Artificial Intelligence & Generative AI

Why organisations work with Alberto Levy Operator credibility on emerging tech: he is the co-founder and CEO of Poly Crypto Rewards and innovation advisor to the Royal Commission for AlUla, so the perspective comes from current decisions, not commentary. Teaches innovation and entrepreneurship inside the IE University International MBA, which gives executives the frameworks his book Start Here codifies for first-time founders and intrapreneurs. Track record across roughly 1,500 projects with 300+ clients in more than 15 countries, including Fortune 500 work spanning automotive, FMCG, media and technology. Recognised on the platforms senior buyers track: World Economic Forum, Harvard Business Review Summit, MIT EmTech, Singularity University, TEDx. A distinctive human-centred voice in a category dominated by hype: his keynotes connect AI, Web3 and design to leadership behaviour and culture, not just technology roadmaps. Biography highlights Adjunct Professor on the International MBA at IE University, Madrid, since 2018, and faculty member on innovation, design thinking and digital leadership programmes at Porto Business School, EGADE / Tec de Monterrey, IPADE, and Financial Times Headspring. Co-founder and CEO of Poly Crypto Rewards, a crypto rewards platform. Innovation and Technology Advisor to the Royal Commission for AlUla, Saudi Arabia, and board advisor at the Founder Institute. Author of Start Here: A Practical Guide to Entrepreneurship for First-Time Founders. Featured speaker at the World Economic Forum, MIT EmTech, Harvard Business Review Summit, TEDx, Singularity University, and Oracle Leaders Circle. Master’s in Interactive Telecommunications, New York University; Bachelor’s in Computer Engineering, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro; Aspen Institute alumnus and Forbes Business Council member. Biography The technology cycle has compressed. AI, Web3 and design tools that organisations were piloting two years ago are now embedded in their products, their go-to-market, and the daily work of their teams. Most leadership teams are still trying to convert that into durable operating advantage rather than another wave of pilots. Alberto Levy works in that gap. He has spent more than two decades inside roughly 1,500 projects across 15+ countries, advising Fortune 500 organisations in automotive, media, FMCG and technology, and has carried that experience into the classroom as an Adjunct Professor on the IE University International MBA, where he teaches innovation, design thinking and digital leadership. His operating profile gives the work weight. He is co-founder and CEO of Poly Crypto Rewards, an Innovation and Technology Advisor to the Royal Commission for AlUla in Saudi Arabia, and a board advisor at the Founder Institute. His book, Start Here: A Practical Guide to Entrepreneurship for First-Time Founders, distils the same playbook he uses with executive teams: spotting real problems, building businesses around them, and stress-testing them against modern tools, AI and digital business models included. Levy is described as an Innovation Evangelist by the Harvard Business Review Summit and the World Economic Forum, and has spoken at MIT EmTech, TEDx, Singularity University and Oracle Leaders Circle. The thread through all of it is a refusal to treat technology as the answer on its own. His argument to senior leaders is that AI, Web3 and design only become advantage when matched to a clear human problem the organisation has decided to solve. Key speaking topics Innovation as an operating discipline AI and human intelligence in the enterprise Web3, blockchain and the future of digital business Digital transformation with a human-centred lens Entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship at scale Creative leadership and culture Customer experience and experiential storytelling Ideal for Board and executive teams setting an AI, Web3 or digital strategy that has to outlast the current technology cycle Chief Innovation Officers, CTOs and transformation leads moving from pilots to operating model Corporate venture, intrapreneurship and founder-track programmes inside large organisations CMOs and customer experience leaders rebuilding around emerging technology Audience outcomes A clearer view of where AI and Web3 produce real operating advantage and where they do not A working model for translating innovation strategy into product, team and culture decisions Practical entrepreneurship tools drawn from Start Here, applicable to both founders and intrapreneurs A sharper sense of how to keep customers and employees at the centre of a technology agenda Confidence to make decisions on emerging technology without waiting for the next hype cycle

Why organisations work with Liv Boeree She gives boards a vocabulary, “Moloch traps,” for the race-to-the-bottom dynamics they already feel in AI deployment, pricing, and risk-taking, and a framework for naming when their organisation is inside one. Her decision-making content is grounded in nine years as a Team PokerStars Pro and a European Poker Tour championship, not theory. Senior leaders take her seriously on probability, expected value, and tilt because she has earned the right to teach it. She is one of the few speakers who can connect operator-level judgement under uncertainty to the systemic question of how the AI industry coordinates. That range matters for boards trying to hold both perspectives at once. Through Raising for Effective Giving, which she co-founded, she has moved more than twelve million dollars into evidence-weighted causes including AI safety. Her stance on responsible technology is backed by her own capital allocation, not just rhetoric. Her TED main-stage talk on competition in AI gives buyers a known reference point and an audience already primed to engage with the argument. Biography highlights First-class degree in Physics with Astrophysics, University of Manchester. European Poker Tour Sanremo champion and World Series of Poker bracelet winner; nine years as a Team PokerStars Pro. TED main-stage speaker, “The Dark Side of Competition in AI.” Co-founder, Raising for Effective Giving (REG), which has directed over twelve million dollars to high-impact causes. Host of the Win-Win Podcast, applying game theory to AI, climate, and coordination problems. Featured guest on The Jim Rutt Show and Ground Truths with Eric Topol, among other named outlets. Biography The AI industry is in a race that few of its participants would, on reflection, choose to be running. Speed is rewarded, caution is punished, and the incentive landscape pulls each lab away from the safety posture its own people quietly believe in. Liv Boeree calls this a Moloch trap, after the game-theoretic force that turns competition between rational actors into outcomes none of them want. Her route into that argument is unusual. She trained as a physicist at the University of Manchester, then spent nine years as a Team PokerStars Pro, winning a European Poker Tour championship and a World Series of Poker bracelet. Poker taught her a vocabulary for thinking under uncertainty: expected value, calibration, tilt, the difference between a bad outcome and a bad decision. That vocabulary now sits at the centre of how she talks to leadership audiences about judgement. In 2014 she co-founded Raising for Effective Giving, which has channelled over twelve million dollars from the poker community into causes including AI safety, disease prevention, and farm animal welfare. Her TED main-stage talk, “The Dark Side of Competition in AI,” extended the same argument to the largest technology firms: industries can be steered into outcomes the individual players inside them do not endorse, and the only way out is deliberate coordination. Her current work runs through the Win-Win Podcast and a steady cadence of writing and broadcast appearances on AI risk, governance, and how serious organisations should act inside competitive races. For boards and executive teams trying to hold both the operator’s question, what is the right next decision, and the systemic question, what game are we actually in, she offers a rare combined view. Key speaking topics AI race dynamics and Moloch traps Decision-making under uncertainty Game theory for leaders AI safety and alignment Effective philanthropy and capital allocation Probability, calibration, and forecasting Ideal for Boards and executive committees setting AI strategy and risk posture Chief Risk Officers, Chief AI Officers, and heads of AI governance Senior leadership offsites focused on judgement and decision-making under uncertainty Investor and philanthropic audiences weighing high-uncertainty capital allocation Audience outcomes A working definition of Moloch traps and a way to spot them inside their own competitive context. A sharper distinction between a bad decision and a bad outcome, drawn from professional poker practice. A more honest read of where AI industry incentives are pushing their organisation, and where governance can credibly intervene. A vocabulary for talking about expected value, calibration, and risk that travels between the boardroom and the operating team.

