Artificial Intelligence & Generative AI

Why organisations work with Sidney Shapiro Argues openly against AI hype. His featured keynote “Stop Believing the AI Hype” treats vendor claims as a leadership evaluation problem, which is the conversation regulated buyers and procurement teams actually need to have. Has published governance work in peer-reviewed venues. A Routledge book chapter on AI governance for higher education institutions, and a forthcoming IGI Global chapter on the governance of generative AI, give him a documented position on what responsible deployment looks like in practice. Brings a decade of operational data science alongside the academic work. A former Data Science Manager at Sofvie building occupational health and safety software, he speaks to the integration and accountability problems that follow a proof of concept. Active in the working practitioner conversation. Hosts the AI in Action podcast and organises the Southern Alberta AI Conference, which together keep his perspective grounded in what organisations across healthcare, agriculture, manufacturing, and public administration are actually trying to ship. Biography highlights Assistant Professor of Business Analytics, Dhillon School of Business, University of Lethbridge Adjunct Assistant Professor of Computer Science, University of Lethbridge Book chapter on AI governance frameworks for higher education published by Routledge (2025); forthcoming chapter on the governance of generative AI with IGI Global Host of the AI in Action podcast and organiser of the Southern Alberta AI Conference Former Data Science Manager at Sofvie Inc., building data systems for occupational health and safety in the mining sector Featured or quoted in The Globe and Mail, CBC News, Lethbridge Herald, and Canadian Family Offices Magazine Biography Most organisations have already run AI pilots. The harder question is what happens after the proof of concept ends. Procurement standards stay unclear, and the governance frameworks people quote in slides do not survive contact with real workflows. This is the gap Sidney Shapiro works in. He is Assistant Professor of Business Analytics at the Dhillon School of Business at the University of Lethbridge, and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Computer Science. Published work includes a Routledge book chapter on AI governance frameworks for higher education and a forthcoming IGI Global chapter on the governance of generative AI. Both set out what responsible deployment actually requires from organisations. His authority on the operational side comes from a decade in data-centric roles before academia. He worked as a Data Science Manager at Sofvie, an occupational health and safety software company in the mining sector, and previously coordinated the Business Analytics graduate program at Cambrian College. That background shapes how he addresses the procurement and integration problems that follow proof of concept, which is where most AI initiatives slow or stall. Public engagement keeps the work current. Shapiro hosts the AI in Action podcast, interviewing practitioners and researchers across healthcare, education, finance, and software development on what AI deployment actually looks like in their organisations. He also organises the Southern Alberta AI Conference. Recent audiences include Indigenous Services Canada, McCain Foods, EY Calgary, CMC Alberta, and the Digital Research Alliance of Canada. These are buyers with low tolerance for vendor language and high tolerance for hard questions. Key speaking topics AI governance and responsible deployment Generative AI in business and society Data privacy and trust in AI systems AI literacy for non-technical leaders Analytics leadership and digital transformation AI in higher education policy Ideal for C-suite leadership teams and boards facing AI governance and accountability decisions CIOs, CTOs, and Chief Data Officers moving AI from pilot to operational deployment Public sector leaders, including municipal and federal government, working under privacy and equity constraints on AI adoption Higher education executives shaping institutional policy on generative AI in teaching and research Audience outcomes A working framework for evaluating vendor AI claims against operational reality, in time to shape procurement decisions Sharper questions to ask of any AI initiative on data governance and where accountability sits when AI is wrong A grounded view of what generative AI does well today and where it still fails, with the implications for organisational adoption Reference points for designing operational AI governance: procurement standards, acceptable-use policies, and accountability mechanisms

Why organisations work with Nikolas Badminton He brings a published, named foresight methodology to the room. The Positive Dystopia Canvas, set out in Facing Our Futures, is a structured tool for stress-testing strategy against scenarios leaders would rather not entertain. He has worked the discipline at scale, with leadership teams at NASA, JP Morgan, Disney, Rolls Royce, the United Nations, and the UK Home Office. The methods on stage have been tested in serious rooms first. He bridges AI capability and strategic foresight in a way few speakers can. Most AI speakers stop at adoption. Most foresight speakers treat AI as one signal among many. Badminton treats AI as the variable that breaks existing planning horizons, and shows leaders how to plan accordingly. He served as a key advisor to The Age of A.I. documentary series with Robert Downey Jr., and his work is regularly cited by the BBC, The Atlantic, Forbes, and Fast Company. The audience tends to recognise him before he is introduced. Biography highlights Chief Futurist at Futurist.com, the international strategic foresight consultancy founded by Glen Hiemstra in 1993. Author of Facing Our Futures (Bloomsbury Business, 2023), JP Morgan Private Bank’s Next Gen Pick on its Summer Reading List and a Top-50 Business Book of 2023 by The Next Big Idea Club. Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA) and a member of Chatham House. Advisor to The Age of A.I. documentary series with Robert Downey Jr. Research cited by the BBC, VICE, The Atlantic, Fast Company, Business Insider, Forbes, and Sunday Telegraph. Engagements with NASA, the United Nations, Google, Microsoft, JP Morgan, Disney, Rolls Royce, Procter & Gamble, the US Department of State, and the UK Home Office. Biography Most organisations cannot describe the future they are planning toward. They have a five-year strategy and a quarterly forecast, with very little real method in between. This gap is where Nikolas Badminton works. As Chief Futurist at Futurist.com, the strategic foresight consultancy founded by Glen Hiemstra in 1993, he advises executives and government leaders on how to build anticipatory capability into how they plan. His method is set out in Facing Our Futures (Bloomsbury Business, 2023). The book gives executives the Positive Dystopia Canvas, a structured tool for stress-testing strategy against scenarios leaders would rather not entertain. JP Morgan Private Bank named it a Next Gen Pick for its Summer Reading List, and The Next Big Idea Club listed it among the Top-50 Business Books of 2023. The client list reflects the demand for that work. NASA, Disney, JP Morgan, Microsoft, Rolls Royce, the United Nations, the US Department of State, and the UK Home Office have used Badminton’s foresight work to inform planning that runs longer than the political or quarterly cycle. A Fellow of the RSA and a member of Chatham House, he served as a key advisor to The Age of A.I. documentary series with Robert Downey Jr., and his research is cited by the BBC, The Atlantic, Forbes, and Fast Company. Key speaking topics Strategic foresight and futures design Artificial intelligence in the enterprise Anticipatory governance and long-range planning Innovation under disruption Energy transition and the future of resources Geopolitical scenarios and technology futures Ideal for CEOs and CSOs building foresight capability inside annual planning cycles. Boards and executive committees stress-testing strategy against long-range scenarios. Innovation, transformation, and R&D leaders responsible for moving beyond pilot stage on AI. Public-sector leaders and policymakers designing decisions with consequences beyond the political cycle. Audience outcomes A working understanding of the Positive Dystopia Canvas and how to apply it to current strategic decisions. Specific signals and scenarios in AI, energy, and geopolitics mapped onto the organisation’s actual planning horizon. The language to make the case for foresight capability inside a strategy function built around quarterly forecasting. Confidence to extend the planning conversation past 18 months without it becoming abstract or speculative.

Why organisations work with Abigail Posner Holds a rare combination of credentials in cultural anthropology (Harvard, magna cum laude), creative strategy (Publicis New York, DDB New York), and senior technology leadership (13 years at Google). Few speakers can address AI and human creativity from inside all three worlds. Pioneered Humanizing Digital at Google, an anthropology-led research programme exploring the emotional relationship between people and technology. Her frameworks come from original fieldwork conducted inside Google. Led AI integration and a cultural transformation programme for 4,000+ Google sales professionals. Speaks from direct experience about what works and what fails inside one of the most AI-fluent companies in the world. Provides concrete methodologies, the Expansiveness Edge framework and the Human Code approach, that teams can apply immediately to specific business problems. Biography highlights Former Director, U.S. Creative Works at Google; thirteen years at the company Pioneered Humanizing Digital, Google’s anthropology-led thought leadership series on the emotional relationship between people and technology Founder of Human Code Company; host of the Human Code podcast Magna cum laude graduate of Harvard University in social anthropology Contributor to The Economist, The New York Times, Business Insider, CNBC, Forbes, and Fast Company; ongoing columnist for The Drum Recipient of the United Nations Media Impact Award Biography Google spent more than a decade trying to understand the emotional logic behind why people engage with digital content. The Humanizing Digital research programme came out of that effort, an anthropology-led series Abigail Posner pioneered while at the company. The route there was unusual. Posner is a magna cum laude graduate in social anthropology from Harvard who spent years in brand strategy at Publicis New York and DDB New York. As Director of U.S. Creative Works at Google, she led creative strategy for YouTube’s largest global advertisers and ran a cultural transformation programme for over 4,000 sales professionals. Posner now leads Human Code Company, the consultancy she founded after leaving Google. Her Expansiveness Edge and Human Code frameworks address the question every leader is asking: what do my people uniquely contribute when every competitor has the same AI tools. Both frameworks come from years of anthropological fieldwork done inside Google. Her writing appears in The Economist, The New York Times, Business Insider, CNBC, Forbes, and Fast Company; she is an ongoing columnist for The Drum. The United Nations awarded her its Media Impact Award for the work. Key speaking topics Human creativity in the AI age The Expansiveness Edge framework AI as a creative amplifier Cultural anthropology applied to business The future of work in an AI economy Ideal for CMOs, brand and marketing leaders working out how AI changes their craft Chief Innovation Officers and senior creative leaders inside marketing, product, or innovation teams CHROs and learning leaders building creative capacity across the workforce Senior leadership teams setting an organisation-wide position on what humans do and what AI does Audience outcomes A named framework, the Expansiveness Edge, for combining different disciplines and perspectives within an individual to produce ideas competitors cannot replicate A working answer to where human judgement still beats AI in their function, and which work to defend against automation Specific exercises they can run inside their own teams to activate creative thinking on demand A reframe of AI as an amplifier of human ingenuity, with concrete ways to deploy it that way

Why organisations work with Andrew and Gaia Grant The co-presenting format is its own offer. The audience hears two voices working a leadership problem in real time, with the academic and the facilitator perspectives playing off each other. The frameworks come out of Gaia Grant’s PhD research in the Discipline of Strategy, Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the University of Sydney Business School. The Innovation Climate Leadership Indicator (iCLi) is an academically validated diagnostic, which matters when the work has to defend itself in front of a board or audit committee. They treat the explore-preserve tension as the actual problem. Most innovation speakers present innovation as a simple acceleration story, which leaves leaders without a useful answer for the part of the business that has to stay reliable. The thirty-year working partnership is itself the case study for the leadership content. Andrew and Gaia have built a co-authored body of research while running a global consultancy together, and that lived material reads in the room as something that cannot be performed. Biography highlights Co-authors of The Innovation Race: How to Change a Culture to Change the Game (John Wiley & Sons, 2016) and the international bestseller Who Killed Creativity?