holder of the US Department of State Distinguished Honor Award. Biography The Senior Advisor for Innovation job at the State Department did not exist before 2009. It was built for Alec Ross, who spent four years travelling to forty-one countries turning emerging technology into an instrument of US foreign policy under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. That mandate, sitting at the join between diplomacy, national security and the technology industry, is the lens he has brought to every role since. The Industries of the Future, published in 2016, mapped the sectors he believed would reorganise the global economy over the following decade: robotics, genomics, the commercialisation of data, the weaponisation of code. It sold into 24 languages and became a fixture on executive reading lists. The Raging 2020s, published in 2021, moved the argument on. The question is no longer which technologies win. The question is whether the contract between governments, companies and citizens holds, and what companies do when it does not. Ross now teaches at the University of Bologna Business School and sits as a Board Partner at the venture capital firm Amplo, with director seats across technology, finance, manufacturing and cybersecurity. He reads a regulatory brief the way a former diplomat does and a growth plan the way an investor does, and has held both jobs in earnest. What that produces for a leadership audience is judgement on questions that sit above the CTO and below the board: where the geopolitical weather is turning, which regulatory frames are about to land, which technology bets will still make sense when the politics catches up. Foreign Policy named him to its Top 100 Global Thinkers for a reason specific to this moment. Very few commentators have worked the diplomatic side, the commercial side and the academic side of the same argument. Key speaking topics Geopolitics of technology and the US to China contest The social contract between governments, companies and citizens Artificial intelligence, data and national competitiveness Cybersecurity as a board-level risk Regulation, antitrust and the future licence to operate Long-range industry disruption and capital allocation Innovation policy and the future of work Ideal for Boards and executive committees setting multi-year technology and geopolitical strategy CEOs, CSOs and heads of government affairs briefing for regulatory inflection points Financial services, technology and industrial leadership teams exposed to US, EU and China policy divergence Conferences convening CEOs, policymakers and investors on the intersection of technology and state power Audience outcomes A sharper read on where regulation, capital and public sentiment are pushing the next decade of technology strategy. A working framework for pricing political and geopolitical risk inside commercial decisions. Named examples of how governments, companies and citizens are renegotiating the social contract, and the implications for licence to operate. A clearer view of which technology sectors are concentrating power, and where corporate strategy has to adjust. An investor and policymaker’s dual perspective on the same question, translated for operators.

Why organisations work with Anand Tamboli His Apress book Build Your Own IoT Platform is a widely used technical manual for developers building IoT platforms, which anchors him outside the bureau-speaker register and inside the engineering community. His second book Keeping Your AI Under Control applies the same discipline to AI governance, giving senior audiences a specific frame on the control layer that most AI keynotes skip. Chartered Engineer status plus MBA in International Business gives him the combination buyers want: deep technical credibility with business-side vocabulary. He mentors innovators through Venture Cafe Sydney, CSIRO and UNSW, so the current reading on emerging technology is current and specific to what is actually being built, not abstract. Twenty-plus years of Fortune 500 speaking and consulting plus awards from Consensus Group Australia («Best Author of the Year») and IoT Hub Australia («IoT Pioneer» nomination) give the credibility an external anchor. Biography highlights Founder, Knewron Technologies; Chartered Engineer; MBA in International Business Author of Build Your Own IoT Platform (Apress) and Keeping Your AI Under Control Innovation mentor for Venture Cafe Sydney, CSIRO and UNSW Honorary Treasurer, Computer Society of India; member, Australian Computer Society «Best Author of the Year», Consensus Group Australia; «IoT Pioneer» nomination, IoT Hub Australia 21-plus years speaking and consulting with Fortune 500 clients Biography Most AI and IoT keynotes operate at the level of strategy slides. Anand Tamboli’s work starts at the implementation layer. His Apress title Build Your Own IoT Platform is used by engineering teams to stand up working platforms inside a small number of business days. His second book Keeping Your AI Under Control does the same job for AI governance: it translates the control question into decisions that a senior operator can make, not an ethics committee. The academic base is Chartered Engineer status and an MBA in International Business, with earlier training in electrical, electronics and power-systems engineering. The commercial base is over two decades of Fortune 500 speaking and consulting through Knewron Technologies. The community base is mentoring through Venture Cafe Sydney, CSIRO and UNSW. Those three combined are unusual in the technology-futurist speaker market. The recognition sits with the substance. He has been named «Best Author of the Year» by Consensus Group Australia and nominated as an IoT Pioneer by IoT Hub Australia. He serves as Honorary Treasurer of the Computer Society