Why organisations work with Greg Williams His forthcoming book Code, Capital, Power (2027) is the spine of his current work: how big technology companies have redefined markets, reshaped global order and bent society to their design. The keynote is the boardroom version of that argument. Sixteen years at WIRED, including close to a decade as Editor-in-Chief of the UK edition, gave him access most writers on this beat do not get. Satya Nadella, Demis Hassabis, Reid Hoffman, Albert Bourla, Prime Ministers Blair, May and Johnson have all sat across from him. That access feeds directly into how he frames emerging signals for boards. He is cofounder of The Venture Group, an AI-first business operating as a founder accelerator programme. That adds an operator’s vantage point to the journalist’s depth he built at WIRED. Four-time British Society of Magazine Editors Editor of the Year for Science and Technology, and Chair of Judges for The Orwell Prize for Journalism 2026. Both are independent external markers that his judgement on this beat is taken seriously by people who track it closely. He works equally well as keynote, interviewer and on-stage moderator, which matters when the programme needs him to hold a room with a head of state, a founder and a regulator on the same panel. McKinsey and BCG have used him to host private leadership formats for this reason. Biography highlights Former Editor-in-Chief of WIRED UK and Deputy Global Editorial Director, WIRED, after sixteen years at the title; cofounder of The Venture Group, an AI-first business operating as a founder accelerator programme. Author of the forthcoming Code, Capital, Power: How Big Tech Companies Redefined Markets, Reshaped Global Order and Are Transforming Society in Their Image (2027). Chair of Judges, The Orwell Prize for Journalism 2026. British Society of Magazine Editors Editor of the Year, Science and Technology, in 2017, 2018, 2020 and 2024. On-stage interviewer of Bill Gates, Satya Nadella, Demis Hassabis, Reid Hoffman, Albert Bourla and Prime Ministers Blair, May and Johnson. Speaking credits include the World Economic Forum in Davos, UN AI for Good, Cannes Lions, Web Summit, Vivatech, SXSW, DLD, Founders Forum and the World Governments Summit, plus private leadership formats for McKinsey and BCG. Biography The most consequential question for senior leadership over the next decade is no longer whether technology will reshape markets. It is who is doing the reshaping, who is benefiting, and what kind of operating environment that leaves for everyone else. The argument Greg Williams sets out in his forthcoming book Code, Capital, Power is that big technology companies have already redrawn the rules of markets, capital and global order, and that boards now have to lead inside that new geometry. That work draws on sixteen years at WIRED, where he ran the UK edition for close to a decade and held the role of Deputy Global Editorial Director, with editorial responsibility for teams from Mexico to Japan. He is also cofounder of The Venture Group, an AI-first business operating as a founder accelerator programme. Access compounds the credibility. Williams has interviewed Bill Gates, Satya Nadella, Demis Hassabis, Reid Hoffman, Albert Bourla and Prime Ministers Blair, May and Johnson, on stage and in print. He has shared programmes with the World Economic Forum in Davos, UN AI for Good, Cannes Lions, Web Summit, Vivatech, SXSW and the World Governments Summit, and has hosted private leadership formats for McKinsey and BCG. The British Society of Magazine Editors named him Editor of the Year for Science and Technology four times, in 2017, 2018, 2020 and 2024, and the Orwell Foundation appointed him Chair of Judges for its 2026 Prize for Journalism, on a panel with Nick Davies, Meenakshi Ravi and Sayeeda Warsi. For a leadership team, the booking works on two levels. As keynote, he translates AI, cybersecurity and the platform economics shaping global order into decisions a board can act on. As interviewer or moderator, he can hold a complicated panel, ask the sharper question, and keep the conversation honest when a founder, a regulator and a customer are on the same stage. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and its impact on business models Cybersecurity and digital risk at board level Technology and geopolitics Innovation and disruption Future of work and workforce transformation Strategic foresight and trend forecasting Leadership in a technology-driven economy Ideal for Boards and executive committees setting AI, data or cybersecurity strategy CEO and CIO offsites that need a credible outside read on the technology agenda Innovation, strategy and transformation leads briefing their organisation on what is coming Industry conferences that need a moderator who can interview founders, regulators and policymakers on the same stage Audience outcomes A sharper filter for separating real technology signal from hype A clearer view of the AI, cybersecurity and platform shifts that will hit their sector next A forward read on the technology economy shaped by his own argument that a small number of big tech companies are restructuring markets and the global order, not a vendor pitch Specific named companies, researchers and regulators to watch Better questions to put to their own technology and strategy teams on return

Why organisations work with Garry Golden He is a credentialled futurist, M.S. in Futures Studies from the University of Houston and former board member of the Association of Professional Futurists, not a trend commentator. The discipline behind the talk is the product. He has applied foresight inside Microsoft, Accenture, American Express, Disney, CVS Aetna, Fidelity, and Boston Scientific, which means executives hear method tested against their own scale of complexity. His work concentrates on the two infrastructure shifts most likely to reset competitive position this decade, energy and transportation, paired with the demographic and AI dynamics that pull on them. He teaches the future of energy and environment at the University of Houston, so his framing of the energy transition carries technical detail rather than generic sustainability framing. Clients use him to install foresight as an internal capability, not as a one-off keynote: he leaves teams with a process for thinking about long-range change after he leaves the room. Biography highlights M.S. in Futures Studies, University of Houston Foresight programme. Adjunct Lecturer on the Future of Energy and Environment, University of Houston. Past Board of Directors, Association of Professional Futurists. Foresight and strategy work delivered for Microsoft (Bing/Cortana), Accenture, American