Artificial Intelligence & Generative AI

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

Why organisations work with Lord Chris Holmes He is the peer behind the Artificial Intelligence (Regulation) Bill, giving boards a direct read on the likely shape of UK AI legislation rather than a second-hand interpretation of it. He co-chairs the All-Party Parliamentary Groups on Fintech, AI, Blockchain, Assistive Technology and the Fourth Industrial Revolution, so he sees the full policy stack in one view. His authored Cabinet Office review and his 2017 DLT for Public Good report give him a track record of turning parliamentary inquiry into usable policy recommendations, not just speeches. He ran Paralympic Integration for London 2012, a programme delivered on a fixed date with global scrutiny, which grounds his technology arguments in large-scale operational delivery. Inclusion sits inside his technology argument, not beside it, so a single session covers AI governance and the workforce implications without stitching two speakers together. Biography highlights Life peer in the House of Lords since 2013, sitting as Baron Holmes of Richmond. Sponsor of the Artificial Intelligence (Regulation) Bill [HL], which had its second reading in March 2024 with cross-party support from over 20 peers. Member of the House of Lords Science and Technology Select Committee; previously served on the AI, Democracy and Digital Technologies, Financial Exclusion, Social Mobility and Digital Skills committees. Co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Groups on Fintech, AI, Blockchain, Assistive Technology and the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Director of Paralympic Integration for London 2012; Britain’s most successful Paralympic swimmer with nine golds, five silvers and one bronze across four Games. MBE (1993); honorary Doctor of Laws, University of Bath (2012); inducted into the Paralympic Hall of Fame. Biography The UK has been trying to decide what kind of AI regulator it wants to be. Lord Chris Holmes has been writing a specific answer to that question inside the House of Lords, most visibly through his Artificial Intelligence (Regulation) Bill, which received its second reading in March 2024 with support from more than twenty peers across party lines. He sits on the House of Lords Science and Technology Select Committee and has previously served on the committees for Artificial Intelligence, Democracy and Digital Technologies, Financial Exclusion, Social Mobility and Digital Skills. That run of committee work, alongside co-chairing parliamentary groups on Fintech, Blockchain, Assistive Technology and the Fourth Industrial Revolution, gives him an unusually wide view of how technology policy is being written across Westminster. Before the Lords, he was Director of Paralympic Integration for London 2012, responsible for making the Paralympics work at the scale of the Olympic Games. The programme hit a fixed date with worldwide visibility, and it informs how he talks about delivering complex technology and inclusion agendas under pressure. His authored work includes the Cabinet Office review on opening public appointments to disabled people and the 2017 report on distributed ledger technologies for public good. For a board trying to understand what AI governance, digital assets and inclusive design will mean in practice, he offers a view formed by drafting the law itself. Key speaking topics AI regulation and governance Fintech and the future of financial services The Fourth Industrial Revolution Distributed ledger technology and digital assets Inclusive technology and accessibility by design Diversity and inclusion in the workforce Leadership lessons from elite sport Delivering large-scale public programmes Ideal for Board and executive committee sessions on AI strategy, governance and regulatory exposure. CTOs, CIOs and heads of policy in banking, insurance and payments navigating fintech and digital asset rules. CHROs and inclusion leads connecting workforce strategy to accessible technology design. Public sector and regulated-industry leadership teams preparing for UK AI legislation. Audience outcomes A clearer view of how UK AI regulation is likely to evolve and what that means for current technology investment decisions. A specific sense of where fintech, digital assets and assistive technology policy are converging. Practical reference points for building inclusion into product and workforce decisions, rather than treating it as a separate workstream. A memorable throughline from elite performance to policy design that leadership teams can use internally.