…And How Do We Get it Back? (Wiley, 2012) Dr Gaia Grant: PhD researcher and lecturer in the Discipline of Strategy, Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the University of Sydney Business School Andrew Grant: founder and director of Tirian International Consultancy and a TEDx speaker, with three decades of executive facilitation across more than thirty countries Developers of the academically validated Innovation Climate Leadership Indicator (iCLi) and the Dynamic Polar Positioning (DPoP) framework, used with executive teams from Fortune 500 firms and government innovation programmes Keynote work at YPO Global Leadership Conference, APEC CEO Summit, the PwC US National Conference, Gartner ITxpo, TEDx and the Salesforce ANZ Roadshow Clients include Google, Nestlé, Boeing, Disney, Salesforce, Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts, Citibank, Visa, Goldman Sachs, UBS and the UAE Prime Minister’s Office Biography The hardest part of innovation is not coming up with new ideas. It is running the rest of the business while you do it. That tension is the central argument of two books co-authored by Andrew and Gaia Grant: The Innovation Race and Who Killed Creativity?. It is also the problem most organisations get wrong when they accelerate AI adoption. The research backbone is Dr Gaia Grant’s doctoral work in Strategy, Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the University of Sydney Business School. Her PhD examined what lets some organisations innovate sustainably while others stall. Two tools came out of it: the academically validated Innovation Climate Leadership Indicator (iCLi) and Dynamic Polar Positioning (DPoP), both now used by executive teams worldwide. Andrew Grant founded Tirian International Consultancy and is the working other half of the research in the room. Gaia anchors the academic case; Andrew runs the live facilitation, with simulations, audience experiments and the kind of pacing that keeps a three-thousand-person Salesforce roadshow following the argument. The partnership is thirty years old, which is why the co-presented sessions read as a working dialogue, not a stitched-together keynote. The work has been used by Google, Nestlé, Boeing, Salesforce, Four Seasons and the UAE Prime Minister’s Office, often delivered with partner institutions including Duke Corporate Education. What gets repeated is the clearest signal of fit: roadshows that return, leadership programmes that scale, teams running iCLi diagnostics by the next planning cycle. Key speaking topics Innovation leadership and culture The explore-preserve paradox in AI adoption Sustainable innovation in complex organisations Creative intelligence and critical thinking Ambidextrous leadership Innovation diagnostics and culture transformation Ideal for C-suite teams running concurrent AI adoption and core-business protection mandates Heads of innovation, transformation and strategy in large, complex organisations Boards and CEOs designing a programme of cultural change with a long delivery arc Executive education and leadership programmes that need academically defensible content Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for the explore-preserve tension that surfaces in every AI and innovation programme An honest read on where the organisation sits on innovation readiness, supported by the Innovation Climate Leadership Indicator (iCLi) A workable distinction between creative thinking and innovation execution, and where each is breaking down inside the audience’s own teams Visibility into which leadership archetypes in the room pull toward exploration and which pull toward preservation Decisions that hold up in a board paper because the framework behind them is academically validated

Why organisations work with Blake Morgan Three books, each making a distinct argument about customer experience: the operational discipline of More Is More, the technology playbook of The Customer of the Future, and the leadership framework of The 8 Laws of Customer-Focused Leadership. Audiences leave with applicable frameworks they can put to work the following week. Over a decade of weekly interviews with chief customer officers and CEOs on The Modern Customer Podcast. That volume of primary-source research gives her keynotes a specificity and currency that circuit speakers cannot match. Before becoming a full-time author and speaker, Blake was a customer service leader inside a Fortune 100 company. She speaks to leadership teams as someone who has worked inside the operational machinery that turns CX strategy into delivery. Her work focuses on the question now dominating CX boardrooms: how AI and automation are reshaping what customers expect and how organisations respond. She handles both the technology substance and the human experience side with equal credibility. Biography highlights Author of three books on customer experience: More Is More (2017), The Customer of the Future (2019), and The 8 Laws of Customer-Focused Leadership (2024). The Customer of the Future was listed by Business Insider among the top 20 books executives were reading during the COVID-19 period, and placed on Book Authority’s Top 100 Future of Technology Books of All Time. Senior Contributor to Forbes, with additional bylines in Harvard Business Review and Hemispheres magazine. Host of The Modern Customer Podcast, featuring chief customer officers, CEOs and CX operators from across industries. Guest lecturer at Columbia University and UC San Diego; adjunct faculty in the Executive MBA program at Rutgers Business School. Dubbed “The Queen of CX” by Meta; LinkedIn Top Voice; named one of the Top 40 female keynote speakers by Real Leaders magazine. Biography Most organisations that describe themselves as customer-centric are not. They have customer language in the strategy deck and customer photographs on the wall, alongside operational decisions that point in a different direction. Closing that gap is the work Blake Morgan has done for most of her career. She was working in the field before customer experience existed as a named discipline. Three books have followed. More Is More argued that memorable customer experience requires sustained corporate investment and introduced her DOMORE framework for structuring the work. The Customer of the Future, published in 2019, set out ten principles for companies preparing for AI, automation, and rising customer expectations around frictionless experience. The 8 Laws of Customer-Focused Leadership, published in 2024, is a playbook for keeping a customer-centric strategy alive inside an organisation under pressure. What