Automation and Robotics

Why organisations work with Kieran Gilmurray He has shipped AI and intelligent automation programmes inside named enterprises including Rapid7, Mercer, and Pearson, with documented savings in the tens of millions. That track record sits behind every framework he presents. His three books on generative AI, agentic AI, and organisational digital transformation give boards a structured reference, not a hype reel. They are written for the executive who has to decide, not the engineer who has to build. He treats agentic AI as an operating model question. The conversation moves quickly from “what is an AI agent” to which decisions an agent should own, what governance the board needs to put around it, and how the workforce is redesigned in response. Seven LinkedIn Top Voice recognitions and Thinkers360 rankings in generative and agentic AI mean the audience is hearing from a voice already widely cited in their own feeds, which lifts the in-room credibility of the conversation. Biography highlights Author of Agentic AI: A Business Leader’s Guide to the Future of Work and Digital Labour, The A to Z of Generative AI, and The A-Z of Organizational Digital Transformation. CEO and Founder, Kieran Gilmurray and Company Limited. Chief AI Innovator, Technology Transformation Group. Seven-time LinkedIn Top Voice in AI and related categories. Listed by Thinkers360 in the Top 50 Generative AI and Top 100 Agentic AI thought leaders. MBA (1st Class Distinction, Entrepreneurship Award) and MSc in Computer Science, both Queen’s University Belfast. Biography The gap between AI ambition and AI in operation has become the defining management problem of the decade. Pilots prove the technology works. Boards then struggle to convert those pilots into structural advantage, and most leadership teams still lack a clear view of which decisions an AI agent should now own. This is the territory Kieran Gilmurray works in. As CEO of Kieran Gilmurray and Company Limited and Chief AI Innovator at the Technology Transformation Group, he advises boards and executive teams on moving generative and agentic AI from concept into operating reality. His work spans finance, HR, customer service, and the wider digital labour stack. The credibility behind the advice is operational. Programmes he has led inside Rapid7, Mercer, and Pearson are referenced across his bureau profiles with quantified outcomes in the tens of millions of pounds and dollars. His three books, including Agentic AI: A Business Leader’s Guide to the Future of Work and Digital Labour, give business leaders a structured way to think about agent design, governance, and workforce redesign without retreating into engineering language. Independent recognition reinforces the position. Kieran has been named a LinkedIn Top Voice seven times and ranks on Thinkers360 leaderboards for both generative AI and agentic AI. He holds an MBA with distinction from Queen’s University Belfast and an MSc in Computer Science from the same institution, a pairing that maps directly onto the audience he writes for: business leaders who need the technology to make commercial sense. Key speaking topics Agentic AI and digital labour Generative AI for business leaders AI strategy and operating model design Intelligent automation at enterprise scale Digital transformation in regulated industries AI governance and board-level oversight Future of work in the age of AI Ideal for Boards and executive committees moving from AI pilots to enterprise deployment CIOs, CTOs, CDOs, and Chief AI Officers designing operating models around generative and agentic AI CHROs and transformation leads redesigning roles and workflows as AI agents enter the workforce Industry conferences in financial services, professional services, technology, insurance, and the public sector Audience outcomes A working definition of agentic AI that distinguishes it from generative AI and earlier automation, with examples from named enterprises A board-level view of where AI agents are already producing operating savings and where they are still pilot theatre A practical map of governance questions a leadership team must answer before scaling AI agents across functions A clear framing of workforce redesign as AI shifts which decisions sit with humans and which sit with digital labour

Why organisations work with Byron Reese He places today’s AI moment inside a 100,000-year arc of technology shifts, giving senior leaders a framework for long-range decisions that vendor briefings cannot supply. As CEO of Gigaom, he sits at the intersection of independent technology analysis and operating leadership, which lets him speak to both the engineering reality and the boardroom question. His five books, published by Simon & Schuster and BenBella, take positions on machine consciousness, automation, and the future of work that are specific and contestable, not generic optimism. He addresses AI without the doom-or-hype binary that dominates the speaking circuit, which is what most leadership audiences are quietly asking for. Biography highlights CEO and publisher of Gigaom, an independent technology research firm. Author of five books, including The Fourth Age (Simon & Schuster, 2018), described by The New York Times as “entertaining and engaging”. Founder of multiple technology companies, with two NASDAQ IPOs and several US patents to his name. Hosts podcasts on artificial intelligence, including Voices in AI and The Agora Podcast. Featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, Bloomberg Businessweek, USA Today and the Financial Times. Bloomberg Businessweek credited him with “quietly pioneer[ing] a new breed of media company”. Biography Most futurists work in five-year horizons because that is what corporate planning cycles demand. The cost is that the most important question, which is what AI actually does to the human story, gets answered by analogy and anecdote rather than by argument. Byron Reese works in a different timeframe. In The Fourth Age, published by Simon & Schuster in 2018, he argues that technology has reshaped humanity three times: fire and language, agriculture and cities, the wheel and writing. Artificial intelligence and robotics, he argues, are now driving the fourth. The book reframes machine consciousness, automation and the future of work as questions of philosophy and history