Future of Work

Why organisations work with Angela Oguntala Her Futurecasting process is a replicable leadership methodology for distinguishing structural change from cyclical noise, giving strategy teams something to use after the keynote, not just a perspective to carry home. She brings a practitioner’s decade-long track record: foresight and innovation work with Google, IKEA, the World Economic Forum, the World Trade Organization, Microsoft, and Deloitte, across sectors from healthcare to luxury to financial services. Her background spans foresight research and business strategy, which lets her connect technology shifts and the changing nature of work in a single frame that sector specialists rarely produce. She was named a Future Innovator by the United Nations, a designation that extends her credibility beyond the speaking circuit into formal expert recognition. Her central argument, that the future is not predictable but can be actively shaped, moves executive audiences from defensive risk-management to purposeful strategic action. Biography highlights Spent a decade as founding partner of Greyspace, a foresight and innovation consultancy Named a Future Innovator by the United Nations Salzburg Global Fellow for leaders challenged to shape a better world Advisory and keynote engagements with Google, IKEA, Microsoft, the World Economic Forum, the World Trade Organization, Heineken, and Deloitte, across healthcare, technology, luxury, and financial services TED talk, Re-imagine the future, on how the assumptions we hold about what is possible either constrain or expand the strategies we are willing to pursue Featured as a strategic foresight expert on outlets including NPR and Sky Biography The hardest thing about strategy is not analysing the present. It is imagining a future that does not yet exist, and committing resources to it before certainty arrives. Angela Oguntala built her career around exactly this problem. She spent a decade as a founding partner of Greyspace, a foresight and innovation consultancy, working across industries from healthcare and financial services to luxury and technology. The work was consistent: helping leadership teams read structural change and identify where to innovate. She now advises companies, governments, and senior leaders worldwide on strategic foresight and innovation. Her clients include Google, IKEA, Microsoft, the World Economic Forum, the World Trade Organization, Heineken, and Deloitte. Her named methodology, Futurecasting, is a structured process for mapping the forces reshaping an organisation’s context, surfacing risks and opportunities across a range of possible outcomes, and building strategy around where and how to act, giving leadership teams the capacity to navigate complexity and innovate, not just respond. Named a Future Innovator by the United Nations, and a Salzburg Global Fellow, Oguntala speaks on the TED platform and has been featured as a strategic foresight expert on outlets including NPR and Sky. Her TED talk, Re-imagine the future, addresses the blindspots that prevent organisations and individuals from seeing the full range of what is genuinely possible, and acting on it. Key speaking topics Strategic foresight and Futurecasting Innovation under uncertainty Emerging technology impacts Leadership and organisational foresight Sustainability and resilience Future of work Ideal for Chief Strategy Officers and strategy leadership teams whose planning models cannot keep pace with compounding change CEOs and executive boards making high-stakes bets as technology, consumer behaviour, and market structure shift simultaneously Chief Innovation Officers and heads of transformation identifying where real innovation opportunity lies amid constant noise Government and institutional leaders working on long-horizon policy and societal change Audience outcomes A clearer distinction between structural change and cyclical noise, and an understanding of how to act on that distinction at leadership level Practical familiarity with the Futurecasting methodology as a replicable process for strategic decision-making under uncertainty A more integrated view of how emerging technologies, global uncertainty, and shifting social expectations interact, rather than treating each as a separate workstream A reframed relationship with uncertainty: from something to manage defensively to something that can be met with intention Approaches to building organisations that can generate and act on genuinely new ideas rather than optimise existing ones

Why organisations work with Tia White Operator perspective from inside a hyperscaler. She runs go-to-market, product and engineering for an AWS AI portfolio tracking over USD 25M in profit, including some of the fastest-growing services at AWS. A track record of taking generative AI and personalisation from theory into customer-facing product. She led the introduction of Personalized Search, Next Best Action and generative AI capabilities into Amazon Personalize. Cross-sector enterprise fluency. Before AWS she held senior technology roles at Wells Fargo, Capital One and JPMorgan Chase, leading regulated digital transformation programmes in financial services. A specific point of view on what separates AI investments that compound from AI investments that stall, grounded in current AWS customer work rather than vendor abstraction. A credible voice on building the technical leadership bench behind AI, including women and Black technologists, that boards are now being asked to account for. Biography highlights General Manager, AI and Machine