gives her work unusual breadth is the range of roles she holds in parallel. She is a Forbes Senior Contributor on customer experience, host of The Modern Customer Podcast with hundreds of chief customer officer interviews behind her, adjunct faculty in the Executive MBA program at Rutgers Business School, and an adviser to companies including Amazon, Marriott, Coca-Cola and the Federal Reserve Bank. Each role produces primary-source material for the others. The dominant CX question has moved on from whether to invest in AI-enabled customer experience design. It is now how to build AI that customers actively want to interact with, at scale, without losing the emotional quality of the brand. That is the question at the centre of Morgan’s current keynote, Designing AI Experiences That Customers Remember. Key speaking topics Customer experience strategy and operations AI-enabled customer experience design Customer-focused leadership Building customer-centric cultures across the organisation Employee experience as the foundation of customer experience The future of customer loyalty in the AI era Digital transformation in service-intensive businesses Ideal for Chief Customer Officers, Chief Experience Officers and heads of customer experience responsible for operationalising CX strategy across an organisation Senior leadership teams and boards deciding how to integrate AI and automation into customer-facing operations without eroding the brand CMOs and heads of digital who are moving their organisations from campaign-driven marketing to experience-driven growth Audience outcomes A usable framework for turning customer experience from a strategic slogan into a daily operating decision Specific examples from companies currently getting CX right, and those getting it wrong, drawn from Morgan’s primary-source interviews A specific assessment of where AI genuinely improves customer experience and where it currently makes it worse A checklist of what customer-focused leaders do differently, drawn from the research behind The 8 Laws of Customer-Focused Leadership

Why organisations work with Roger Spitz His background gives him unusual commercial authority. Before Techistential and the Disruptive Futures Institute, he led Technology M&A at BNP Paribas globally, where he advised on more than 50 transactions with a combined value over $25 billion. That record matters to boards and institutional investors whose advisers often lack operating experience. His book Disrupt With Impact won the 2024 Chanticleer International Book Awards first place in Business and Enterprise, and the four-volume Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption is used as a practitioner reference on strategic foresight. The AAA Framework (antifragility, anticipation, agility) gives leadership teams a concrete lens to apply to their own operating environment rather than another abstract call to “embrace change”. Techistentialism, the concept he coined, is specifically about human agency and decision-making under AI, which is the question most executive teams are quietly asking themselves about the technology their organisations are deploying. Institutional anchors at the World Economic Forum’s Global Foresight Network, Thinkers360 Top 10 for Management Leadership and the AI Council of the Indian Society for Artificial Intelligence place him inside the forums his audiences either belong to or want to. Biography highlights President of Techistential and Chair of the Disruptive Futures Institute, San Francisco Former Global Head of Technology M&A at BNP Paribas; 50-plus transactions with a combined value exceeding $25 billion Author of Disrupt With Impact and the four-volume Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption 2024 Chanticleer International Book Awards first place in Business and Enterprise Non-Fiction Thinkers360 Top 10 for Management Leadership WEF Global Foresight Network member; AI Council, Indian Society for Artificial Intelligence Biography Traditional strategy runs on prediction. The trouble is that the systems senior leaders now operate in, AI, geopolitics, climate, capital markets, are non-linear in ways prediction cannot catch. Roger Spitz’s work is built around the alternative: a discipline of antifragility, anticipation and agility that allows organisations to benefit from volatility rather than simply endure it. His authority starts in finance. He was Global Head of Technology M&A at BNP Paribas, where he advised on more than 50 transactions with combined value over $25 billion, which is a different foundation to most futurists and is visible in how he handles boards. He now runs Techistential, the climate and foresight strategy advisory he founded, and chairs the Disruptive Futures Institute in San Francisco, where he coined the term “Techistentialism” to describe human agency and decision-making in an AI-mediated world. The body of published work is substantial. Disrupt With Impact: Achieve Business Success in an Unpredictable World won first place in Business and Enterprise Non-Fiction at the 2024 Chanticleer International Book Awards, and the four-volume Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption is used as a practitioner reference on strategic foresight. He sits in the World Economic Forum’s Global Foresight Network, ranks in the Thinkers360 Top 10 for Management Leadership, and serves on the AI Council of the Indian Society for Artificial Intelligence. For CEOs, boards, institutional investors and policy leaders, what Spitz offers is both specific and operational. The AAA Framework gives them a lens. The AI and techistentialism work gives them a language for what autonomous systems are doing to their operating model. And the M&A record gives them a speaker who has been on the other side of the capital-markets conversation they are probably also having. Key speaking topics Strategic foresight and the AAA Framework (antifragility, anticipation, agility) AI, techistentialism and human agency in an automated world Non-linear disruption and scenario thinking Geopolitical and technological risk Boardroom strategy under unpredictability Building antifragile organisations Ideal for Boards, CEOs and executive committees revisiting strategic planning assumptions under accelerating disruption Chief strategy officers, chief AI officers and heads of corporate development Institutional investors, asset managers and private equity leadership teams Policy leaders and central banks running foresight and resilience briefs World Economic Forum and high-level industry forums Audience outcomes A clearer view of why linear forecasting is failing and what replaces it in current conditions A working grasp of the AAA Framework and how to apply it to the audience’s own strategy cycle Specific framing for human-AI decision-making drawn from Disrupt With Impact and the techistentialism work Case material from M&A, frontier technology and foresight consulting usable in the audience’s own sector Reference material from the published books that leadership teams can circulate after the session