rather than software roadmaps, and The New York Times called it “entertaining and engaging”. His credibility is operational as well as intellectual. As CEO and publisher of Gigaom, he runs one of the better-known independent technology research firms. Before that he founded and sold multiple companies, took two through NASDAQ IPOs, and built consumer internet platforms that Bloomberg Businessweek described as “a new breed of media company”. He holds several US patents in crowdsourcing and content technology. Reese is, by his own description, the “Future of” guy: he has written and spoken on the future of AI, work, banking, education, agriculture, and the planet. His later books, Stories, Dice, and Rocks That Think and We Are Agora, extend the same long-range argument into how humans forecast and how human collectives behave. The thread that connects all of it, and the reason boards keep booking him, is that he is willing to take a position on where this is going. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and the future of work The long arc of technology and human civilisation Automation and workforce redesign Machine consciousness and AI ethics Innovation in conditions of rapid technological change Reasoned optimism as a leadership stance on technology The future of education, banking and agriculture Ideal for Boards and executive teams setting long-range AI and automation strategy CHROs and workforce planners redesigning roles around AI capability Innovation and strategy leaders in financial services, education and industrial sectors Conference audiences looking for a substantive counterweight to AI hype and AI doom Audience outcomes A clearer mental model of where AI sits in the longer history of human technology Sharper questions for internal AI strategy conversations, particularly on workforce and capital allocation A credible counter-position to the dominant doom-or-hype framing of AI in the press A specific account of how automation reshapes employment, drawn from Reese’s published argument rather than generic forecasts Renewed confidence that leadership decisions on technology can be made with intellectual rigour, not faith

Why organisations work with Ulrich Walter He brings the credibility of a flown astronaut and a sitting university chair to AI and robotics conversations that usually rely on consultants or vendor analysts. His role on the Bavarian Ethics Council gives him direct exposure to how regulators, ethicists and engineers are drawing the operating lines around AI, useful for boards setting their own. Disruptive-innovation content drawn from NASA mission cases and his own IBM project-management work, not from secondhand business literature. A working researcher in geriatronics and service robotics, which gives him a concrete view of what AI-assisted hardware can and cannot do today, beyond the generative-AI conversation. Comfortable in technical depth and broad audience formats. Eleven books, a weekly TV programme on Welt TV, and a Spiegel bestseller indicate a speaker who can carry a non-specialist room without softening the science. Biography highlights Payload Specialist, NASA Space Shuttle Columbia, Spacelab D-2 mission (STS-55), 1993. Chair of the Institute of Astronautics, Technical University of Munich, 2003 to 2023, now emeritus. Member, Bavarian Ethics Council on robotics and artificial intelligence. German Professor of the Year 2008 in engineering sciences and informatics. Author of eleven books including the Spiegel bestseller “Im Schwarzen Loch ist der Teufel los” and the Wiley textbook Astronautics. Host, Spacetimes, weekly space-science documentary on Welt TV since 2016. Biography Most leadership teams are asked to make decisions about AI and robotics without a working understanding of how the underlying systems behave. That gap is where Ulrich Walter does his most useful work. Trained as a physicist at the University of Cologne, with postdoctoral years at Argonne National Laboratory and UC Berkeley, he combines an active scientific career with a policy seat that few keynote speakers can match. In 1993 he flew Spacelab D-2 aboard Space Shuttle Columbia as Payload Specialist, running 89 experiments across materials science, life sciences and robotics in just under ten days in orbit. After the mission he managed satellite imaging programmes at the German Aerospace Center, then ran development projects at IBM, before being appointed to the Chair of Astronautics at TU Munich in 2003. At TUM he led research on service robotics, geriatronics, and the systems engineering behind human spaceflight. He also sits on the Bavarian Ethics Council on robotics and AI, advising on where the operational and moral limits of these technologies should fall. The work is technical, and it is current. For corporate audiences, the most useful translation is the one between high-risk technical environments and ordinary business decision-making. How does NASA assess disruptive change? How does a project manager at IBM apply mission-grade discipline? What does a working scientist on Germany’s AI ethics body actually think a board should worry about? Walter is unusually direct on all three. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and ethics Disruptive innovation Space technology and the NewSpace economy Robotics and geriatronics Systems engineering and project management The future of human spaceflight Science communication for non-specialist audiences Ideal for Boards and executive teams setting governance on AI and emerging technology Engineering, R&D and innovation leadership at industrial and aerospace firms Senior project and programme managers in complex, high-risk environments Conferences and offsites looking for a substantive technology keynote that can also carry a non-technical room Audience outcomes A working view of where AI and robotics genuinely change the operating picture, and where the hype runs ahead of the science. A practical translation of NASA-style risk management and project discipline into commercial settings. A clearer sense of how European regulators and ethicists are framing the limits of AI deployment. Exposure to the NewSpace economy and what it signals about the next generation of commercial technology. A reset of perspective on long-horizon strategic thinking from someone who has spent ten days looking at the planet from orbit.