Learning, Amazon Web Services. First Black woman hired as a GM in Machine Learning, AI and Analytics at AWS. Director of Engineering at a Fortune 100 company before age 30. Prior senior technology roles at Wells Fargo, Capital One and JPMorgan Chase. Led the launch of new Amazon Personalize capabilities including Personalized Search, Next Best Action and generative AI features; speaker at AWS re:Invent 2022 on personalisation. Featured in Forbes; keynote and emcee credits include SXSW and the Grace Hopper Celebration. Board and advisory roles include Rewriting the Code. Biography Generative AI has moved faster than most enterprise operating models can absorb. Inside AWS, Tia White runs the AI and Machine Learning business that customers turn to when a pilot has to become a product. She owns go-to-market, product and engineering for an AI portfolio tracking over USD 25M in profit, including some of the fastest-growing services at AWS. Her work at AWS includes leading the next generation of Amazon Personalize, with features such as Personalized Search, Next Best Action and generative AI capabilities now used by enterprises to lift engagement and revenue. She has spoken at AWS re:Invent on personalisation as an operating discipline rather than a marketing feature, and is regularly cited by AWS as a voice on what Gen Y and Gen Z customers expect from personalised experiences. Before AWS she held senior technology roles at Wells Fargo, Capital One and JPMorgan Chase, including the leadership of public cloud migrations in financial services. She reached Director of Engineering at a Fortune 100 company before the age of 30. That financial services background gives her a working answer to the questions regulated industries are now asking about generative AI, data, privacy and risk. She was the first Black woman hired as a GM in Machine Learning, AI and Analytics at AWS, and uses that platform to address the harder question behind most AI roadmaps, which is whether the organisation has the talent and the leadership bench to deliver them. She has been featured in Forbes, has keynoted and emceed at SXSW and the Grace Hopper Celebration, and sits on boards including Rewriting the Code. Key speaking topics Generative AI in the enterprise Personalisation as a revenue and engagement discipline AI agents and agentic workflows Machine learning in regulated industries Cloud migration and digital transformation Responsible AI and bias mitigation Building diverse technical leadership in AI and engineering Ideal for CTOs, CIOs and Chief Data and AI Officers moving from AI pilots into production CMOs and Chief Customer Officers investing in personalisation, recommendation and customer engagement Boards and executive committees in financial services, retail and regulated industries setting AI strategy CHROs and DEI leads responsible for the technical talent pipeline behind AI Audience outcomes A clearer read on which generative AI use cases pay back and which do not, drawn from live AWS customer patterns. A working view of personalisation as an operating capability that touches data, product and engineering, not a marketing campaign. Sharper questions for the board on AI risk, privacy and the operating model around generative AI. A concrete sense of what the technical leadership bench behind a serious AI roadmap looks like, and where most organisations are short.

Why organisations work with Julie Holmes She gives leaders a way past the trap most AI programmes fall into. Second Story Strategy™, her framework, treats AI as a starting line for distinct new value, not a finish line for cost savings. She has built and sold technology, not just studied it. Two innovation companies and products in over 60 countries give her keynotes the texture of an operator, and she still builds AI applications for herself and clients today. Her material works at two stages: helping teams who are still becoming AI-capable, and pushing teams who have already proven AI makes them faster toward the harder question of what they will do with it that no one else can. PSA-UKI Hall of Fame status puts her among 33 speakers recognised for sustained craft on stage, which matters when the brief is a high-stakes leadership audience with mixed AI fluency in the room. She lectures on innovation and AI at Yale, Birkbeck, and the American University of Beirut, keeping the material tested against faculty and students as well as paying clients. Biography highlights Hall of Fame Speaker, PSA-UKI, one of 33 to hold the honour Originator of Second Story Strategy™ and the Second Story Blueprint for building competitive advantage on top of AI Author of Little Big Bangs for Leaders and of the 101+ AI Tips, Tools and Prompts series for leaders and sales professionals Founder of two innovation companies with products distributed in over 60 countries Clients include Oracle, Expedia, American Express, JetBlue, Nestle, EY, VMware, US Bank, and LinkedIn Guest lecturer at Yale, Birkbeck (University of London), and the American University of Beirut Biography AI is raising the floor for everyone. The same models, agents, and automation reach every competitor in a category at roughly the same time. That makes it easy to be good, and good is no longer a position. It is the new baseline. Julie Holmes works on the question that follows: once everyone is faster, what will your organisation be that no one else can be? Her answer is Second Story Strategy™, a framework drawn from studying which companies actually pull ahead with AI and which simply run harder in place. The pattern she found was not about budget