Express, Disney, CVS Aetna, Fidelity, Dell, Boston Scientific, Verizon Wireless. Civic and cultural foresight engagements with AARP, the Kennedy Center, Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Walker Arts Center, and the American Alliance of Museums. Recurring focus on energy system decarbonisation, fuel cells, AI-driven software disruption, and global demographic transitions. Biography Most strategy decks treat the next decade as a longer version of the last one. The discipline of futures studies exists because that assumption has stopped holding, particularly in industries where AI, energy systems, and demographic structure are all shifting at the same time. Golden was trained inside that discipline. He holds an M.S. in Futures Studies from the University of Houston, one of the few graduate programmes in the field, and served on the Board of Directors of the Association of Professional Futurists. He now teaches the Future of Energy and Environment at Houston as an Adjunct Lecturer, which keeps his work close to the technical detail of the energy transition rather than the marketing version of it. The client list reflects the breadth of where structured foresight earns its place. Microsoft has used him inside the Bing and Cortana groups; Accenture, American Express, CVS Aetna, Disney, Fidelity, Dell, and Boston Scientific have brought him in to stretch leadership horizons on AI, infrastructure, financial services, and talent. He works the civic side as well, with AARP, the Kennedy Center, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the American Alliance of Museums commissioning work on demographic and cultural shifts. The pattern across those engagements is consistent. Leaders arrive with a planning process built for incremental change and leave with a method, drivers, signals, scenarios, decisions, that lets them treat exponential change as something to plan around rather than react to. Key speaking topics Strategic foresight and long-range scenario planning The future of energy systems and decarbonisation AI and software-driven industry transitions The future of transportation and mobility infrastructure Demographic change and its strategic implications Future of work, learning, and talent development The future of civic and cultural institutions Ideal for CEO and executive teams running long-range strategy reviews in energy, financial services, healthcare, and technology. Chief Strategy Officers and corporate development leads building scenario capability inside the planning function. Boards and investment committees pressure-testing capital allocation against ten and twenty year horizons. Innovation, R&D, and learning leaders responsible for connecting talent and capability plans to coming infrastructure shifts. Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for distinguishing trend, driver, and signal, and using each appropriately in strategic conversation. A clearer view of which shifts in AI, energy, and demographics are likely to reshape their specific industry within the planning horizon. A repeatable scenario method the team can run again without external facilitation. Sharper questions for the next strategy cycle, in particular where current assumptions are most likely to fail.

Why organisations work with Jack Shaw Operator experience across successive AI waves, from expert systems and eCommerce through Knowledge-Based Expert Systems to today’s generative AI. That span of hands-on work is rare, and it is what lets him tell a board which shifts are durable and which are noise. Author of The AI Imperative Series, a planned multi-volume set examining AI transformation industry by industry. The first volume, Manufacturing’s AI Imperative, was published in April 2026; subsequent volumes covering healthcare, finance, distribution, and government are in preparation. Track record advising senior leadership at Mercedes-Benz, Siemens, GE, Caterpillar, Rockwell Automation, Coca-Cola, 3M, IBM, Oracle, and Bosch. The client mix skews industrial and regulated, which is directly relevant when the audience is not a technology company. A working framework that separates tactical AI initiatives, which can pay back inside twelve months, from strategic programmes that reshape the operating model over three to five years. The framework is built for executive teams running both tracks simultaneously without one starving the other. Presents in 26 countries and all 50 U.S. states, with material that adapts to manufacturing, distribution, financial services, and public sector audiences rather than a single vertical. Biography highlights Author of The AI Imperative Series; first volume, Manufacturing’s AI Imperative, published April 2026 Graduate of Yale University; MBA, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University Enterprise AI experience spanning commercial expert systems and machine learning through to today’s generative AI Former Vice President of Commercial Systems, Applied Systems Intelligence; previously led an AI software company in Knowledge-Based Expert Systems Advisor to senior leadership at Mercedes-Benz, Siemens, GE, Caterpillar, Rockwell Automation, Coca-Cola, 3M, IBM, Oracle, and Bosch Keynote presentations in 26 countries and all 50 U.S. states, across manufacturing, distribution, financial services, and public sector audiences Biography Knowledge-Based Expert Systems were running in defence and industrial settings long before ChatGPT gave AI a consumer face. Shaw was writing commercial software in that space in the 2000s as Vice President of Commercial Systems at Applied Systems Intelligence, after leading an AI software company through the previous wave. He has been inside enterprise AI since before most organisations were asking the question, which is why he can tell a board which shifts are durable and which are noise. Drawing on more than four decades in AI and enterprise technology, Shaw has delivered over 1,000 keynote presentations across 26 countries. As an AI transformation advisor, he works with senior leadership at Mercedes-Benz, Siemens, Bosch, GE, Caterpillar, IBM, Coca-Cola, and Oracle. His focus is where AI changes the economics of the business, not just its tooling. His work turns on a dual-path distinction between Tactical AI and Strategic AI. Tactical AI covers the applications that pay back inside twelve months; Strategic AI is the operating-model change that reshapes competitive position over three to five years. He frames the destination as the Autonomic Enterprise, where routine sensing and response run at machine speed and human judgement is reserved for the decisions that cannot be delegated. That thinking is now published. Manufacturing’s