Why organisations work with Danilo McGarry He has run AI inside two of the largest regulated enterprises on the planet. Buyers get an operator who has defended budgets, cleared risk committees and shipped at scale, not a consultant describing other people’s work. His track record is tied to outcomes in the numbers. His work at Alter Domus is associated with a period of significant valuation growth, and his engagements are framed around measurable cost, revenue and risk impact rather than adoption metrics. He sits at the board-level interface of AI. He teaches on the Financial Times Board Directors Programme and advises the CIPD on AI, which means the language he uses lands with directors, not just technologists. He explains complex AI choices in terms non-technical leaders can act on. That is what earns him repeat invitations from banks, insurers, health systems and consultancies where the decision rests with a chief executive or a chair. Biography highlights Former Head of AI at Citigroup, leading enterprise AI and automation inside one of the world’s largest banks. Former Head of AI at UnitedHealth Group, operator of one of the largest software-robot estates in any healthcare business. Former Global Head of AI and Automation at Alter Domus, the fund services group, from December 2019. Strategic adviser on artificial intelligence to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD). Faculty contributor to the Financial Times Board Directors Programme. Host of the “It’s All About AI” podcast; TEDx speaker; ranked on Thinkers360 and Onalytica lists of leading AI voices. Biography The hard part of enterprise AI is not the model. It is the decision to commit, the governance to contain the risk, and the operational grip to turn a working pilot into a line on the P&L. Danilo McGarry has spent his career on the inside of that problem. At Citigroup he led artificial intelligence and machine learning, launching automation and AI initiatives across capital markets operations. He then became a senior AI leader at UnitedHealth Group, where his remit included a programme of roughly 3,500 software “digital workers” embedded in one of the largest healthcare businesses in the United States. As Global Head of AI and Automation at Alter Domus from 2019, he built an AI and automation function inside a fund services firm through a period of significant growth. Earlier roles at JPMorgan and Royal Bank of Canada gave him the grounding in regulated operations that now sits under everything he says on stage. That operator track record is why boards listen. He is a faculty contributor to the Financial Times Board Directors Programme and strategic adviser on AI to the CIPD, which puts him in front of chairs, chief executives and people leaders making the governance calls. He is cited and quoted in outlets including the Financial Times, The Times, Bloomberg, Forbes and WIRED, and ranks on Thinkers360 and Onalytica lists of leading voices in AI and intelligent automation. His argument on stage is practical. Treat AI as an operating-model question, not a tooling question. Pick the handful of processes where the economics are real, industrialise them, and build the governance that lets the next wave scale without fresh permission every time. It is a message that lands with leadership teams who are tired of pilot decks and want to know what to do on Monday. Key speaking topics Enterprise AI strategy AI operating models and governance Intelligent automation at scale AI in financial services and healthcare Board-level AI literacy Digital workers and the future of operations Responsible AI adoption Ideal for Boards and chief executives setting enterprise AI policy and investment envelopes. CIOs, CDOs and heads of transformation running AI and automation portfolios. CHROs and people leaders rethinking workforce design around AI and digital workers. Regulated-sector leadership teams in banking, insurance, asset servicing and healthcare. Audience outcomes A clearer view of where AI actually moves the numbers inside their own operating model. A working vocabulary for the governance, risk and workforce questions AI creates at board level. Concrete reference points from AI deployments inside Citigroup, UnitedHealth Group and Alter Domus. A sharper read on which AI investments industrialise and which stay trapped as pilots. Confidence to set the next twelve months of AI priorities with fewer, better bets.