Why organisations work with Marc Saltzman Three decades of daily working-journalist output across USA Today, AARP, Forbes Vetted, Reader’s Digest, Costco Connection and Yahoo, which means his read on what is real versus hype is grounded in actual product testing, not slide-deck futurism. Author of 17 books, including Wiley’s Siri, Apple Watch and Apple Vision Pro For Dummies titles, giving him a track record of translating frontier consumer tech into language a general audience can act on. Host of Tech It Out on 100+ U.S. radio stations via Radio America, plus Canada’s longest-running technology radio show, Tech Talk; broadcast craft that translates directly into keynote pacing for mixed audiences. Covers a working business stack in plain English: generative AI, cybersecurity, smart home and aging-in-place tech, retail and commerce, social media, automotive innovation, so a single booking can address multiple functions in the room. Regular on-camera commentator for CNN, NBC, CBS, FOX, CTV and Global, which means he is comfortable in front of a sceptical room and on stage with executives and media partners. Biography highlights Reporting on the technology sector since 1994 as journalist, author and broadcaster. Contributor to USA Today/Gannett (109 publications), AARP, Forbes Vetted, Reader’s Digest, Costco Connection, Yahoo, Toronto Star, Zoomer and Postmedia. Author of 17 books, including Siri For Dummies (Wiley, 2012), Apple Watch For Dummies (Wiley, 2015) and Apple Vision Pro For Dummies (Wiley, 2024). Host and producer of Tech It Out on 100+ U.S. stations via Radio America. Creator and host of Tech Talk, Canada’s longest-running technology radio show. On-air technology commentator for CNN, NBC, CBS, FOX, CTV, Global and CP24, with prior hosting credits on FOX Business and Bloomberg Television. Biography Most consumer technology coverage is written by people who do not actually use the products. Saltzman’s career is built on the opposite habit. Since 1994 he has reported on the technology sector as a working journalist, columnist and broadcaster, with a syndicated USA Today/Gannett column reaching 109 publications and regular bylines in AARP, Forbes Vetted, Reader’s Digest, Costco Connection, Yahoo and Postmedia titles. The output across formats is what makes the perspective useful to senior teams. He has written 17 books for general audiences, including Siri For Dummies, Apple Watch For Dummies and Apple Vision Pro For Dummies for Wiley, where the editorial constraint is to make a frontier consumer product usable by a non-technical reader on day one. That same constraint shapes his radio work: Tech It Out airs on 100+ U.S. stations through Radio America, and Tech Talk is Canada’s longest-running technology radio show. Television sharpens the discipline further. As a regular commentator on CNN, NBC, CBS, FOX, CTV, Global and CP24, with prior hosting credits on FOX Business and Bloomberg Television, he has spent years translating new categories, AI assistants, wearables, smart home, mixed reality, connected vehicles, into language a general audience can use within a four-minute segment. For organisations, the practical value is a single voice that can speak across consumer technology, generative AI, cybersecurity, retail and commerce, and the future of work, grounded in what products actually do today rather than what vendor decks claim they will do tomorrow. Key speaking topics Generative AI in everyday business and consumer life Cybersecurity and digital safety for organisations and customers The future of retail and commerce Smart home, wearables and connected devices Social media strategy for business Aging-in-place and consumer health technology Automotive and mobility innovation Emerging consumer technology trends Ideal for CMOs and customer experience leaders responding to AI, social and commerce shifts IT, security and risk leaders briefing non-technical executives and boards Retail, consumer goods and franchise leadership teams Conference programmers seeking a credible technology emcee, panel host or keynote across mixed audiences Audience outcomes A working filter for separating durable consumer technology shifts from short-lived hype A clearer view of how generative AI, cybersecurity threats and connected devices show up in customer behaviour Concrete examples of how retail, commerce and workplace tools are changing, drawn from current product testing Plain-English language that executives can repeat to staff, customers and boards without distortion Sharper questions to take back to vendors, agencies and internal technology teams

Why organisations work with Theresa Payton She has held the most accountable technology seat in the world – not as an adviser, but as the operator responsible for securing the Executive Office of the President. That is a different class of credential from the vendor or think-tank backgrounds most cybersecurity speakers bring. Her book Manipulated – on The Guardian’s Top 10 Books About Cybercrime list, maps the specific mechanics of AI-driven disinformation, deepfakes, and election interference; organisations working on trust, governance, or brand integrity get a strategic framework they can act on. As a patented inventor of security designs and co-founder of a cybersecurity product company (Dark3, acquired by Celerium), she brings the practitioner’s perspective, not the theorist’s: she has built the solutions, not just described the problem. She translates threat intelligence into board-level language. Her seventeen years across banking technology, government, and private advisory work means she can speak credibly to risk committees, technology leaders, and general business audiences in the same event. Biography highlights First female White House Chief Information Officer, serving under President George W. Bush, 2006–2008 Founder and CEO of Fortalice Solutions, ranked in the Global Cybersecurity Top 500 by Cybercrime Magazine Prior senior technology executive roles at Bank of America and Wells Fargo Author of Manipulated: Inside the Cyberwar to Hijack Elections and Distort the Truth, The Guardian Top 10 Books About Cybercrime list; revised edition published 2024 Co-inventor on an approved U.S. patent in security design Recipient of the FBI Director’s Award for Community Service; 2020 CISO MAG Cybersecurity Crusader of the Year; 2019 Woman Cybersecurity Leader of the Year Starred as Deputy Commander of Intelligence on the CBS reality series Hunted Regular security commentator on the Today Show, Good Morning America, CNN, CBS News, Fox News, and