AI Imperative: An Executive Mandate is the first volume in The AI Imperative Series, an industry-by-industry set applying the framework to the AI decisions facing the C-suite, with volumes on distribution, government, healthcare, and finance in preparation. A Yale graduate with a Kellogg MBA, Shaw advises internationally on executive AI strategy, AI governance, and workforce transformation. He speaks directly to what boards are asking now: how to get out of pilot purgatory, how to cut the decision latency that stalls AI programmes, and how the gap between AI leaders and laggards compounds faster than in any previous technology shift. Key speaking topics Tactical AI and Strategic AI: the dual-path framework Enterprise AI from pilot to operating-model change The Autonomic Enterprise and the emerging Autonomic Economy AI governance, risk, and executive accountability Workforce transformation in the age of AI Industry-specific AI strategy for manufacturing, distribution, and regulated sectors Decision latency and compounding advantage in enterprise AI Ideal for Boards and C-suites setting enterprise AI and digital strategy CIOs, CTOs, and CDOs sequencing AI investment across competing priorities: infrastructure, workforce capability, data readiness, and vendor selection Manufacturing, automotive, distribution, and financial services leadership teams Industry associations and regulated-sector conferences asking where the technology actually lands in operations Audience outcomes A clearer read on which AI capabilities matter for their specific industry and time horizon Concrete examples from Fortune 500 deployments rather than generic case studies Vocabulary to challenge vendor pitches and internal proposals with sharper questions A dual-path framework for separating the AI initiatives that pay back inside twelve months from the strategic programmes that reshape the operating model over three to five years, with a method for running both tracks simultaneously without one starving the other

Why organisations work with Mark T. Hofmann He has conducted anonymous, scientific interviews with active hackers and uncaught criminals on the darknet, so the attacker psychology in his keynotes is field-sourced, not theorised from headlines. His doctoral research at the University of Tubingen on psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism in hackers gives security and risk leaders a behavioural model for who is targeting them and why. He translates profiling and interrogation methods, the same toolkit used in serious crime work, into practical reading-people skills for negotiation, fraud detection, and executive due diligence. He has been certified as a Crime and Intelligence Analyst by the California Department of Justice and is regularly briefed on by international media including CNN, CBS, Forbes, and 60 Minutes Australia, which gives a buyer confidence the substance survives outside a stage. He covers the dark side of AI, deepfakes, voice cloning, and AI-assisted social engineering, with material that has been pressure-tested against actual perpetrator behaviour rather than vendor marketing. Biography highlights Master of Arts in Industrial and Organizational Psychology, University of Wuppertal. Doctoral candidate at the University of Tubingen, researching dark personality traits among hackers. Certified Crime and Intelligence Analyst, California Department of Justice, 2019. TED speaker, “Profiling Hackers: The Psychology of Cybercrime”. Featured on CNN, CBS, ARD, RTL, Forbes, Business Insider, and 60 Minutes Australia. Lecturer in Behavioral and Cyber Psychology and consultant for Management Circle AG. Biography Most cyberattacks do not begin with code. They begin with a person, a moment of trust, and a message that looked legitimate. The attacker’s craft is psychological before it is technical, and that is the layer most security programmes underinvest in. Mark T. Hofmann works on that layer for a living. A business psychologist trained at the University of Wuppertal and a Certified Crime and Intelligence Analyst credentialed by the California Department of Justice, he conducts anonymous, scientific interviews with active hackers and uncaught criminals to understand motive, method, and the soft signals that make a target. His doctoral work at the University of Tubingen examines psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism among hackers, which gives his stage material a research backbone rather than a headline one. That fieldwork translates directly into the questions a CISO, a CEO, or a head of fraud is wrestling with. How do attackers select targets inside a finance team? What does a deepfake voice request actually exploit in the listener? Why do executives keep authorising wires they should have queried? Hofmann answers those questions with case material drawn from people who do this for a living and were willing to talk. His reach extends beyond security. He teaches profiling and interrogation methods as a practical skillset for negotiation, fraud interviewing, and high-stakes meetings, the same techniques applied to commercial situations. He has been featured on CNN, CBS, Forbes, ARD, RTL, Business Insider, and 60 Minutes Australia, and has delivered a TED talk on profiling hackers. The combination is unusual: a keynote speaker whose primary research subject is the person on the other side of the attack. Key speaking topics Cyber profiling and the psychology of cybercrime Social engineering and the human firewall The dark side of AI, deepfakes, and synthetic identity Profiling in negotiation and high-stakes meetings Reading people, body language, and behavioural signals White-collar crime, psychopathy, and narcissism in organisations Ideal for CISOs, heads of information security, and cyber risk leaders rebuilding the human layer of their defence. CFOs, heads of treasury, and fraud teams exposed to deepfake-driven payment and impersonation attacks. Boards and executive committees that need a non-technical briefing on AI-enabled threat actors. Negotiation, M&A, and procurement leaders who want a practical toolkit for reading counterparties. Audience outcomes A working mental model of who is attacking the organisation, what motivates them, and how they choose targets. Specific behavioural cues that distinguish a manipulative request from a legitimate one in email, voice, and video. A clear view of where deepfakes and AI-generated content are already changing fraud and impersonation risk. Practical profiling and questioning techniques that can be applied in negotiation and internal investigation. A sharper read on dark-personality traits inside leadership pipelines and counterparties.