Why organisations work with Cornel Amariei Operator credibility on both sides of the innovation question: ran innovation as Head of Innovation at Continental Automotive with patents adopted across European electric vehicles, then built .lumen from research project to a venture-backed company. Built the first Romanian company to receive EIC Accelerator funding, with a €9.7M blended finance package and a €5M January 2025 round led by Catalyst Romania alongside the EIC Fund. The story is a working playbook on European deep-tech capital formation. Working at the intersection of autonomous driving, robotics and assistive technology, with a defensible patent portfolio. Useful to leadership teams thinking about how to convert AI and sensor capability into a product proposition with a real customer. Recognition from credible institutions, not bureau awards: Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe, JCI Ten Outstanding Young Persons of the World, Global Business Hall of Fame. A personal stake that travels well into corporate audiences. Grew up in a family where every member had a disability, and built a company that addresses an underserved global market of 40 million blind people. Authority on social impact ventures without the activist framing. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, .lumen. Pedestrian Autonomous Driving technology, first deployed in glasses for blind users. Former Head of Innovation, Continental Automotive. Patents applied in European electric vehicles. First Romanian inductee, Global Business Hall of Fame, 2021. Innovators category, alongside Canva’s Melanie Perkins. Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe; JCI Ten Outstanding Young Persons of the World. Author, “Arduino Development Cookbook” (Packt Publishing, 2015). Alumnus, Constructor University (formerly Jacobs University Bremen). Biography A research project inside a Romanian engineering team in 2018 became, by early 2020, a venture called .lumen. By 2025 the company had closed a €5M round led by Catalyst Romania with the European Innovation Council Fund and Tigrim Capital alongside it, the latest tranche in a €9.7M blended finance package that made it the first Romanian startup to take EIC Accelerator capital. The product, Pedestrian Autonomous Driving, was first demonstrated in glasses that replicate and extend the function of a guide dog. The global addressable problem is concrete: roughly 40 million blind people, fewer than 20,000 guide dogs. The biography behind the company matters because it explains the design choice. Cornel Amariei grew up in a family where every member had a disability: parents with locomotor conditions, a sister with cerebral palsy. The motivation is not a brand layer on top of a venture. It is the reason the venture exists. Before .lumen, Amariei was Head of Innovation at Continental Automotive, where his patent work was integrated into European electric vehicles. That experience matters for boards thinking about innovation governance. He has run the discipline inside a multinational tier-one and built it from scratch as a founder, which is rare in a market where most speakers have done only one. The recognition is from named institutions: Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe, JCI’s Ten Outstanding Young Persons of the World, and induction into the Global Business Hall of Fame in 2021 as the first Romanian laureate, in the innovators category alongside Canva founder Melanie Perkins. He is also a published technical author with Packt and an alumnus of Constructor University in Bremen. Key speaking topics Deep-tech entrepreneurship and scale-up leadership Innovation management inside multinationals Assistive technology and accessibility ventures Autonomous driving and robotics applied to consumer products Patent strategy and IP-led product development European deep-tech capital and the EIC Accelerator route Social impact through technology commercialisation Ideal for Innovation, R&D and CTO leadership inside industrials, automotive and consumer technology Boards and executive committees reviewing how invention is governed and converted to product ESG, accessibility and inclusion programmes seeking a credible technology voice rather than an activist one Entrepreneurship summits, deep-tech investor events and scale-up programmes across Europe Audience outcomes A working view of how a research prototype becomes a regulated, funded, commercial product A founder’s account of building patent value inside both a multinational and a startup A grounded reference point for what European deep-tech capital, including EIC blended finance, actually requires of a company A clearer sense of where assistive and accessibility technology is going as autonomous driving capabilities scale down to wearables A reset on what social impact looks like when it is a product proposition rather than a corporate programme

Why organisations work with Elena García Armada She has done what most deep-tech founders only describe: taken a robotics breakthrough from CSIC laboratory bench into certified clinical use, through a company she still runs. Her European Inventor Award Popular Prize from the European Patent Office gives her a credential most innovation speakers cannot match, anchored in a specific patented invention, not a body of opinion. She speaks fluently across two worlds that rarely meet on the same stage: tenured senior scientist at CSIC and CEO of a regulated medical device company, with operational responsibility for staff, capital, and clinical outcomes. Her work sits at the intersection of robotics, AI-driven control, and biomedical engineering, which makes her credible on the practical question of how emerging technologies translate into products under real regulatory and commercial constraints. Biography highlights CEO and co-founder of Marsi Bionics, the CSIC-UPM spin-off that brought paediatric exoskeletons to clinical use. Senior tenured scientist at the Centre for Automation and Robotics (CAR), CSIC-UPM, leading research on legged robots and exoskeletons. PhD in robotic engineering, Polytechnic University of Madrid; postdoctoral training at MIT’s Leg Laboratory. European Inventor Award Popular Prize 2022, European Patent Office; finalist EU Women Innovators Award 2021; Gold Medal of the Spanish Red Cross 2022. Author of “Los robots y sus capacidades” and “Robots” (Catarata / Editorial CSIC). Doctor honoris causa, Miguel de Cervantes European University, 2023; Premio Nacional Reina Letizia for Research and Innovation, 2023. Biography Most exoskeletons in research labs do not fit children. The mechanics, the weight, the control systems, and the regulatory pathway for a paediatric medical device are harder