or engineering depth. The standouts treated AI as a foundation and built something distinct on top of it, working through four levels she maps as Build, Reimagine, Extend, and Lead, with the organisation’s own distinctiveness as the load-bearing element running through all of them. Her credibility comes from building, not commenting. Holmes founded two innovation companies and shipped products into more than 60 countries, and she still builds AI applications for herself and clients. That operator history shapes how she talks to senior audiences. The diagnosis is practical, the language is plain, and her work extends into resources leaders can use directly, including the regularly updated 101+ AI Tips, Tools and Prompts series. Holmes is a Hall of Fame Speaker with PSA-UKI, one of 33 to hold the honour, and a guest lecturer at Yale, Birkbeck, and the American University of Beirut. Brands including Oracle, Expedia, JetBlue, Nestle, EY, and LinkedIn have brought her in for the same reason: to move AI from a tool that makes them cheaper to a foundation that makes them distinct. Key speaking topics Second Story Strategy™ and competitive advantage through AI AI strategy and enterprise adoption AI-empowered teams and workflows Innovation as a leadership discipline Sales and customer experience under AI Future of work and AI capability building Ideal for C-suite leaders setting enterprise AI direction Heads of department helping their teams level up with AI Sales and customer-experience leaders integrating AI into commercial workflows Company-wide events where AI fluency varies widely across the room Audience outcomes The five behaviours that set AI-savvy teams apart, framed as a Second Story Strategy™ they can act on A clear way to decide where to build genuine distinction and where keeping pace is enough Concrete examples of how AI is reshaping leadership, sales, and customer experience, with specific tools named Language for leading non-technical teams into AI with confidence rather than anxiety A sharper sense of which AI use cases build advantage and which only add speed

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 Lorraine Hariton Six years leading Catalyst, the global nonprofit whose research and benchmarks Fortune 500 boards already use to evaluate their own progress on women’s advancement. Operating background that buyers in male-dominated executive teams take seriously: 15 years at IBM, CEO of two Silicon Valley start-ups, Obama-appointed State Department official. Specific authority on the measurement question. Catalyst’s frameworks on emotional tax, empathic leadership, and inclusion assessment were developed and scaled during her tenure. Credible on the intersection of bias and emerging technology, including how gender and racial bias enter AI systems through data and design choices. Biography highlights President and CEO of Catalyst from 2018 to 2024. Special Representative for Commercial and Business Affairs at the US State Department under President Obama. CEO of two venture-backed Silicon Valley companies, Beatnik and Apptera. Senior Vice President of Global Partnerships, New York Academy of Sciences; co-founder of the Global STEM Alliance and the 1000 Girls, 1000 Futures programme. Inaugural Women’s Leadership Champion Award, University of Virginia Darden School of Business, 2022. Crain’s New York Business Women of Influence, 2023. BS Stanford University, MBA Harvard Business School. Biography Catalyst is the research organisation whose data Fortune 500 boards quote back to themselves when they discuss the women-in-leadership gap. For six years that organisation was run by Lorraine Hariton, an operator with credentials those same boards understand: fifteen years at IBM, two CEO roles at venture-backed Silicon Valley companies, an Obama-administration appointment representing US commercial interests at the State Department. That mix matters because the audience for serious DEI work has shifted. Senior teams now want practitioners who can speak the language of operating performance and capital discipline, not advocacy. At Catalyst, Hariton oversaw the development of frameworks used inside member companies on emotional tax, empathic leadership, and inclusion measurement, the kind of artefacts that survive contact with a sceptical executive committee. Her work addresses the credibility gap between public DEI commitments and observable workplace outcomes. She speaks directly to the failure mode senior leaders fear most, performative policy that produces no change and erodes employee trust. She also works on how gender and racial bias enter AI systems through training data, an issue most executive teams are still under-prepared for. The University of Virginia Darden School of Business presented her with its inaugural Women’s Leadership Champion Award in 2022. Crain’s named her to its Women of Influence list the following year. Her holistic view of where women’s advancement sits within an organisation, alongside compensation strategy, capital allocation, and technology governance, is what makes her useful in a boardroom rather than at a conference panel. Key speaking topics Gender equity and women’s advancement in senior leadership Inclusion measurement and DEI accountability Bias in artificial intelligence and emerging technology Workplace culture transformation Future of work and flexible workplace design Empathic and inclusive leadership practice Ideal for CHROs, Chief Diversity Officers, and CEO offices commissioning a measurable advancement strategy for women in senior leadership Boards and nominating committees evaluating their own pipeline credibility Senior leadership teams in male-dominated industries (financial services, technology, energy, industrials) working on inclusion outcomes that hold up to scrutiny Companies building governance around bias and fairness in AI deployment Audience outcomes A clearer picture of what credible DEI measurement looks like, drawn from Catalyst’s published frameworks A sharper grasp of where bias enters AI systems and what executive teams should be asking about it Direct exposure to a practitioner who has worked with the leadership teams of many of the world’s largest employers on this agenda A more confident vocabulary for senior leaders, particularly men in executive roles, to engage with women’s advancement as a business strategy issue rather than a compliance one