Why organisations work with Julia Streets Twenty-five years inside financial services, from senior roles at NYSE Euronext and Instinet to founding Streets Consulting, gives her unusual fluency across the language of trading floors, regulators, fintechs and boards. DiverCity Podcast, which she launched in 2017 as the first DE&I podcast in financial services, has run 16 seasons with listeners in more than 50 countries and gives her a documented track record of holding industry leaders to specific commitments, not slogans. An MBE in the 2025 King’s Birthday Honours, awarded for services to diversity and inclusion in entrepreneurship in financial services and technology, is a credential almost no other speaker in her topic area carries. Her host and moderator craft, sharpened by years on the stand-up circuit, makes her a credible choice for conferences where the chair has to keep senior bankers, regulators and founders in the same conversation without flattening any of them. She advises fintech founders and global institutions on the same set of growth and communication problems, which means she can speak to both sides of the buyer-vendor relationship in the room. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Streets Consulting, advising fintech startups, scaleups and global financial institutions on growth, marketing and communications. MBE, 2025 King’s Birthday Honours, for services to diversity and inclusion in entrepreneurship in financial services and technology. Host and executive producer of DiverCity Podcast, the first DE&I podcast in financial services, with 16 seasons and listeners across 50 countries. Author of The Lingua Franca of the Corporate Banker, published by Searching Finance. Former senior executive at NYSE Euronext (global head of communications, technology division) and Instinet (European marketing and sales development). Twice named a Global Diversity Champion in the Global Diversity List; three-time Brummell Magazine listee for women on boards, women entrepreneurs and women of influence in the City. Trustee of Street Child; regular broadcast contributor on BBC Radio 4, BBC Radio Kent and City AM. Biography The first DE&I podcast in financial services launched in 2017 with no obvious commercial reason to exist. Sixteen seasons later, DiverCity Podcast has listeners in more than fifty countries and a back catalogue of named industry figures committing on the record to specific changes. The host and executive producer is Julia Streets, and the show is one piece of a wider body of work on how financial services actually changes, rather than how it announces it does. Streets Consulting, which she founded after senior roles at NYSE Euronext and Instinet, advises fintechs and global institutions on growth, positioning and communications. The brief is the same on both sides: how does a firm explain what it does to people who are paid to be sceptical of it. Two decades inside trading-floor culture, and a 2012 satirical book on corporate jargon, The Lingua Franca of the Corporate Banker, give her a low tolerance for the kind of language that lets executives avoid saying anything specific. The 2025 MBE, awarded in the King’s Birthday Honours for services to diversity and inclusion in entrepreneurship in financial services and technology, sits alongside two listings as a Global Diversity Champion and three appearances on Brummell Magazine’s lists of women on boards, women entrepreneurs and women of influence in the City. The recognitions track a single argument across her work: that diversity in finance is a commercial question, not a compliance one, and that it should be measured by who gets hired, promoted and listened to. For an audience, the practical effect is a speaker and host who can move between fintech innovation, capital markets technology and DE&I without losing the room, because she has actually built a business in each. She is also a former stand-up comedian, which is why bankers tend to talk back to her on stage rather than at her. Key speaking topics Fintech innovation and capital markets technology Diversity, equity and inclusion in financial services Entrepreneurship in regulated industries Communication and influence for senior leaders AI and the future of financial services Conference chairing and panel moderation Women in fintech and technology Ideal for Boards and executive teams in banking, capital markets and fintech navigating technology adoption and regulatory change. CHROs and DE&I leads in financial services who need a credible external voice on inclusion that holds up to commercial scrutiny. Founders and investors at fintech scaleups working on positioning, growth and institutional credibility. Conference organisers in financial services who need a chair or moderator with subject fluency across innovation, regulation and culture. Audience outcomes A clearer view of where fintech innovation is genuinely changing financial services and where it is being oversold. Specific, named examples of how DE&I commitments translate into hiring, promotion and product decisions, drawn from sixteen seasons of recorded interviews. Direct, jargon-stripped language for talking about technology change inside regulated organisations. A working sense of how fintech founders and incumbents see each other, useful for anyone building or buying across that line.