Why organisations work with Alex Connock He runs the AI for Executives module on the Oxford Executive MBA and co-directs Oxford’s postgraduate course in Artificial Intelligence for Business, so the content has been pressure-tested with senior leaders before it reaches a corporate audience. He spent two decades running media businesses at scale, including thirteen years as co-founder and CEO of Ten Alps with Bob Geldof and five as Managing Director of Endemol Shine North, which means his framing of AI is grounded in production economics, not vendor narrative. His Routledge textbook on media business models in the AI age is a teaching reference at multiple business schools and has been translated into Korean and Turkish, giving him a coherent published argument rather than a deck of demos. He moves credibly between a board conversation about AI strategy and a creative team session on generative tools, which is rare in a topic dominated by either technologists or policy commentators. Biography highlights Senior Fellow, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford; co-director of Oxford’s postgraduate course in Artificial Intelligence for Business. Professor of Media and Artificial Intelligence, University of Exeter. Head of Department, Creative Business, National Film and Television School. Author of three Routledge titles, including “Media Management and Artificial Intelligence” (2022), “Media Management and Live Experience” (2024), and “Entrepreneurship in Media and Entertainment” (2025). Co-founder and former CEO of Ten Alps (now Zinc Media) with Bob Geldof; former Managing Director of Endemol Shine North. Education: PPE (Oxford), Journalism (Columbia), MBA (INSEAD), PhD in video optimisation for e-commerce. Biography Generative AI has reordered the cost base of every business that produces content, software, or marketing, and the question for leadership teams is no longer whether to engage but where the operating model actually changes. That question is harder to answer well than the public debate suggests. It needs someone who has run a production company through a previous wave of digital disruption, and who teaches the underlying technology to senior executives now. That is the position Alex Connock occupies. At Saïd Business School in Oxford he co-directs the postgraduate course in Artificial Intelligence for Business and runs the AI for Executives module on the Executive MBA. He holds a Professorship in Media and Artificial Intelligence at the University of Exeter and leads the Creative Business department at the National Film and Television School. Before the academic work he spent two decades as an operator. He co-founded Ten Alps with Bob Geldof in 1998 and ran it as chief executive for thirteen years, producing programming for UK and international broadcasters and the UK government’s Teachers TV. He then ran Endemol Shine North as Managing Director through a period of substantial growth. His three Routledge titles, including the 2022 textbook “Media Management and Artificial Intelligence” with Korean and Turkish translations, give the talks a published spine. The result is a speaker who can take a board conversation from generative AI as topic to specific decisions about content, channel, and capital, with a vocabulary that holds up in front of both the strategy team and the creative team. Key speaking topics Generative AI and the media business AI for executives and the corporate operating model AI applied to marketing and brand The economics of synthetic content and creator platforms AI, national strategy and creative industries policy Entrepreneurship and growth in media and entertainment Ideal for Boards and executive committees commissioning an AI strategy session that goes beyond capability demos. CMOs, CSOs, and content leaders in media, entertainment, publishing, advertising, and marketing. Executive education and senior leadership programmes inside large corporates. Industry conferences in media, technology, and creative industries seeking a credentialed academic voice with operator history. Audience outcomes A clear read on where generative AI changes the unit economics of content, marketing, and customer-facing operations. A structured view of the AI tooling landscape, anchored to specific business decisions rather than vendor categories. Reference points from media businesses already running AI in production, including platforms, broadcasters, and creator economies. A working vocabulary for the boardroom conversation on AI strategy that holds up with both technical and commercial colleagues.

Why organisations work with Sandra Wachter Her Counterfactual Explanations framework – co-developed at Oxford and adopted in production by Google, IBM, Microsoft, Accenture, and Vodafone – gives organisations a legally defensible method for explaining algorithmic decisions to the individuals they affect, not just to internal audit teams. Her Conditional Demographic Disparity (CDD) bias test demonstrated that 13 of 20 widely used bias detection tools fail EU non-discrimination standards. Amazon and IBM implemented CDD in their cloud services; it was deployed in 2024 to expose systemic bias in the Dutch national education system, resulting in a ministerial apology and formal reform. She works at the precise intersection of legal standards and technical metrics – meaning she can tell risk and compliance teams not only what accountability requires but how to measure whether systems actually deliver it. As a member of the European Parliament Working Group on AI Liability and the World Bank Task Force on Access to Justice and Technology, she tracks how regulatory frameworks are being written in real time, giving organisations visibility into requirements before they become mandatory. Her research has shifted institutional practice at the NHS and MHRA, which are revising medical device licensing standards using her findings on the unintended consequences of common group fairness measures – a concrete precedent for how her work moves from publication to policy. Biography highlights Professor of Technology and Regulation, Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford; Humboldt Professor of Technology and Regulation, Hasso Plattner Institute Leads the Governance of Emerging Technologies (GET) Research Programme at Oxford Co-developer of Counterfactual Explanations (now deployed by Google, IBM, Microsoft, Accenture, and Vodafone) and the Conditional Demographic Disparity (CDD) bias test (implemented by Amazon and IBM; applied in the Netherlands education reform, 2024) Published in Science Robotics, Nature Electronics, and Nature Reviews Physics; cited over 20,000 times (Google Scholar) Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Research Award (2025, €3.5M); O2RB Excellence in Impact Award (2018, 2021); Computer Weekly Women in UK Tech Award (2021); Privacy Law Scholar Award (2019); CognitionX AI Ethics Award (2017, 2023) Policy roles: European Parliament Working Group on AI Liability; World Bank Task Force on Access to Justice and Technology; WEF Global Futures Council on Values, Ethics and Innovation; UNESCO; UK Police Ethics Guidance Group Previously Visiting Professor, Harvard Law School; Research Fellow, The Alan Turing Institute Media profiles in the Financial Times, Wired, New York Times, BBC,Guardian, Harvard Business Review, Reuters, Time Magazine, and MIT Technology Review Biography Sandra Wachter is Professor of Technology and Regulation at the University of Oxford’s Oxford Internet Institute and Humboldt Professor at the Hasso Plattner Institute. She leads Oxford’s Governance of Emerging Technologies Research Programme – work that sits not in the space of ethical aspiration but in the harder territory of legal standards and technical verification. The tools her research has produced are in use at scale. The Counterfactual Explanations framework she co-developed is deployed in production by Google, IBM, Microsoft, Accenture, and Vodafone. Her Conditional Demographic Disparity (CDD) bias test – built after demonstrating that 13 of 20 commonly used bias tools fail EU non-discrimination law – was adopted by Amazon and IBM in their cloud services. In 2024, CDD was used to expose systemic bias in the Dutch national education system; the Dutch Minister of Education apologised and initiated formal reform. The NHS and MHRA have revised their medical device licensing practices using her findings on the consequences of widely applied group fairness measures. Her publications appear in Science Robotics, Nature Electronics, and Nature Reviews Physics, and she has been cited over 20,000 times. Awards include the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Research Award (2025, €3.5M), the O2RB Excellence in Impact Award (2018, 2021), the Privacy Law Scholar Award (2019), and the CognitionX AI Ethics Award (2017, 2023). She sits on the European Parliament Working Group on AI Liability, the World Bank Task Force on Access to Justice and Technology, the WEF Global Futures Council on Values, Ethics and Innovation, and the UK Police Ethics Guidance Group, and was previously Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School. For boards and risk leaders, her most immediate value is diagnostic: the gap between what organisations say their AI governance achieves and what the regulatory and technical evidence supports is larger than most assume. She has spent a decade building the instruments to measure that gap precisely. Key speaking topics AI governance and regulation Algorithmic accountability and explainability Algorithmic bias and non-discrimination law Generative AI and legal liability The EU AI Act and regulatory compliance Profiling, inferential analytics, and data protection Platform regulation and internet governance Ideal for Boards and C-suite teams making AI adoption and governance commitments Chief Data Officers and technology leadership teams designing accountability frameworks Legal, compliance, and risk leaders responsible for AI deployment decisions Public sector and regulatory audiences shaping AI policy and standards Audience outcomes A clear-eyed assessment of where current AI governance practices fall short of EU and UK legal standards – and why common assumptions about bias testing are insufficient Practical grounding in legally defensible tools for explainability and bias measurement, including frameworks already adopted by major technology companies Informed foresight into how the EU AI Act and emerging AI liability frameworks will affect deployment requirements Understanding of how generative AI creates specific new liabilities around hallucination, misinformation, and the emerging legal question of AI truthfulness The ability to distinguish between stated accountability commitments and governance that can withstand external scrutiny

Why organisations work with Mariano Sigman A 2018 Nature Human Behaviour study he co-authored, run with 5,180 live participants, showed that aggregating small structured debates produces sharper answers than the wisdom of thousands; that finding rewrites how senior groups should be designed to decide. He directs the Decision-Making programme of the Human Brain Project, Europe’s flagship neuroscience consortium, and is the only Latin American scientist to hold a directorship in that initiative. His training in physics in Buenos Aires, neuroscience at Rockefeller, and postdoctoral work with Stanislas Dehaene at the College de France gives his claims a methodological grounding that separates them from motivational uses of the same science. “The Secret Life of the Mind”, published by HarperCollins, has been translated into more than a dozen languages and reviewed by Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, and Science Magazine; his ideas hold up outside the speaker circuit. His 2023 book “Artificial”, co-authored with Santiago Bilinkis, gives leadership audiences a calm, scientifically grounded read on what AI changes and does not change in human cognition. Biography highlights PhD in neuroscience from Rockefeller University; postdoctoral research with Stanislas Dehaene at the College de France. Director of the Decision-Making programme of the Human Brain Project; the only Latin American scientist to hold a directorship in that initiative. Associate Professor at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella; founder of the Integrative Neuroscience Laboratory at the University of Buenos Aires; Principal Researcher at CONICET. Pius XI Medal from the Pontifical Academy of Sciences (2016); James S. McDonnell Scholar Award; Human Frontier Science Program Career Development Award. Author of “The Secret Life of the Mind” (HarperCollins, 2017) and “El poder de las palabras” (2022); co-author of “Artificial” with Santiago Bilinkis (2023). TED main-stage speaker on collective intelligence with Dan Ariely. Biography Smart people in a room together do not reliably make smart decisions. Mariano Sigman has spent two decades building the experimental science that explains why, and what to change about it. His laboratory at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella draws on physics, neuroscience, linguistics, and cognitive science to study how individuals and groups actually form judgments under uncertainty. The clearest example is a 2018 paper in Nature Human Behaviour with Joaquin Navajas and colleagues. Working with 5,180 live participants, the team showed that aggregating the consensus of small structured debate groups was substantially more accurate than averaging the opinions of thousands of independent individuals. The architecture of a conversation, in other words, matters more than the number of voices inside it. Sigman trained as a physicist at the University of Buenos Aires, took a PhD in neuroscience at Rockefeller, and did postdoctoral research at the College de France with Stanislas Dehaene, one of the leading figures in cognitive science. He directs the Decision-Making programme of the Human Brain Project, the European flagship initiative, and is the only Latin American scientist to hold a directorship there. “The Secret Life of the Mind”, published by HarperCollins, became an international bestseller and brought his work on judgment, learning, and consciousness to readers in more than a dozen languages. His 2023 book “Artificial”, co-authored with Santiago Bilinkis, applies the same lens to the relationship between human cognition and AI. For boards and executive teams, that body of work answers a specific question. Senior decisions live or die on how a small group aggregates uncertain information. Sigman gives leaders a working account of where that process breaks, why it breaks, and which structural moves close the gap. Key speaking topics Collective intelligence and group decision-making Cognitive bias and judgment under uncertainty The neuroscience of learning and adult neuroplasticity Conversation, language, and belief formation Artificial intelligence and human cognition Consciousness and the science of the mind Creativity and the cognitive roots of innovation Ideal for Boards and executive committees rethinking how high-stakes decisions are deliberated and made CHROs and learning leaders designing capability and judgment programmes for senior talent Strategy, innovation, and transformation leaders working under deep uncertainty Technology and AI leadership teams reasoning about human-machine collaboration Audience outcomes A working account of why structured small-group debate outperforms both lone experts and large consensus meetings. A specific vocabulary for the cognitive distortions that quietly shape leadership judgment, including confidence bias and equality bias. A clearer read on how the adult brain learns and changes, and where common assumptions about learning capacity are wrong. A practical sense of how language and conversation shape belief, memory, and choice inside teams. A grounded view of what AI changes, and does not change, in the cognitive demands placed on senior leaders.