of India and is an active member of the Australian Computer Society. The institutional footprint is inside engineering communities, not inside bureau marketing. For boards, CIOs, CTOs, innovation leaders and transformation functions at Fortune 500 enterprises, Tamboli offers a register that sits between engineering implementation and executive governance. He works in English across keynote, masterclass, panel and consulting formats. Key speaking topics AI governance and keeping AI deployments under control IoT platform strategy and implementation Transformative innovation and future-ready organisations Technology ethics and responsible technology Learning to unlearn and leading through disruption Distributed leadership and the future of work Ideal for Boards, CIOs and CTOs making AI and IoT deployment decisions Innovation, R&D and transformation functions at Fortune 500 enterprises Engineering leadership communities requiring a technical, not commentator-level, speaker Asia-Pacific and Australasian corporate and public-sector audiences Audience outcomes A working framework for AI governance drawn from Keeping Your AI Under Control An engineering-level view of IoT platform strategy from an Apress-published author Specific examples drawn from 21-plus years of Fortune 500 technology consulting A view of where the emerging-technology agenda sits for boards over the next cycle

Why organisations work with James Taylor A named, published model. The Eight Ps of SuperCreativity (Purpose, Personality, Practice, People, Process, Place, Product, Persuasion) gives leadership teams a common language for a problem most companies still discuss in abstractions. Field-tested with the buyers he is pitching to. Apple, Cisco, Deloitte, EY, Visa, IBM, McDonald’s, Sony and Johnson and Johnson have used his work with their teams, so the credibility problem is solved before the conversation starts. Primary research, not curation. Through the SuperCreativity Podcast he has interviewed hundreds of founders, researchers and creative directors, which gives his keynotes specific stories that bureau-written talks on AI cannot match. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts with a TED talk on augmenting human creativity, which signals institutional seriousness for boards that want more than a futurist pitch. Works in partnership as The Ethical Futurists with Alison Burns when briefs require joint treatment of AI, sustainability and ethical business practice. Biography highlights Author, SuperCreativity: Accelerating Innovation in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (Sirmione Publishing, 2026). Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA); MBA. TED speaker: SuperCreativity, Augmenting Human Creativity in the Age of AI. Host, SuperCreativity Podcast, featuring interviews with creative leaders, founders and AI researchers. Advisory and keynote client roster includes Apple, Cisco, Deloitte, EY, Visa, IBM, McDonald’s, Sony, Mercedes-Benz and Johnson and Johnson. Co-founder of The Ethical Futurists with Alison Burns, focused on sustainability, ethics and future of work. Biography The conversation in most boardrooms has moved on from whether to adopt AI to whether AI is producing anything genuinely new. Productivity gains are easier to claim than originality, and executives now want to understand what separates teams that use AI to compress existing work from teams that use it to generate ideas their competitors have not yet considered. That is the question Taylor has built his practice around. His book SuperCreativity, published by Sirmione Publishing in 2026, argues that the age of the lone genius is over and that creative advantage now belongs to leaders who can orchestrate collaboration between humans and machines. The Eight Ps framework at the centre of the book (Purpose, Personality, Practice, People, Process, Place, Product, Persuasion) is how he translates the argument into something a leadership team can act on. The evidence base is unusually direct. Through the SuperCreativity Podcast he has run long-form interviews with founders, researchers, and creative directors across Silicon Valley and beyond, building a library of primary material on how creative work is actually being done under AI conditions. That research feeds keynotes for Apple, Cisco, Deloitte, EY, Visa, IBM, McDonald’s, Sony, Mercedes-Benz and Johnson and Johnson. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, holds an MBA, and has delivered a TED talk on augmenting human creativity in the age of AI. With Alison Burns he also runs The Ethical Futurists, a dedicated partnership for briefs that sit at the intersection of AI, sustainability and corporate ethics. Key speaking topics Human-AI creative collaboration Innovation capability and the Eight Ps of SuperCreativity Creative leadership in AI-enabled organisations Applied artificial intelligence for business teams Ethics and responsibility in AI adoption Future of work and creative skills Ideal for C-suite and board sessions weighing the strategic return on AI investment beyond productivity Chief Innovation Officers, CTOs and transformation leads responsible for integrating AI into existing teams Leadership offsites for creative, marketing, product and R and D functions Industry conferences on AI, innovation and the future of work Audience outcomes A shared framework, the Eight Ps of SuperCreativity, that leadership teams can carry back into their own planning A clearer view of where AI augments human judgement and where it dilutes it Specific examples of how large organisations are using AI to raise creative output, not just operational speed A starting position on the ethical questions that follow any serious AI rollout Prompts for how to redesign roles, teams and workflows around human-AI collaboration