Why organisations work with Julia Hobsbawm She named the problem before most boards understood it. The Nowhere Office gave senior leaders a vocabulary and a framework for hybrid work at the moment they most needed one. Workplace social health is a category she effectively defined, and Bayes Business School made her its first Honorary Visiting Professor in the field. Her thinking is built from primary research and senior-leader interviews through Workathon, the invitation-only network she founded for decision-makers wrestling with workforce change. She translates a fast-moving debate into board-ready language. Her Bloomberg Work Shift column ran for two years through the period when work itself was being rewritten. She has a four-book arc, from Fully Connected to Working Assumptions, that gives buyers a coherent intellectual backbone, not a topic of the moment. Biography highlights OBE for Services to Business, 2015. Honorary Visiting Professor of Workplace Social Health, Bayes Business School (formerly Cass). Author of The Nowhere Office, The Simplicity Principle, Fully Connected and Working Assumptions. The Simplicity Principle won the American Book Fest Best Book Award 2020 and the NYC Big Book Award 2020; Fully Connected was shortlisted for the CMI Management Book of the Year. Bloomberg contributing columnist; author of the Working Assumptions column for Bloomberg Work Shift, 2022 to 2024. Founder and CEO of Workathon, and founder of the World Work Organisation, launched in 2025. Biography The office stopped being a single place in 2020 and never went back. The Nowhere Office, the 2022 book that gave the post-pandemic workplace its working name, set out the case that hybrid was not a phase to be managed but a structural shift to be designed for. Julia Hobsbawm wrote it from inside the conversation, drawing on a decade of research into how connectivity changes work. That research has a formal home. Bayes Business School made her its first Honorary Visiting Professor of Workplace Social Health in 2018, formalising a category she had been building since Fully Connected, the 2017 book shortlisted for the CMI Management Book of the Year. The Simplicity Principle followed in 2020 and won the American Book Fest Best Book Award and the NYC Big Book Award, extending the argument into how leaders think and decide under cognitive load. Her platform now runs in two directions. Workathon, founded in 2024, is an invitation-only network of senior decision-makers feeding her primary research on workforce change, and produced its first annual study, The United State of Work, in 2025. The World Work Organisation, launched the same year, is an attempt to give the future-of-work conversation a global institutional anchor. She writes for buyers as well as boards. The Working Assumptions column ran in Bloomberg Work Shift from 2022 to 2024, and her latest book of the same name reads as a field report on what leaders thought they knew about work before Covid and generative AI, and what they know now. She was awarded the OBE for Services to Business in 2015. Key speaking topics The future of work and the Nowhere Office Hybrid and flexible working models Workplace social health and connectivity Simplicity and decision-making in complex organisations Generative AI and the human side of work Productivity, presence and the redesign of office life Ideal for CHROs and people directors redesigning hybrid policy and workplace strategy CEOs and executive teams navigating return-to-office and workforce expectations Boards and investors assessing workforce risk and organisational design Real estate, facilities and workplace experience leaders rethinking the role of the office Audience outcomes A clearer language for hybrid work, anchored in named frameworks rather than slogans. A sharper read on what employees now expect from work and how that reshapes retention. A practical lens on workplace social health as a measurable component of performance. An honest account of how generative AI is changing the texture of daily work, not just the tooling.

Why organisations work with Hannah Fry Hello World (2018) advances a specific governance argument: that AI fails not because the technology is wrong, but because accountability was poorly designed. That gives boards a working framework for AI governance, not just a sharper awareness of risk. Her UCL research was applied directly – she worked with governments, police forces, health analysts, and supermarkets, translating mathematical models of human behaviour into operational decisions. That applied track record is what separates her algorithmic analysis from academic commentary. The accuracy-versus-fairness trade-off in predictive systems is a mathematical problem before it is an ethical one. She can explain it precisely enough for legal, compliance, and strategy leaders to translate it into governance decisions – not just for data teams. She holds Cambridge’s inaugural Professorship in the Public Understanding of Mathematics – a chair that formalises the argument that making quantitative thinking accessible to non-specialists is itself a research discipline. As President of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications and a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, her institutional credibility extends well beyond media profile. Biography highlights First Professor of the Public Understanding of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge (from January 2025), joining the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics Previously Professor in the Mathematics of Cities at UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis; research applied to urban crime, transport, health analysis, and terrorism, with direct advisory roles across government and industry Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (elected 2022) and Fellow of Queens’ College, Cambridge President of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications Author of Hello World: How to Be Human in the Age of the Machine (2018) – winner of the 2020 Asimov Prize; shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction and the Royal Society Science Book Prize Christopher Zeeman Medal (2018) and Royal Society David Attenborough Award (2024) for contributions to science communication Delivered the 2019 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures – only the fourth mathematician to do so since Michael Faraday established the series in 1825 BBC presenter across AI Confidential with Hannah Fry (2026), The Secret Genius of Modern Life (BBC Two), and Bloomberg Originals’ The Future with Hannah Fry (2023); regular contributor to The New Yorker; TED Talk «The Mathematics of Love» has exceeded five million views Biography Hannah Fry spent over a decade at UCL studying the mathematics of cities – how people move through urban space, where crime clusters, how disease propagates through populations. Her research was applied: she worked directly with governments, police forces, health analysts, and supermarkets. The question she returned to consistently was what