MSNBC Biography Theresa Payton ran cybersecurity for the White House. From 2006 to 2008, as Chief Information Officer for the Executive Office of the President under George W. Bush, she was accountable for the security of IT systems used by the President and 3,000 staff: not as an adviser, but as the person responsible. Before that, she spent sixteen years in senior technology roles at Bank of America and Wells Fargo. The combination is unusual: operational authority at the highest level of government, built on a banking technology foundation. That background shapes how she approaches cyber risk with corporate audiences. The question she puts to boards is not whether their organisation will face a breach, but whether their governance structures are designed to know about it, act on it, and contain it. As CEO of Fortalice Solutions, listed in the Global Cybersecurity Top 500, she has spent fifteen years working through exactly that question with Fortune 100 clients. Her book Manipulated, named one of The Guardian’s Top 10 Books About Cybercrime, examines how AI-generated deepfakes, self-replicating chatbots, and coordinated disinformation campaigns are used to compromise institutions from the outside in. A revised edition was published in 2024. She is also a co-inventor on an approved U.S. patent in security design, and previously co-founded Dark3, a cybersecurity product company later acquired by Celerium. Her profile extends beyond the conference circuit. She has testified before government bodies, served as Deputy Commander of Intelligence on the CBS series Hunted, and is a regular security analyst on networks including CNN, CBS News, and MSNBC. For organisations where the board genuinely needs to understand what it owns and what it is exposed to, she is one of the few speakers who has actually sat in that seat. Key speaking topics Cybersecurity governance and board-level risk AI-driven threats and deepfake manipulation Secured digital transformation Election security and information integrity Data privacy and digital identity Fraud and social engineering Cybersecurity leadership and workforce Ideal for Boards and non-executive directors navigating cyber and AI governance CISOs, CIOs, and CTOs developing organisation-wide security strategy Risk, compliance, and audit committees in regulated sectors Technology and transformation leaders in financial services, healthcare, and government-adjacent industries Audience outcomes A board-ready framework for assessing the gap between digital investment and security governance Practical understanding of how AI-driven threats – deepfakes, disinformation, autonomous attack tools – operate in practice, not just in theory Clearer accountability structures for cyber risk at executive level Awareness of the specific ways social engineering and fraud are evolving, with concrete defensive steps Language and framing to take cybersecurity from a technical department concern to a strategic leadership conversation

Why organisations work with Alex Goryachev He ran the function he now talks about. Cisco’s global innovation strategy, AI programme launch and innovation centres on five continents were built under his direction. He gives boards and executive teams a working playbook for moving AI past the pilot stage, drawn from Fearless Innovation and codified into the global ISO Standards on Innovation he helped shape. He addresses workforce resistance to AI directly, naming the cultural and behavioural blockers that stall enterprise AI programmes, rather than focusing only on the technology layer. He bridges enterprise practice and the next generation of leaders through his Executive-in-Residence role at Tulane’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, which keeps his frameworks tested against current operating reality. Biography highlights Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Fearless Innovation (Wiley, 2020). Former Managing Director and Global Head of Innovation Strategy, Cisco. Established Cisco’s Global Innovation Centers across five continents and led the launch of its AI innovation programme. Executive-in-Residence, Tulane University Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. Contributor to global ISO Standards on Innovation. Frequent contributor to Forbes, Fast Company, Entrepreneur and CEOWORLD; LinkedIn Top AI Voice. Earlier leadership roles at IBM, Dell and Pfizer. Biography Most enterprise AI programmes do not fail at the model. They fail at the handover, at the moment a promising pilot has to become a working capability inside a large operating company. That is the territory Goryachev spent two decades in. As Managing Director and Global Head of Innovation Strategy at Cisco, he established the company’s Global Innovation Centers across five continents and led the launch of its AI innovation programme. Earlier leadership work at IBM, Dell and Pfizer gave him an unusually broad view of how innovation actually moves through large, regulated organisations. That operating experience became the basis of Fearless Innovation (Wiley, 2020), a Wall Street Journal bestseller that lays out a practical discipline for converting innovation rhetoric into measurable results. The book sits alongside his contribution to the global ISO Standards on Innovation, where he helped codify the principles for how organisations build innovation capability at scale. He continues that work today as an Executive-in-Residence at Tulane University’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and as a regular contributor to Forbes, Fast Company, Entrepreneur and CEOWORLD on the question that now dominates board agendas: how to move from AI as a slide-deck strategy to AI as an operating advantage. Key speaking topics Enterprise AI strategy and operational deployment Innovation as a managed discipline AI literacy and workforce readiness Digital transformation in large enterprises Leadership in an AI-first operating model Culture change and innovation behaviour Ideal for Boards and CEOs setting an AI agenda beyond proof-of-concept Chief Innovation, Strategy and Transformation Officers responsible for translating AI ambition into operating results CHROs and learning leaders rebuilding workforce capability for an AI-first business Executive teams in Fortune 500s, scale-ups and government bodies stalled at the pilot stage of AI Audience outcomes A clear view of the difference between AI experimentation and AI as an operating capability, with named markers of each. Specific patterns from inside Cisco’s innovation programme that audiences can map onto their own organisations. A direct read on where workforce resistance to AI typically appears, and what leaders can do about it. A working sense of what Fearless Innovation prescribes as the discipline behind sustained innovation results.