than the adult equivalents, and the commercial incentives to solve them are weaker. ATLAS 2030, the world’s first adaptable paediatric exoskeleton, exists because Elena García Armada chose to work on the harder version of the problem. The technical work began at the Centre for Automation and Robotics, the joint CSIC and Polytechnic University of Madrid centre where she is a senior tenured scientist. The commercial work began in 2013, when she co-founded Marsi Bionics as a CSIC spin-off to take the technology out of the lab and into rehabilitation centres and hospitals. Her credentials sit on both sides of that journey. Postdoctoral training at MIT’s Leg Laboratory on the research side; CEO of a regulated medical device company on the commercial side. The European Patent Office awarded her the Popular Prize of the 2022 European Inventor Award for the underlying invention, and the Spanish state has recognised the social impact with the Premio Nacional Reina Letizia and the Red Cross Gold Medal. What is unusual is not the recognition. It is that the same person holds the patent, runs the company, and answers for the clinical outcomes. That combination is rare in deep-tech innovation, and it is what makes her useful to boards thinking about how science-led ventures actually become businesses. Key speaking topics Deep-tech commercialisation Robotics and exoskeleton technology Biomedical engineering and assistive devices Innovation in regulated industries Science-led entrepreneurship AI-driven control systems in robotics Women in STEM and inclusive innovation Ideal for Boards and executive teams investing in or running deep-tech and medtech ventures Innovation, R&D and CTO functions seeking credible perspective on lab-to-market translation Healthcare and life-sciences leaders working on assistive and rehabilitation technology Audiences focused on STEM talent strategy and women in engineering Audience outcomes A concrete view of what it takes to move a robotics breakthrough from research into a regulated, commercial product A sharper sense of how academic science, patents, and venture-building reinforce one another when handled by the same hand Direct exposure to a working case of paediatric exoskeleton design, with the engineering, clinical, and commercial choices made visible A grounded perspective on the role of women in technical leadership of European deep-tech

Why organisations work with Aaron Frank As one of only two lead facilitators of Singularity University’s flagship five-day Executive Program, he translates emerging technology trajectories into specific decisions a senior team can make this quarter, not abstract futures. He has taught the same material to the United States Marine Corps, the Central Bank of Denmark, Ernst & Young, FC Barcelona, GE, and The Economist Group, which means his frame is tested across regulators, militaries, sports bodies, and Fortune 500 operators. He guest lectures inside Oxford’s Saïd Business School Digital Transformation course, evidence that his content survives peer scrutiny in a serious executive-education environment. He writes a steady stream of analysis for Singularity Hub, Wired, Forbes, Vice, and VentureBeat, and authored Singularity’s 2026 executive briefing on Physical AI, so audiences get a speaker whose arguments are already pressure-tested in print. His current research focus is the convergence of generative AI, spatial computing, 3D simulation, and physical AI, a frame that gives him a concrete read on where the next wave of enterprise infrastructure is heading. Biography highlights Principal Faculty, Singularity University, and one of only two lead facilitators of its flagship five-day Executive Program. MBA, University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School, where he also guest lectures on the Digital Transformation course. Bylines in Vice, Wired, Forbes, VentureBeat, and Singularity Hub. Author of A Business Leader’s Introduction to Physical AI (Singularity, 2026). Has spoken to or advised the United States Marine Corps, the CIA, the Department of Defense, the Central Bank of Denmark, Ernst & Young, GE, The Economist Group, Coca-Cola, Under Armour, FC Barcelona, the NBA, Sony, and Honeywell. Board member, Saint Francis Living Room, a community kitchen in San Francisco’s Tenderloin. Biography Generative AI is now familiar territory for most senior leaders. What comes after is the harder question: which emerging shifts genuinely reshape an industry, and where capital should actually move. That interpretive read is what Aaron Frank does for a living. He is one of only two lead facilitators of Singularity University’s flagship Executive Program. The five-day intensive puts him in a room with around a hundred senior leaders, working through emerging technology trajectories as a structured curriculum. Few speakers test their arguments against a senior audience that often. His range covers rapid technological change, spatial computing and 3D simulation, digital twins as enterprise infrastructure, and the move toward physical AI. He has taught that material to the United States Marine Corps, the Central Bank of Denmark, Ernst & Young, FC Barcelona, and GE. His bylines appear in Wired, Forbes, Vice, VentureBeat, and Singularity Hub. Outside Singularity, he holds an MBA from Oxford’s Saïd Business School and guest lectures on its Digital Transformation course. He also sits on the board of Saint Francis Living Room, a community kitchen in San Francisco’s Tenderloin. His current research focus is the rise of physical AI, set out for Singularity in a 2026 executive briefing on the convergence of robotics, simulation, and spatial intelligence. Key speaking topics Exponential technology trajectories and leadership decisions Innovation strategy under technology acceleration Spatial computing, 3D simulation, and digital twins Physical AI and robotics Ideal for Boards and executive teams setting AI and emerging technology investment direction CTO, CIO and head of digital transformation audiences Industrial, manufacturing, defence and supply chain leadership planning around physical AI and digital twins Strategy and innovation leads in financial services, sport, media and government Audience outcomes A clearer read on which emerging technology shifts actually reshape their industry, and which are noise. A working vocabulary for generative AI, spatial computing, digital twins, and physical AI that a senior team can use in the same conversation. Specific examples of how regulators, militaries, sports bodies, and Fortune 500 operators are deploying these technologies today. A view on the next two to five years of enterprise AI infrastructure beyond the chatbot, drawn from operating deployments.