happens when those decisions are automated, and whether the automation can be trusted. Her book Hello World (2018) answered that question with precision. Algorithms are not objective – they encode the biases embedded in the data they were trained on, often before anyone noticed. The response, she argued, is not to distrust AI but to design governance that keeps humans genuinely in the loop. She called this the «cyborg future» – a practical framework for accountability, not a metaphor. The book won the 2020 Asimov Prize and was shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction and the Royal Society Science Book Prize. In January 2025, she became Cambridge’s first Professor of the Public Understanding of Mathematics, following in the footsteps of David Spiegelhalter and Stephen Hawking as a public interpreter of the discipline. She also serves as President of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications and holds a Fellowship of the Royal Academy of Engineering. Her media work extends the argument across audiences that no academic publication reaches. BBC Two’s AI Confidential with Hannah Fry (2026) investigated how AI is reshaping human relationships and institutional decisions. The Secret Genius of Modern Life ran over two BBC Two series. She delivered the 2019 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures – only the fourth mathematician in the lectures’ 200-year history to do so – and writes regularly for The New Yorker. For leadership teams moving from AI adoption to AI accountability, that combination of mathematical rigour and public clarity is not a communications asset. It is the substance of what she brings. Key speaking topics AI and algorithmic decision-making Data bias and algorithmic fairness Human-machine governance Risk and probability in complex systems The mathematics of human behaviour Urban data and city systems Science communication and mathematical literacy Ideal for Executive and board-level audiences setting AI governance and risk policy Chief Data Officers, Chief Technology Officers, and senior technology strategy teams Leadership conferences addressing responsible AI adoption in regulated industries – healthcare, financial services, criminal justice Public sector audiences navigating the use of predictive and automated systems Audience outcomes A clearer understanding of how algorithmic bias is produced and why it is mathematically difficult to eliminate without deliberate trade-offs A practical mental model – drawn from the Hello World framework – for when to trust algorithmic output and when to retain human judgment Confidence to engage substantively with AI governance questions without requiring deep technical knowledge Greater ability to interrogate the assumptions behind data-driven outputs, rather than treating them as authoritative A vocabulary for discussing AI risk that is precise and usable in board-level and policy conversations

Why organisations work with Georgie Barrat Seven years fronting The Gadget Show built a specific skill, making complex technology feel usable to a general audience, and she brings that directly into boardroom and all-hands settings where AI adoption is stalling. She runs The AI Method, her own programme for helping non-technical users integrate AI into their work, so the keynote is informed by what actually lands with finance, HR and operations staff rather than with engineers. She has hosted on-stage for Google, IBM, Sony, Huawei, Mastercard and BAFTA, which means the moderating craft is tested at the level of audience and panellist that senior events require. Her keynote circuit includes Web Summit, Mobile World Congress and Smart City Expo, the venues where the AI and future-of-work conversation is actually being shaped. She is a credible voice on women in technology and STEM inclusion through sustained work with Stemettes, the IET, Girls in ICT and Childnet, which makes her a natural fit for diversity-led tech events rather than a bolt-on. Biography highlights Presenter of Channel 5’s The Gadget Show for seven years from 2017. Regular contributor to BBC Morning Live and stand-in host for Jeremy Vine on 5. Founder of The AI Method, an AI adoption programme for non-technical users and solopreneurs. Keynote speaker at Web Summit, Mobile World Congress and Smart City Expo. Host and moderator for Google, IBM, Sony, Huawei, Mastercard and BAFTA. First-class degree in English Literature from King’s College London. Biography Most organisations have an AI strategy. Far fewer have a workforce that knows what to do with it. That translation problem, between a tool a leadership team has bought and the person on the payroll expected to use it, is the ground Georgie Barrat has worked for more than a decade. Her training is broadcast. Seven years as a presenter of Channel 5’s The Gadget Show taught her to make complex consumer and enterprise technology legible to a general audience without losing the point. That discipline now runs through her keynotes on AI, digital transformation and the future of work, delivered at Web Summit, Mobile World Congress and Smart City Expo, and at corporate audiences for Google, IBM, Sony, Huawei, Mastercard and BAFTA. Barrat founded The AI Method, a programme designed for women and solopreneurs using AI without a technical background. It gives her keynote material an unusual grounding. She is not theorising about adoption; she is testing what actually moves a non-engineer from curiosity to use. That edge matters for any leader whose AI rollout depends on marketing, finance, HR and operations staff, not data scientists. She is also a sustained advocate for women in tech and STEM inclusion, working with Stemettes, the IET, Girls in ICT and Childnet. On stage she hosts, moderates and keynotes. Off stage she still reports, with regular slots on BBC Morning Live and Jeremy Vine on 5, which keeps the material current rather than curated. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and workforce adoption Future of work in an AI-powered organisation Digital transformation and culture change Consumer and enterprise technology trends Women in technology and STEM inclusion Event hosting, moderation and on-stage interviewing Ideal for Leadership teams and all-hands audiences grappling with AI rollout across non-technical functions. CHROs, L&D leads and transformation directors planning workforce upskilling around AI. Tech, telecoms and consumer brands needing a broadcast-grade host or moderator for flagship events. Employee networks and diversity councils building credible women-in-tech programmes. Audience outcomes A clearer picture of where AI creates real productivity gains inside the business versus where the hype is running ahead of the use case. Practical language for leaders to use with non-technical staff so adoption feels less threatening and more achievable. A sharper view of which emerging technologies, from generative AI to spatial computing, warrant attention on a three-year horizon. Evidence-backed framing for women-in-tech and STEM inclusion work that goes beyond celebration days.