Why organisations work with Karen Nelson-Field She runs Amplified Intelligence, the company whose eye-tracking dataset of 55,000+ panellists sits behind the IAB and MRC’s 2025 attention measurement accreditation standards. The category she explains is the category she helped define. Her three books, published by Oxford University Press and Springer, give CMOs and media leads a defensible academic spine for redirecting budget away from cheap reach and toward attention-weighted media. A decade inside the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute means her commercial advice rests on the same evidence base as How Brands Grow, the most influential marketing science framework of the last twenty years. Her client list, Google, Meta, Snapchat, PepsiCo, Nestlé, Mars, Unilever, OMD, means she addresses media owners and advertisers using the same vocabulary, neither captured by either side. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, Amplified Intelligence (founded 2016) Industry Professor of Media Innovation, The University of Adelaide Former Senior Research Associate, Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science Author of three books on media science, published by Oxford University Press and Springer Judge, IPA Effectiveness Awards 2022 Work covered in The New York Times, Bloomberg, CNBC, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, The Drum, WARC Biography For two decades, advertising spent more on media than on any other line of marketing investment, and verified less of its return than almost any other category of corporate spend. The industry standard for measuring whether an ad worked was whether the pixels were technically on screen. Whether a human looked at them was a separate question, mostly unasked. Karen Nelson-Field is the researcher who turned that question into a measurable category. As Founder and CEO of Amplified Intelligence, she built the eye-tracking and machine-learning infrastructure that quantifies active and passive attention across TV, digital, and social environments. The company now operates the largest human attention panel in the world, and its data informed the IAB and MRC’s 2025 attention measurement accreditation standards. Her authority predates the company. A decade at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, working alongside Byron Sharp on buyer behaviour and brand growth, gave her the evidence-based grounding that distinguishes her from attention commentators who appeared after the category became fashionable. Her three books, Viral Marketing, The Attention Economy and How Media Works, and The Attention Economy: A Category Blueprint, are read as the field’s reference texts rather than its trade press. For boards and CMOs, the practical value is direct. She names where current media metrics are misleading, what the replacement looks like, and how to allocate budget against the new evidence. Clients including Google, Meta, PepsiCo, Mars, and Unilever commission her not for trend commentary but for the underlying mathematics of where their advertising money actually performs. Key speaking topics Attention as a media currency The economics of advertising effectiveness Brand growth and buyer behaviour Media planning under digital fragmentation AI and machine learning in audience measurement Marketing science and evidence-based strategy Ideal for CMOs and marketing directors reassessing media investment frameworks Media agency leadership renegotiating attention-based trading models Platform and media owner executives benchmarking against new measurement standards Board-level conversations on marketing accountability and budget governance Audience outcomes A working definition of attention that distinguishes it from viewability, reach, and exposure Specific evidence on which formats and platforms convert attention into commercial outcome A clear view of where IAB and MRC 2025 measurement standards change buyer obligations Direct guidance on reallocating media budget against attention-weighted metrics An evidence base drawn from the same school as How Brands Grow, applied to current media conditions

Why organisations work with Timandra Harkness A working statistician on the Council of Trustees of the Royal Statistical Society who can speak fluently to technical and non-technical audiences in the same room. Author of two books that bracket the AI conversation: Big Data: Does Size Matter? on what data actually does and does not tell us, and Technology Is Not the Problem on why our cultural anxieties about tech are misdirected. A mainstream BBC Radio 4 presenter on FutureProofing, How To Disagree and Steelmanning, which means she handles complex, contested material on air for general audiences and brings that craft to a corporate room. Speaks regularly at institutions that take rigour seriously, including the Royal Society, the Alan Turing Institute, and the Royal Academy of Engineering, so the substance survives scrutiny from technical buyers. Comfortable as keynote speaker, panel moderator, or event host, which makes her useful across the full shape of a leadership offsite or technology summit. Biography highlights Author, Big Data: Does Size Matter? (Bloomsbury Sigma, 2016) and Technology Is Not the Problem (HarperCollins, 2024). Council of Trustees, Royal Statistical Society; chair of the editorial board, Significance journal. Writer and presenter, BBC Radio 4 series including FutureProofing, How To Disagree, Steelmanning, and Political School. Resident reporter across eight series of BBC Radio 4’s The Human Zoo. Speaker and lecturer at the Royal Society, Alan Turing Institute, Royal Academy of Engineering, RSA, Cheltenham Science Festival, and the Abel Prize for Mathematics. Contributor to the Telegraph, Guardian, Sunday Times, WIRED, New Statesman, UnHerd and BBC Focus. Biography Most arguments about technology in the boardroom are arguments about something else. Trust. Identity. What kind of company we want to be. Timandra Harkness, a statistician and broadcaster whose work spans both BBC Radio 4 and the Royal Statistical Society, is unusually well placed to name what is actually being discussed. Her first book, Big Data: Does Size Matter?, published by Bloomsbury Sigma in 2016, took the data revolution seriously without inflating it. Her second, Technology Is Not the Problem, published by HarperCollins in 2024, makes the harder case: that our anxieties about AI and social media are anxieties about ourselves, and that locating the problem in the technology is what stops us