Why organisations work with Jason Bradbury Twelve years presenting The Gadget Show on Channel 5 trained him to make emerging technology legible to a general audience without diluting the substance. Boards get the same treatment. His 2026 keynote The AI Advantage introduces a “6 Degrees of AI” framework that maps AI impact across sectors, giving audiences a structured way to read their own industry rather than a generic overview. He completed MIT’s Artificial Intelligence: Implications for Business Strategy programme, anchoring the keynote content in a formal commercial-AI curriculum rather than vendor marketing. He combines keynote and host roles in the same booking. For technology summits and innovation days that need a credible anchor across the whole programme, this removes a casting decision. Biography highlights Presented Channel 5’s The Gadget Show from launch in 2004 to 2016, twelve years of prime-time technology broadcasting. Multiple Guinness World Records set on the programme, including fastest jet-powered street luge at 186.41 km/h. Author of the Dot Robot techno-thriller series for Penguin Random House: Dot Robot, Atomic Swarm, Cyber Gold. Completed MIT Sloan’s Artificial Intelligence: Implications for Business Strategy programme. Has sat on judging panels for the BAFTA Video Games Awards and the Media Guardian Innovation Awards. Keynote and hosting work with Vodafone, Samsung, Intel, Microsoft, Oracle, Sony, Audi, BMW, BP, Disney, Porsche, Salesforce, Royal Caribbean and BT. Biography Twelve years on Channel 5’s The Gadget Show is, among other things, twelve years of explaining emerging technology to an audience that did not study engineering. Jason Bradbury presented the programme from its 2004 launch through 2016, by which point he had also set multiple Guinness World Records on air, the most cited being a jet-powered street luge clocked at 186.41 km/h on the show’s 200th episode. The broadcasting work sits alongside a second strand of authorship. The Dot Robot series for Penguin Random House (Dot Robot, Atomic Swarm, Cyber Gold) is technology fiction for younger readers, and the same instinct runs through his keynote work: take a complicated technical subject, find the human stakes, hold attention. The keynote material has tightened as AI has moved up the boardroom agenda. Bradbury completed MIT Sloan’s Artificial Intelligence: Implications for Business Strategy course, and his 2026 talk The AI Advantage introduces a “6 Degrees of AI” framework intended to give business audiences a structured way to read AI impact in their own sector rather than a generic horizon scan. He is most commonly booked by organisations that want a single credible figure to anchor a technology day, keynote on AI in the morning, host panels in the afternoon, hold the room. Clients across that work include Vodafone, Samsung, Intel, Microsoft, Oracle, BMW, BP, Porsche, Disney and Salesforce. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence for business audiences Sector impact of generative AI Future of work and automation Emerging consumer technology Robotics and autonomous systems Innovation and product disruption Technology event hosting and moderation Ideal for Technology summits and innovation days that need a single anchor across keynote and host roles Sales kick-offs and customer conferences using AI as the headline theme Boards and executive offsites looking for an accessible read on AI sector impact Awards ceremonies and brand events with a technology adjacency Audience outcomes A working mental model of where AI is heading across the next decade, mapped to the audience’s own sector Sharper questions to ask vendors, internal teams and consultants about AI claims A concrete sense of which AI use cases are credible now versus speculative Reduced sense that AI is a single undifferentiated wave, replaced with a structured view of where it lands

Why organisations work with Spencer Kelly Two decades inside the BBC’s flagship technology programme, Click, give him a working knowledge of frontier tech that very few keynote speakers can match, and a presenter’s instinct for what a general audience can absorb. He is one of the few speakers who is equally credible as a keynote on AI and emerging tech and as the host or moderator who runs the rest of the day, which reduces the number of people a conference organiser has to brief. A Cambridge Computer Science background, with an undergraduate dissertation on AI, means his explanations sit on actual technical understanding rather than on borrowed framing. He has interviewed the people audiences are most curious about, from Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer to James Cameron, Edward Snowden and Julian Assange, which gives his sessions named primary material instead of recycled commentary. BBC Radio 4’s Understand: Tech & AI and the technology segment on BBC Morning Live keep him in current weekly conversation with a non-specialist audience, which is the audience most leadership teams actually resemble. Biography highlights Presenter of BBC Click from January 2006 to its final episode in March 2025, the BBC’s longest-serving technology presenter. Host of BBC Radio 4’s Understand: Tech & AI, a 10-part series first broadcast in July 2023. Presents the technology segment on BBC Morning Live. Computer Science double first from Churchill College, Cambridge, with an undergraduate dissertation on artificial intelligence. Honorary Doctor of Technology, Coventry University. Named T3 Magazine Tech Personality of the Year in 2015. Biography BBC Click ran for 25 years on BBC World News and the BBC News Channel. Spencer Kelly presented it for nearly 19 of them, from January 2006 to its final episode in