Why organisations work with Kian Bakhtiari Direct primary-source insight from a live community of 2,000+ Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha contributors across 50+ markets, rather than the lagged trend reports most boards are working from. A published, practitioner argument on purpose-led marketing through Kogan Page’s “Marketing for Social Change”, giving commercial teams a framework for purpose that survives the backlash cycle. Strategic credibility across two registers: the agency boardroom (former Head of Strategy at Dentsu Aegis Network) and the multilateral institution (WEF Agenda Contributor, UNFCCC advisor). Operating experience with consumer-facing brands that have to convert Gen-Z, including Adidas, Unilever, Diesel, L’Oreal, Danone, Innocent Drinks, Pentland Brands and Speedo. A Financial Times Top 50 Future Leaders listing, which gives a buyer external validation that the perspective is taken seriously by the business press. Biography highlights Founder of The People, a Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha cultural intelligence consultancy with contributors across 50+ markets. Author of “Marketing for Social Change: How to Turn Purpose Into Business and Social Impact”, Kogan Page (2024). Named in the Financial Times “Top 50 Future Leaders” for contributions to marketing. Agenda Contributor to the World Economic Forum; Advisor to UN Climate Change (UNFCCC). Forbes contributor on Gen-Z, brand and consumer culture; featured in Campaign, The Drum, Vogue Business and Rolling Stone. Former Head of Strategy at Dentsu Aegis Network; TEDx Brighton speaker on imagination and innovation. Biography Marketing teams have been trying to “reach Gen-Z” with the tools of the previous cycle: panels, focus groups, agency trend decks. The cohort itself has moved on, and most of the commercial signals reaching the boardroom are already a generation late. Kian Bakhtiari built The People to close that gap, running a live network of Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha contributors across 50+ markets that feeds primary cultural intelligence directly into client work. His background is unusually balanced for the field. Former Head of Strategy at Dentsu Aegis Network, he understands what the commercial brief looks like inside a holding company. As Agenda Contributor to the World Economic Forum and Advisor to UN Climate Change, he sees how the same generational questions land in policy and multilateral settings. The Financial Times named him in its Top 50 Future Leaders for marketing, an external read on where his work sits in the discipline. His book, “Marketing for Social Change” (Kogan Page, 2024), is the practitioner argument behind the consultancy. It sets out how brands can embed purpose into the operating substance of the business rather than the campaign layer, and how to avoid the backlash that hits when the two diverge. Clients he has worked with on this terrain include Unilever, L’Oreal, Diesel, Adidas, Danone, Innocent Drinks, Pentland Brands, Speedo and the BBC. What he gives a senior team is a route into a consumer base they cannot read with their existing tools, and a defensible position on purpose that holds up when scrutinised. That sits at the centre of how commercial strategy is now being rewritten for younger consumers and workers. Key speaking topics Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha consumer behaviour Purpose-led marketing and brand activism Cultural intelligence and foresight Marketing for social change The future workforce and generational diversity Brand communities and the creator economy Innovation, imagination and creativity Ideal for CMOs, brand directors and consumer insight leads recalibrating their approach to Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha audiences Chief Strategy Officers and growth leads in consumer-facing categories where younger cohorts decide the next decade of revenue Boards and executive committees stress-testing purpose, ESG and brand positioning against a more sceptical, more political consumer base CHROs and culture leads working on multigenerational workforces where Gen-Z is reshaping engagement and retention Audience outcomes A sharper picture of what Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha actually want from brands, employers and institutions, drawn from a live primary-source network rather than syndicated research. A practical test for whether a brand’s purpose can survive contact with the operating business, and where it most often breaks. A view of the commercial cost of getting generational signals wrong, and the categories where that cost is already showing up. Specific examples of brands that have moved purpose from campaign to product, and what made the difference.