from acting on it. She presents BBC Radio 4’s FutureProofing, How To Disagree, and Steelmanning, programmes that work because they take competing arguments seriously rather than flattening them. That habit transfers. In a leadership room, she is the speaker who can hold a senior team’s attention on the awkward middle of an AI question, where the technical position and the cultural position have to be reconciled. She sits on the Royal Statistical Society’s Council of Trustees and chairs the editorial board of Significance, the Society’s journal. She has spoken at the Royal Society, the Alan Turing Institute, and the Royal Academy of Engineering. The technical rigour is real, and it is what stops the cultural argument from drifting into commentary. Key speaking topics Big data and what it does and does not reveal The cultural and ethical questions raised by AI Statistics, evidence and decision-making Human agency in an automated environment Identity, recognition and the social media question Technology and trust Disagreement and constructive argument inside organisations Ideal for Boards and executive teams making AI, data, and digital infrastructure decisions Technology and innovation summits seeking a credible non-vendor voice Leadership offsites where the AI conversation has to bridge technical and cultural ground CDO, CTO, and CHRO audiences working through the human consequences of new systems Audience outcomes A sharper sense of what data and AI systems can and cannot do, written by someone who works with statisticians A clearer language for the cultural and ethical questions executive teams keep deferring A defensible way to think about agency, recognition and trust as the technology landscape shifts Better-quality internal disagreement on contested technology decisions

Why organisations work with Rich Mulholland He runs a working AI agency, Too Many Robots, alongside a presentation business, so the advice on staying relevant in an AI-saturated market comes from someone deploying the tools, not commenting on them. Legacide gives him a precise argument that flips the standard innovation conversation: the constraint is not new ideas, it is the old behaviour that keeps surviving every restructure. Here Be Dragons codifies “storyselling” as a discipline for commercial teams, useful for sales leaders trying to move buyers without resorting to feature lists or discounting. Missing Link has shaped the presentation craft of corporate leaders across South Africa and beyond for over two decades, which means he speaks to senior executives about communication as someone who has trained the room rather than just spoken in it. Biography highlights Founder of Missing Link, described by multiple sources as South Africa’s largest presentation and communication training firm. Founder of Too Many Robots, an AI agency advising clients on practical AI deployment. Co-founder of 21Tanks, a problem-identification consultancy positioned as South Africa’s first perspective lab. Author of four books: Legacide, Boredom Slayer, Here Be Dragons, and Relentless Relevance. Guest lecturer at the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business and the Gordon Institute of Business Science. TEDx speaker at TEDxJohannesburg and TEDxCapeTown; has delivered keynotes in 50 countries across six continents. Biography Innovation programmes rarely fail at the idea stage. They fail at the legacy stage, where the existing way of doing things absorbs the new initiative and digests it back into business as usual. This is the territory Rich Mulholland has spent two decades working in, first through Missing Link, the South African presentation and communication firm he founded, and then through the writing that made Legacide a reference point for executives trying to understand why their change programmes keep stalling. His thesis is direct. Innovation does not happen when an organisation starts doing something new. It happens when it stops doing something old. That distinction reframes the senior team’s job from generating ideas to clearing space, and it is the spine that connects his work across innovation, sales, and communication. In Here Be Dragons he applies the same logic to commercial teams, treating storytelling not as a soft skill but as the operating discipline that decides whether a deal moves. The AI dimension is the more recent layer. Through Too Many Robots, the agency he founded to help clients deploy AI tactically rather than rhetorically, Mulholland has been working inside the question that most boards are still asking from the outside: what remains a human advantage when expectation, attention, and execution can all be automated. His answer, set out in the Humanity’s Unfair Advantage keynote, is that relevance is the perpetual play, not a position you achieve once. He is a guest lecturer at the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business and at GIBS, has spoken in 50 countries across six continents, and has appeared on TEDx stages including TEDxJohannesburg and TEDxCapeTown. Before any of this he was a touring roadie running lights for Iron Maiden, Def Leppard, and Bon Jovi, which is where the obsession with what makes a room respond actually started. Key speaking topics Relentless relevance and the discipline of staying useful to customers Legacy thinking as the silent constraint on innovation Storyselling and persuasion for commercial teams Humanity’s unfair advantage in an AI-driven market Leadership communication and executive presence Strategy for autonomous and purpose-driven organisations Ideal for Chief commercial officers, chief revenue officers, and sales leadership audiences working on storytelling and buyer persuasion Innovation leads, transformation heads, and strategy teams trying to dismantle legacy behaviour rather than add new initiatives Executive communicators and senior leaders preparing for high-stakes platforms, investor days, and town halls Boards and leadership teams scoping where AI substitutes human work and where human relevance still holds Audience outcomes A working definition of what legacy thinking looks like inside their own organisation, and where it is absorbing innovation effort A sharper framing for sales and commercial narratives that moves beyond feature lists into customer-centred story A clearer view of which parts of their work AI will eat and which parts depend on human relevance A practical standard for what a senior executive presentation should do, drawn from someone who has trained presenters for two decades