March 2025. That single fact carries more weight in a leadership audience than any speaker bio summary, because it means the person at the front of the room has been tracking, testing and explaining frontier technology to a global audience continuously across an entire technology cycle. The Cambridge Computer Science training matters here. His double first at Churchill College, with an undergraduate dissertation on artificial intelligence and genetic algorithms, is the reason his explanations of AI sit on actual technical foundations rather than on metaphors. He moves fluently between the engineering reality and the boardroom question, which is exactly what most senior audiences are trying to do when they sit down at a strategy day. Beyond Click, he hosts BBC Radio 4’s Understand: Tech & AI, the 10-part series launched in July 2023, and presents the technology segment on BBC Morning Live. He has interviewed Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, James Cameron, Edward Snowden and Julian Assange. T3 Magazine named him Tech Personality of the Year in 2015. Coventry University awarded him an Honorary Doctor of Technology. For an event with leadership stakes, he is unusually flexible. He delivers the keynote on AI, automation and emerging technology when that is the brief, and he hosts, moderates or runs the awards when the day needs a presenter who can carry the room and stay on the subject. The same person does both jobs to BBC standard, which is rarer than most conference programmes assume. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence in business Emerging technology and its commercial impact Automation and the future of work Quantum computing, blockchain and the metaverse Technology hosting, moderation and awards presenting Ideal for Boards and executive teams running an AI literacy or emerging tech briefing Conference organisers who need a single host across keynote, panel and awards CIO, CTO and digital transformation leaders running annual offsites Industry awards and sector summits that want a recognisable, technically credible host Audience outcomes A clearer picture of where AI and adjacent technologies are now, separated from the marketing layer. Specific named examples of how organisations are using emerging tech, drawn from his Click reporting. A working sense of which technologies sit in the next 18 months and which sit further out. The confidence to ask sharper questions of internal teams and external vendors.

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

Why organisations work with Tim Cortinovis He treats AI in sales as an operating model question, not a tooling question. The conversation shifts from “which platform” to “what does revenue generation look like when the work itself is automated” His “single-handed unicorn” thesis names a specific argument that lands with founders, scale-up CEOs and corporate innovators: the unit economics of building large companies with very small teams have changed, and the strategic implication is concrete He is one of a small number of speakers genuinely fluent in agentic AI for revenue, recognised by Thinkers360 in both the AI and Sales categories, not one or the other He delivers in English, German and Spanish, which makes him commercially useful across European corporate audiences without translation overhead The frame is business-first and pragmatic. Forbes called him a tech visionary, but the room gets actionable economics, not a tour of model capabilities Biography highlights Top 10 Thought Leader in Agentic AI and Top 10 Thought Leader in Sales, Thinkers360 Author of Selling Smarter, Not Harder; Homo Automaticus; and The Single-Handed Unicorn series Named clients include Siemens, E.ON, ING, MSC Cruises, Edelman and YPO Master of Arts in Spanish and German Linguistics, University of Hamburg Member, Global Speakers Federation and German Speakers Association Keynote languages: English, German, Spanish Biography Most “AI in sales” content is still tooling content. It explains what platforms exist, how a model can draft an email, where automation removes a click. The harder argument, the one buyers are starting to ask for, is what the commercial organisation looks like when an autonomous agent owns the workflow end to end. Tim Cortinovis works in that argument. His central thesis, the “single-handed unicorn”, names something specific. The unit economics of building a large business have changed because agentic systems can now do work that previously required headcount. For corporate leaders, the implication is not “use more AI” but a redesign of how revenue, marketing and customer operations are staffed. He has built five books around this territory, including Selling Smarter, Not Harder and Homo Automaticus, and Thinkers360 has placed him in the top ten globally for both Agentic AI and Sales. The credentials sit on top of fifteen years of operating experience in international B2B sales and marketing, primarily in IT and automation. That history shows in the room. Named clients include Siemens, E.ON, ING, MSC Cruises and Edelman, and the work is delivered across English, German and Spanish for European audiences who want practical economics rather than a tour of model capabilities. Forbes has referred to him as a tech visionary; the more useful description is that he gives a sales leadership team a defensible answer to what AI is actually for in their organisation. Key speaking topics Agentic AI in sales and revenue operations The single-handed unicorn thesis Sales and marketing automation AI-driven business model redesign Future of work in commercial functions Digital transformation in B2B sales Ideal for Chief Revenue Officers and Chief Commercial Officers running AI transformation in sales Founders and scale-up CEOs rethinking headcount under agentic AI Boards and ExCos asking what AI actually changes about commercial operating models Sales leadership offsites and B2B revenue conferences across Europe and the Americas Audience outcomes A clear position on what agentic AI changes about the structure of a revenue organisation, not just its tools A working vocabulary for the single-handed unicorn argument and where it does and does not apply Specific examples of AI-driven commercial models from companies already operating this way A sharper view of where their own sales function is automatable now versus 18 months out