Why organisations work with Mo Gawdat His central AI thesis – that these systems reflect the values humans encode into them, and that organisations still have a window to act – was published in 2021 and validated by the subsequent speed of AI deployment. Boards are not getting speculation; they are getting a forecast with a track record. Scary Smart gives senior leadership a specific accountability framework, not a risk briefing: the argument is that the question is not whether AI will be powerful, but what the organisation is actively doing to shape its values now. The Solve for Happy happiness model is a named, reproducible framework developed through the same engineering logic Gawdat applied throughout his technology career – not a wellbeing programme, but a systematic methodology for building psychological stability under pressure. He addresses the external disruption (AI’s structural impact on work and value) and the internal response (the human psychology of navigating it) as a single argument – which is why his sessions land differently in a strategy forum than a conventional AI speaker or a conventional wellbeing speaker would. Seven years inside Google [X] at the point when self-driving cars, Project Loon, and Google Life Sciences were being built and commercialised gives him a credibility baseline that no amount of research or commentary can replicate. Biography highlights Former Chief Business Officer, Google [X] (2013-2018), overseeing commercial strategy for Google’s moonshot innovation division 30-year career in technology spanning IBM, NCR, Microsoft, and Google, including senior roles across emerging markets globally Author of Solve for Happy (Macmillan, 2017), Scary Smart (Macmillan, 2021), That Little Voice in Your Head (Macmillan, 2022), and Unstressable (2024, co-authored with psychologist Alice Law) Scary Smart named a Sunday Times Business Book of the Year (2021) Chief AI Officer at Flight Story, the digital marketing company co-founded by Steven Bartlett Founder of One Billion Happy, a global initiative to share structured approaches to happiness and wellbeing Host of Slo Mo, one of the leading mental health podcasts globally Biography When Scary Smart was published in 2021, its central argument read as speculative: AI would become superintelligent, its real danger lay not in the technology itself but in the values humans encode into it, and organisations still had a narrow window to shape the outcome. Within a year, the release of ChatGPT had reframed the argument as a warning that had arrived early. Mo Gawdat had been inside Google [X] when these systems were being built. Gawdat joined Google in 2007 and served as Chief Business Officer of Google [X] from 2013, overseeing commercial strategy for the moonshot division behind self-driving cars, Project Loon, and Google Life Sciences. His seven years there gave him direct exposure to both the capability and the accountability gaps at the frontier of AI development. He left in 2018 and now serves as Chief AI Officer at Flight Story, the digital marketing company co-founded by Steven Bartlett. The parallel body of work on happiness was not a departure from his technology career. It emerged from the same engineering mindset applied to personal crisis. Following the death of his son Ali in 2014, Gawdat developed the framework at the centre of Solve for Happy: a systematic, reproducible model for well-being grounded in cognitive science. The book became an international bestseller. His thesis is that the two bodies of work are not separate. An organisation that understands the human psychology of its people is better positioned to navigate the disruption AI will accelerate. Unstressable, co-authored with psychologist Alice Law and published in 2024, extends that logic into a practical stress-management framework built around four human systems. He hosts Slo Mo, one of the leading mental health podcasts globally, and his earlier books – That Little Voice in Your Head (2022) and Scary Smart, a Sunday Times Business Book of the Year – continue to reach executive audiences grappling with AI governance and personal resilience across a 30-year technology career. Key speaking topics AI ethics and governance Responsible AI adoption The human impact of AI disruption Happiness science and the engineering of well-being Stress management frameworks Technology leadership and strategic foresight Human values in AI development Ideal for Boards and executive leadership teams making AI governance and adoption decisions Chief People Officers and Chief Technology Officers managing workforce responses to AI disruption Strategy, transformation, and future of work forums where AI risk and human resilience intersect Technology, financial services, and marketing organisations with significant and growing AI exposure Audience outcomes A coherent framework for evaluating AI’s ethical and human risks, grounded in direct experience of building these systems rather than external commentary Clarity on what values organisations need to embed in AI systems now, and why the window to do so meaningfully is narrowing Practical tools from the Solve for Happy model for building psychological stability and resilience under conditions of sustained uncertainty A more calibrated understanding of the timeline and direction of AI development, distinct from both catastrophism and uncritical optimism Practical techniques from Unstressable for identifying and reducing sources of stress at individual and team level