Why organisations work with Dr Stephanie Hare Technology Is Not Neutral, named a Financial Times Best Technology Book of summer 2022, gives her a published framework her audiences can read before and after the session, which lifts her work out of conference-keynote territory. Her career covers the three sides of technology decision-making that most speakers can only address from one: operator (Accenture, Palantir), analyst (Oxford Analytica, Accenture Research) and researcher (LSE PhD, St Antony’s Oxford). That combination is unusually hard to replicate. She is a recognised BBC contributor, selected for the BBC Expert Women programme, with regular appearances on BBC World Television and BBC World Service, which makes her a known quantity to executive audiences used to seeing her comment on the same issues they are deciding. Her published writing in the Financial Times, Washington Post, Guardian, Harvard Business Review and WIRED gives clients a body of work they can share internally when briefing a session. The institutional client list, including KPMG, IKEA, LEGO, BAE Systems, CERN, the Royal Society and the Alan Turing Institute, signals that she operates comfortably across corporate, scientific and public-sector audiences. Biography highlights Author of Technology Is Not Neutral: A Short Guide to Technology Ethics (London Publishing Partnership), FT Best Technology Books of summer 2022 Co-presenter of Artificial Intelligence: Decoded on BBC television and contributor to the BBC World Service programme Business Matters Writing in the Financial Times, The Washington Post, the Guardian/Observer, Harvard Business Review, WIRED and Computer Weekly; selected for the BBC Expert Women programme and the Foreign Policy Interrupted fellowship PhD and MSc from the London School of Economics; BA University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; study at the Sorbonne Alistair Horne Visiting Fellow at St Antony’s College, Oxford Former Principal Director at Accenture Research; strategist at Palantir; senior Western Europe analyst at Oxford Analytica Biography Technology ethics is one of the few senior-leadership topics where the question is harder than the answer sounds, and Stephanie Hare has spent her career working on that gap. Technology Is Not Neutral, her book published by London Publishing Partnership, was named a Financial Times Best Technology Book of summer 2022 and has become a widely referenced practitioner text on how to think about the ethical consequences of AI, biometrics, surveillance and the platforms embedded in modern business operations. Her route to the argument is unusual. She holds a PhD and MSc from the London School of Economics, a BA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a year at the Sorbonne, and held the Alistair Horne Visiting Fellowship at St Antony’s College, Oxford. Her operator record covers Accenture, Palantir and Oxford Analytica, where she was a senior Western Europe analyst, before her current position as an independent researcher and broadcaster. That combination, academic, operator, analyst, gives her the register of each of the three rooms a technology ethics conversation usually has to run through. The media presence is specific. She is a regular contributor to BBC World Television and BBC World Service, was selected for the BBC Expert Women programme and for the Foreign Policy Interrupted fellowship. Her bylines run across the Financial Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, the Observer, Harvard Business Review and WIRED, which means corporate audiences often recognise the voice before they meet her. The advisory and speaking work sits across the organisations her argument is most relevant to: KPMG, IKEA, LEGO, BAE Systems, CERN, the Royal Society and the Alan Turing Institute. For boards, chief AI officers, chief technology officers and general counsel working through AI governance, biometric deployment and data strategy, Hare is one of the few commentators who can hold the ethics, the technology and the political risk in the same session. Key speaking topics Technology ethics and responsible AI AI governance and regulation Biometrics, surveillance and data strategy Political risk in technology and digital infrastructure Cybersecurity and emerging technology Climate action and the ethics of technology Ideal for Boards, chief AI officers and CTOs making defensible decisions on AI, biometrics and data General counsel, chief risk officers and compliance leaders facing accelerating AI and technology regulation Technology and advisory firms looking for a senior externally credible voice on ethics and governance Scientific institutions, research organisations and public-sector bodies running complex technology-ethics briefs Audience outcomes A working framework, drawn from Technology Is Not Neutral, for making and defending technology-ethics decisions A clearer view of where AI regulation and political risk are moving and how that should shape operating choices Reference material from the book and Hare’s published writing for teams to use internally after the session Cross-sector case examples drawn from her consulting work with KPMG, IKEA, LEGO, BAE Systems and the Alan Turing Institute

Why organisations work with Kelly Vero She has shipped AAA games (including credits across the Lara Croft and Transformers franchises) and now runs an AI-powered digital fashion business, so she speaks about immersive technology from the inside of two different commercial stacks, not from a consultancy slide. As CEO and CTO of NAK3D, she gives leadership teams a concrete view of how 3D content, AI and consumer brands are starting to fit together at production scale. Her book How Video Games Made the Metaverse: From Pixels to Portals (Routledge) gives executives a structured way to read the metaverse as the natural extension of forty years of game technology, not a marketing fad. She has worked at policy and institutional level with the European Commission and Pro Helvetia, which means she can frame technology questions in terms a regulated board will recognise. Biography highlights CEO and CTO of NAK3D, a Swiss AI-powered digital fashion start-up. Chief Metaverse Officer at Aequaland, an educational platform for children. Author of How Video Games Made the Metaverse: From Pixels to Portals, published by Routledge. Earlier edition nominated for the British Business Book Awards 2024. 