Why organisations work with Dalia Marin Her peer-reviewed research links automation, trade-policy uncertainty, and reshoring in a single empirical model, giving leadership teams a defensible basis for supply-chain decisions rather than a narrative. She translates between the Brussels and Berlin policy worlds and the corporate boardroom, drawing on advisory work with the European Commission, the EBRD, and the IMF. Her Project Syndicate column is a running public reference point on deglobalisation, German deindustrialisation, and the labour-market consequences of AI, read by policy and business readers across Europe. She is one of the few senior economists who has tracked the German industrial model, and the Eastern European production network around it, continuously since the 1990s. That long view matters when companies are re-assessing the same geographies. Biography highlights Chair in International Economics, TUM School of Management, Technical University of Munich. Non-resident Fellow at Bruegel and Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research. Former Professor of International Economics at Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich (1998 to 2017). Co-editor of “The Organization of Firms in a Global Economy” (Harvard University Press, 2008) with Elhanan Helpman and Thierry Verdier. Co-author of “Global Value Chains in a World of Uncertainty and Automation”, Journal of International Economics, 2025. Visiting appointments at Harvard, Stanford, NYU Stern, the IMF, the NBER, and the European University Institute. Project Syndicate columnist on deglobalisation, industrial policy, and the future of the German economic model. Biography The reshoring debate has moved past the slogan stage. Firms are actually pulling production back to high-income economies, and the economic literature is starting to explain why. Trade-policy uncertainty and cheaper industrial robots, working together, are restructuring global supply chains in ways that a decade of offshoring logic did not anticipate. That is the core argument of Marin’s recent work, co-authored in the Journal of International Economics in 2025. Her research shows that exposure to uncertainty in developing-country suppliers pushes production back to high-income countries, but only where robots have made it economically feasible. For a senior operations or strategy audience, this is a usable frame: reshoring is not a political mood, it is a measurable response to two forces that can be modelled. The wider body of work runs through Bruegel, CEPR, and a sustained Project Syndicate column. She has written continuously on the German economic model, the Eastern European production network built around it, and the inflationary and labour-market consequences of a partial retreat from globalisation. Her advisory work with the European Commission, the EBRD, and the IMF sits alongside the academic record rather than replacing it. She was Chair in International Economics at Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich for almost two decades before moving to TUM. Visiting appointments at Harvard, Stanford, NYU Stern, the IMF, and the NBER place her inside the network of economists who set the terms of the trade-policy debate. The value for a corporate audience is that she can connect that technical conversation to the question actually on the table: what does the next decade of supply-chain strategy look like when the old globalisation assumptions no longer hold. Key speaking topics Deglobalisation and the restructuring of global supply chains Automation, robots, and reshoring The German economic model and European competitiveness International trade policy and geopolitical risk Multinational firms and the organisation of global production Industrial policy in Europe and the United States Inflation, labour markets, and the economics of deglobalisation Ideal for Boards and executive committees reassessing supply-chain footprint in light of tariffs, geopolitical risk, and automation CSOs, Heads of Strategy, and COOs responsible for manufacturing and sourcing decisions in industrial and export-led businesses Policy forums, investor conferences, and economic summits focused on Europe, Germany, and the future of global trade Senior leadership in financial institutions and multinational corporates with significant exposure to Eastern Europe and the German industrial base Audience outcomes A clear read of the empirical evidence on reshoring, automation, and trade-policy uncertainty, rather than the headline narrative A sharper view of where the German economic model is strong and where it is exposed, with implications for anyone doing business across the European industrial network A working framework for assessing which parts of a supply chain are candidates for reshoring and which are not A grounded perspective on the macro-economic consequences of deglobalisation, including effects on inflation and labour markets Language and evidence that senior leaders can use in their own board conversations on geopolitical and trade exposure