Why organisations work with Dorothée Töreki She has run digital transformation from the inside. Eleven years at IBM Germany and a Director of Digitalisation role at the Boysen Group give her a working understanding of how AI and digital tools actually land in industrial and corporate environments. She teaches the same material she presents on stage. Her part-time lectureship at Duale Hochschule Heidenheim covers blockchain and generative AI, which keeps the content close to the underlying mechanics rather than the marketing layer. She is one of the few German-language voices who can move an audience from technology scepticism to active engagement, in both English and German, without simplifying the substance. Her work spans the connected stack: generative AI, blockchain, Web 3.0, the Internet of Things and human-machine collaboration. That breadth lets her show executives where today’s pilots are pointing. Biography highlights Eleven years at IBM Germany in roles spanning Digital Advisor, Competitive Leader and Digital Workplace Consultant. Former Director of Digitalisation at the Boysen Group, leading cultural transformation. Founder of Denkräume im Digitalen, established 2019. Part-time lecturer in blockchain and generative AI at Duale Hochschule Heidenheim. LinkedIn Top Voice DACH 2018 and Best of IBM 2016. Co-author for Springer Gabler on generative AI and digitalisation themes. Biography Most German industrial firms can describe what generative AI is. Far fewer can describe what it changes inside their operating model. That gap, between technical literacy and operating capability, is the territory Dorothée Töreki has worked in for two decades. Her route into the subject is unusual. She trained as a civil engineer and worked on infrastructure projects including the ICE rail link between Frankfurt and Cologne, before moving into information technology. Eleven years at IBM Germany followed, in roles that ran from digital workplace consulting to competitive analysis on cloud and AI. As Director of Digitalisation at the Boysen Group, she carried that perspective into an industrial automotive supplier, designing the cultural side of digital change. In 2019 she founded Denkräume im Digitalen to focus on executive education and keynotes. The body of work spans generative AI, blockchain, Web 3.0 and human-machine collaboration. She teaches the same material at Duale Hochschule Heidenheim, which gives the content a level of technical detail most keynote speakers cannot match. Springer Gabler publishes her as a contributing author on generative AI and digital business. She is recognised as a LinkedIn Top Voice DACH and was named Best of IBM in 2016. Her delivery, in German or English, is built on turning abstract technology into specific operational consequence: what changes for marketing, for service operations, for the workplace, for the way decisions get made. Key speaking topics Generative AI in business Digital transformation in industrial organisations Blockchain and Web 3.0 Human-machine collaboration Future of work and digital workplace Internet of Things and Economy of Things Cultural change in technology adoption Ideal for CIOs, CDOs and heads of digital transformation in industrial and B2B firms. Executive committees and boards setting AI strategy. Marketing, sales and customer experience leadership teams. German-speaking corporate audiences seeking technical depth without losing accessibility. Audience outcomes A working picture of where generative AI changes specific business functions, not a generic technology overview. Clear language for the cultural and organisational shifts that decide whether digital pilots scale. A more precise read on adjacent technologies such as blockchain, Web 3.0 and IoT, and how they connect to AI strategy. The confidence to engage rather than retreat from the next wave of technology decisions.

Why organisations work with Andy Storch He has facilitated talent and leadership programmes for Salesforce, Oracle, Google, Toyota, Deloitte, EY, KPMG, Cisco, Sony, and Tiffany & Co., which means he has tested his career-ownership material against the most demanding corporate L&D functions in the market. He runs the room where his buyers meet each other. The Talent Development Think Tank conference, community, and podcast give him a working view of what CHROs and L&D leaders are actually trying to fix, before they brief a speaker. His thesis is concrete and actionable: career ownership is a learnable practice, not a slogan. Own Your Career Own Your Life breaks it into specific steps employees and managers can apply on Monday. His 2025 follow-up with Mike Kim, Own Your Brand, Own Your Career, gives organisations a practical handle on personal brand as a retention and internal mobility lever, not a LinkedIn exercise. He works equally credibly as a keynote, workshop facilitator, and community host. For talent functions running multi-day events, that flexibility is rare. Biography highlights Author of Own Your Career Own Your Life (2020) and co-author with Mike Kim of Own Your Brand, Own Your Career (2025). Founder and host of the Talent Development Think Tank podcast, conference, and community, sponsored by Advantage Performance Group. Has consulted, taught, or facilitated for Salesforce, Oracle, Google, Toyota, State Farm, Red Bull, Deloitte, EY, KPMG, HP, Sony, Cisco, and Tiffany & Co. MBA, USC Marshall School of Business (President of the MBA programme); BS, University of Florida. Host of three podcasts: The Talent Development Hot Seat, Own Your Career, and My NFT Journey. Workshop facilitator for global enterprises since 2011. Biography Career development inside large organisations has become a quiet contract failure. Employees assume their employer will plot the path; employers assume employees will take initiative; the middle is where engagement and retention disappear. Storch built a practice around closing that gap from both sides. His book Own Your Career Own Your Life sets out a step-by-step approach to career ownership for individual contributors and managers. The 2025 follow-up with Mike Kim, Own Your Brand, Own Your Career, extends the argument into personal brand as an internal-mobility and retention lever rather than an external marketing exercise. Both books are direct and operational, not motivational. The proof point most relevant to corporate buyers is who he works with. Salesforce, Oracle, Google, Toyota, Deloitte, EY, KPMG, Cisco, Sony, and Tiffany & Co. have used him to facilitate leadership and talent programmes. He has been running these workshops since 2011, which is what allows the keynote material to