30-year career in interactive entertainment, with credits across the Lara Croft and Transformers franchises. Consultant to the European Commission, Pro Helvetia (Swiss Arts Council) and Confetti Media Group. Won a Startup Innovation Award at a World Economic Forum-linked event in Davos, January 2024. Biography The metaverse arrived in the boardroom as a slogan and left as a question: where is the operational substance behind any of this. The honest answer is that it sits inside the games industry, where 3D worlds, real-time content pipelines and live-service economies have been working at scale for two decades. That is the world Kelly Vero has spent thirty years inside. Her credits stretch across the Lara Croft franchise and Hasbro’s Transformers games, taking her from script and character work into production at the heart of mass-market AAA development. The result is a deep, practitioner-level grasp of how immersive technology actually gets built, shipped and monetised. She now applies that experience as CEO and CTO of NAK3D, a Swiss AI-powered digital fashion company sitting between gaming, virtual platforms and consumer brands. NAK3D won a Startup Innovation Award at a World Economic Forum-linked event in Davos in January 2024. Vero is also Chief Metaverse Officer of the children’s education platform Aequaland, and has consulted for the European Commission and Pro Helvetia on technology and creative policy. Her book How Video Games Made the Metaverse: From Pixels to Portals, published by Routledge, treats the metaverse as the next chapter of a long technical lineage, not a sudden hype cycle. For boards trying to decide what to fund, what to ignore and what to build, that frame is more useful than any forecast. Key speaking topics AI and 3D commerce The metaverse as commercial infrastructure Digital fashion and virtual goods Generative AI in creative production Game design as a model for customer experience Web3 and immersive platforms Innovation strategy in deep tech Ideal for CMOs and brand leaders deciding how to commit to virtual goods, digital fashion and immersive customer experience CEOs and boards of consumer and entertainment businesses weighing AI and 3D investment CTOs and digital transformation leads scoping AI commerce, content pipelines and creative AI Investors and innovation teams in retail, fashion, media, gaming and adjacent sectors Audience outcomes A clear read on which immersive and metaverse claims are commercially serious and which are not Concrete examples of how AI and 3D content are already reshaping fashion, retail and entertainment commerce A working frame for treating game technology as the parent discipline of the metaverse, with practical implications for product and platform decisions Confidence to scope a first credible AI or 3D content initiative, rather than commission another exploratory study

Why organisations work with Alicia Asín She runs Libelium, the Spanish IoT company behind the Waspmote wireless sensor platform, deployed across smart cities, precision agriculture and environmental monitoring projects worldwide. Audiences get a working founder-CEO view, not a technology commentator. She was the first woman to receive Spain’s National Young Entrepreneurs Award (2014) and received the Rey Jaime I Award for Entrepreneurship in 2017, a prize whose jury includes Nobel laureates. These are sovereign-level, externally adjudicated credentials. Second position in the 2018 European Commission Prize for Women Innovators reinforces the EU-level recognition. Her “Datacracy” argument, that data should strengthen democratic accountability rather than erode it, gives public-sector, smart-city and ESG audiences a specific vocabulary for the governance layer of IoT and AI deployment. She works in English and Spanish, which makes her directly useful for pan-European, Iberian and Latin American corporate and public-sector events. Biography highlights Co-founder and CEO, Libelium; creator of the Waspmote IoT sensor platform First woman to receive Spain’s National Young Entrepreneurs Award (2014) Rey Jaime I Award for Entrepreneurship, 2017 Runner-up, European Commission Prize for Women Innovators, 2018 World Economic Forum Young Global Leader Named “Spanish with Talent” by Marca España; 2016 National Computer Science Prize Biography Sensors are the quietest part of the technology stack and the one that will most shape the next decade of public-sector decision-making. Alicia Asín co-founded Libelium in Zaragoza and has spent the intervening period building Waspmote, the company’s open-source IoT hardware platform, into a reference product for smart cities, precision agriculture and environmental monitoring deployments worldwide. The recognition record is sovereign-level. She was the first woman to receive Spain’s National Young Entrepreneurs Award (2014). In 2017 she received the Rey Jaime I Award for Entrepreneurship, one of the most prestigious prizes in Spain, whose jury includes Nobel laureates. In 2018 she was named runner-up in the European Commission Prize for Women Innovators. She is a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader. The argument she brings to senior audiences is governance, not hardware. “Datacracy” is her shorthand for the idea that IoT and AI should strengthen institutional accountability, in cities, in food systems and in public services, rather than weaken it. That framing gives public-sector, smart-city and ESG audiences a specific lens on procurement, data ownership and the design of monitoring systems that people will actually trust. For technology leadership, smart cities, sustainability and European public-sector audiences, Asín offers the working view of a multi-award-winning founder who is still running the company. She speaks in English and Spanish, which makes her directly useful across Iberian, pan-European and Latin American programming. Key speaking topics Internet of Things and the Waspmote platform in practice Smart cities, precision agriculture and environmental monitoring at scale Datacracy: data, transparency and institutional accountability Women in technology and STEM education under AI Founder-CEO experience of scaling a European hardware company Ideal for Technology leadership, innovation and R&D audiences at European corporates Smart-city, public-sector and urban-policy conferences Sustainability, agri-food and environmental programmes evaluating IoT deployments Women-in-tech and leadership events at pan-European and Latin American programmes Audience outcomes A working founder-CEO view of IoT deployment in cities and food systems A vocabulary (“Datacracy”) for the governance layer of IoT and AI adoption Specific examples drawn from Libelium deployments in smart cities and precision agriculture A pan-European perspective on the policy and procurement context for sensor-led programmes