Why organisations work with Erica Dhawan She has a named thesis built for the AI moment. Use Your Brain, her forthcoming book, gives executive teams a method for the problem they now all face: moving fast with AI without sliding into cognitive autopilot. Her argument is that speed has become the commodity and judgment the real differentiator. She owns two further published frameworks, Connectional Intelligence and Digital Body Language, each with its own book, research base and Fortune 500 application record. Few speakers in this space operate from a body of work this specific. Thinkers50 recognition and a Wall Street Journal bestseller give her credibility with boards and executive committees that are sceptical of soft-skill keynotes. The work has been pressure-tested across unusually wide terrain: World Economic Forum, US Army, Coca-Cola, FedEx, Goldman Sachs, Walmart and Cisco. The frameworks travel across sector, hierarchy and culture. Biography highlights Author of the forthcoming Use Your Brain: How to Think Deeper in a World on Autopilot, on rebuilding judgment as AI accelerates everyday work. Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Digital Body Language: How to Build Trust and Connection, No Matter the Distance. Co-author of Get Big Things Done: The Power of Connectional Intelligence with Saj-nicole Joni. Named to Thinkers50; shortlisted for the Thinkers50 RADAR award for emerging management thinkers. Founder and CEO of Cotential, advising global organisations on 21st-century collaboration. TED speaker; talk on connection across distance has surpassed 2 million views. Contributor to Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and the Wall Street Journal. Education: Wharton (BS), MIT Sloan (MBA), Harvard Kennedy School (MPA). Biography Most organisations are racing to adopt AI. Far fewer are asking what it is quietly doing to the way their people think. When a tool can draft, summarise and recommend in seconds, the path of least resistance is to accept the output and move on. The real risk of the AI era, Erica Dhawan argues, is that people stop thinking for themselves while the machine does it for them. Her forthcoming book, Use Your Brain, is built for that problem. It gives leaders and teams a practical method for staying in the driver’s seat: catching the moment a team slips into cognitive autopilot, interrogating what AI hands them, and protecting the judgment no model can supply. The message lands because it is practical rather than alarmist. Speed is now the commodity, and judgment is the edge. That argument sits on more than a decade of work on how people connect and perform. Her Wall Street Journal bestseller Digital Body Language decoded the cues that replace tone, posture and eye contact when teams work across distance, channel and generation. Her earlier book with Saj-nicole Joni, Get Big Things Done, introduced Connectional Intelligence, the practical capability to combine networks, knowledge and ambition into outsized results. Thinkers50 has recognised her on this body of work, and her writing appears regularly in Harvard Business Review and Fast Company. The work has been stress-tested in unusually varied rooms. She has briefed the World Economic Forum, the US Army, and global teams at Coca-Cola, FedEx, Goldman Sachs, Walmart and Cisco. Her TED Talk on connection across distance has been watched more than two million times, rare reach for a topic most speakers struggle to make concrete. Key speaking topics Use Your Brain: judgment and human thinking in the age of AI High-performing teams in the age of AI Connectional Intelligence and cross-silo collaboration Digital Body Language and hybrid communication Trust and engagement across distributed workforces Multigenerational and cross-cultural communication Connectional Intelligence for sales and client relationships (optional, reinstated) Ideal for CEOs and executive teams setting the tone for how AI is adopted across the organisation. CHROs and heads of culture building human capability alongside AI rollout. Learning and leadership development heads building judgment and collaboration at scale. Cross-functional and cross-geography teams that need to think and decide together, faster. Sales and client-facing leaders translating Connectional Intelligence into stronger customer relationships. (optional, reinstated) Audience outcomes A shared language for using AI as an amplifier of human judgment rather than a substitute for it. Practical tools for recognising cognitive autopilot and interrogating what AI hands you. The Four Laws of Digital Body Language for cutting ambiguity and building trust across distance, channel and generation. A clearer read on where speed without judgment is quietly costing the organisation in decision quality. A sharper understanding of how AI changes, but does not replace, the work of human connection.