land in language a senior L&D function recognises. The Talent Development Think Tank, his podcast, conference, and community, gives him an unusual position in the market. He is not commenting on the talent development field from outside it; he is the convener inside it. For a CHRO or head of L&D, that means the speaker on stage has heard, in private, the same problems they are trying to solve. Key speaking topics Career ownership and employee development Talent development strategy Personal brand and internal mobility Leadership for managers of professionals Employee engagement and retention Future of work and talent trends Ideal for CHROs, heads of L&D, and talent development leaders running enterprise development programmes Annual talent and leadership offsites for managers of professionals Employee resource groups and internal high-potential cohorts Sales and account leadership conferences focused on retention and growth of top performers Audience outcomes A working definition of career ownership that managers and employees can apply to weekly conversations Specific tools to make personal brand work as an internal mobility and retention asset A clearer line between what the employer owes the employee and what the employee owes their own career Language to frame development conversations that does not collapse into performance review template A view of where talent development practice is heading, drawn from a sitting community of CHROs and L&D leaders

Why organisations work with Joe Toscano He left Google over the data practices he saw inside it, then wrote the book on what those practices look like from within. That insider account is hard to replicate at the keynote level. His work translates AI and privacy debates into specific operating decisions: what data to keep, what to delete, what to disclose, and where consent breaks under regulatory scrutiny. As founder of DataGrade and BEACON, he speaks from the position of someone running a privacy-first business, not commenting on one from outside. His public visibility through The Social Dilemma, Fox News, and Forbes means he can hold a non-technical audience on a technical subject without dropping the substance. Biography highlights Featured expert in Netflix’s The Social Dilemma. Author of Automating Humanity (powerHouse Books / Simon & Schuster). Founder and CEO of DataGrade. Founder of the Better Ethics and Consumer Outcomes Network (BEACON). Former Experience Design consultant for Google. TEDx speaker; Forbes contributor; recurring Fox News technology commentator. Biography The companies setting the rules for how consumer data trains AI systems are also the companies whose products most depend on that data. That conflict sits at the centre of Joe Toscano’s work. He came out of Silicon Valley with a designer’s view of how those products are built, then turned that knowledge outward. Toscano was an Experience Design consultant for Google before stepping away in 2017 over what he saw of the industry’s data practices. Automating Humanity, his book with powerHouse Books, set out the argument in detail: how attention is engineered, how disinformation pays, and how automation is being trained on data the public never knowingly handed over. He went on to found DataGrade, a privacy-first data company, and BEACON, a network focused on technology literacy and ethical innovation. The Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma brought that work to a mass audience, and he has since become a regular technology commentator on Fox News and a contributor to Forbes. What makes him useful to boards is the combination of inside knowledge and operating responsibility. He is not theorising about AI governance from a lectern. He is building a company that has to make those decisions every day, and translating that into language a non-technical executive team can act on. Key speaking topics AI ethics and governance Data privacy and consumer trust The business case for privacy-first design Technology literacy for non-technical leaders The future of work under AI and automation Disinformation and platform accountability Regulation and the post-GDPR landscape Ideal for Boards and executive committees setting AI and data governance standards Chief Privacy Officers, CISOs, and Chief Data Officers CMOs and customer experience leaders weighing personalisation against privacy HR and transformation leads planning workforce change driven by AI Audience outcomes A clearer line between defensible and indefensible uses of customer data in AI systems Specific questions a board should be asking about model training data and consent A working view of how privacy can be a commercial advantage, not just a compliance cost Sharper judgement about what to believe and discount in vendor pitches on AI capability

Why organisations work with Aric Dromi Nine years as an in-house Futurologist at Volvo Cars gives him an operator’s view of how a global manufacturer actually absorbs autonomous, electric and connected technology, not a consultant’s slide on it. He works across the same problem from three angles, corporate strategy, government policy and civic infrastructure, which is unusual in technology foresight and useful when a brief touches more than one of them. Founder of TEMPUS.MOTU and advisory board member at NTT Innovation Institute and UNLEASH, with a network that spans telecoms, mobility, energy and the UN Sustainable Development Goals agenda. Pushes against deck-driven strategy. His stated rule, that any strategy worth executing should fit on a napkin, lands well with executives tired of frameworks that do not survive contact with the operating business. Comfortable in uncomfortable territory. He frames himself as a “professional troublemaker” and is booked for sessions where leadership wants their assumptions stress-tested, not validated. Biography highlights Nine-year tenure as in-house Futurologist at Volvo Cars, advising on autonomous, electric and connected vehicle strategy. Founder of TEMPUS.MOTU, a strategic advisory and think tank serving corporate and public-sector clients. Advisory board, NTT Innovation Institute, the corporate research arm of NTT Group. Innovation Advisory Board, UNLEASH, the global innovation lab built around the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Earlier roles at Ericsson, Microsoft and Cellcom, where he was Chief Knowledge Officer. Author of The Intellectual Rage and The Prophet, plus further titles published under the pen name D.B. Solomon. Biography Volvo did not hire a futurologist for nine years to predict the next car. It hired one to help the leadership team work out what a car company even is once mobility becomes autonomous, electric and connected. That brief, sustained over almost a decade inside one of Europe’s most identifiable industrial brands, is the foundation of how Aric Dromi thinks. He now runs TEMPUS.MOTU, a strategic advisory and think tank that takes the same posture into other sectors. The work spans corporate strategy, government policy and city-scale infrastructure, with engagements that have included clients such as Mastercard, Siemens, Volkswagen, Telefonica, the World Bank and the IFC, alongside government work in Kazakhstan and Moscow city. His public positions reflect the same range. He sits on the advisory board of NTT Innovation Institute, the research arm of one of the world’s largest telecoms groups, and on the Innovation Advisory Board of UNLEASH, the global lab built around the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The point of those affiliations is not credentialing. It is access to the actual conversations where technology, capital and policy are being negotiated. Dromi is direct about what he is for and what he is against. He calls himself a professional troublemaker, writes books that read more like critiques than playbooks, and tells executive audiences that any strategy worth doing should fit on a napkin. Leaders book him when they want their assumptions broken in a room where it still costs less than breaking them in the market. Key speaking topics AI, automation and the future of work Autonomous and connected mobility Smart cities and urban infrastructure Data, privacy and digital governance Strategic foresight under exponential change Innovation strategy and corporate transformation Geopolitics of technology Ideal for Boards and CEOs of industrial, mobility and energy businesses are confronting AI and automation as a strategy question, not an IT one. CSOs, CIOs and heads of innovation are responsible for translating foresight into operating decisions. Government and city leaders are working on smart-city, mobility and digital infrastructure programmes. Executive offsites and leadership summits where the brief is to break orthodoxies, not confirm them. Audience outcomes A clearer view of how AI, automation and connected systems will reshape the audience’s specific industry, not technology in general. Sharper questions for the next strategy cycle, framed around capability, governance and societal licence to operate. A working sense of where corporate, policy and civic decisions intersect, and where leaders are exposed when they assume they do not. Confidence to retire foresight tools that no longer survive contact with the operating business. A direct, sometimes uncomfortable challenge to assumptions the leadership team has stopped questioning.

Why organisations work with Elaine Kasket She is one of the few cyberpsychologists in Europe who is also a clinically trained, HCPC-registered counselling psychologist, which means her advice on digital wellbeing is grounded in clinical practice, not commentary. Her work covers technology across the full lifespan, from “sharenting” to digital afterlife, which gives leaders a coherent framework for thinking about the employee, the customer, and the citizen as the same person. She wrote the definitive trade book on digital death and digital legacy, All the Ghosts in the Machine, and now leads on the psychology of AI companions and grief bots, an area few executive audiences have heard explained well. She has consulted to organisations including Netflix, Santander, Deloitte, the NHS and Hill & Knowlton Strategies, so the work translates from research into board-level conversations about AI, attention and surveillance. Her newest book, Reset, gives leadership teams a practical vocabulary for agency over technology rather than the usual digital detox framing, which most senior buyers find too thin for adult professional audiences. Biography highlights BPS-Chartered Psychologist and HCPC-Registered Counselling Psychologist; Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society Visiting Professor at the Centre for Death and Society, University of Bath; formerly Honorary Professor of Psychology at the University of Wolverhampton Author of Reset: Rethinking Your Digital World for a Happier Life (Elliott & Thompson, 2024) and All the Ghosts in the Machine (Robinson, 2019) TEDx Oxford speaker; featured expert in the Netflix documentary The Future Of: Life After Death Regular contributor to BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour, CNN, BBC Ideas, The Guardian, New Scientist, Psychology Today and Stylist Keynote engagements include Santander, Deloitte, the NHS, Royal Society of Medicine, Congreso Futuro, re:publica and the International Baccalaureate global conference Biography Most organisations talk about digital wellbeing in the language of the wellness industry: detoxes, screen-time apps, mindful breathing. The actual psychological problem is structural. Attention is being extracted, identity is being recorded, and the costs are showing up in engagement, retention and clinical mental health caseloads. That gap between the corporate vocabulary and the clinical reality is the space Elaine Kasket works in. She trained as a counselling psychologist before cyberpsychology was a discipline, and is registered with the HCPC alongside her chartered psychologist status with the British Psychological Society. That clinical grounding is what separates her commentary from the commentary economy around technology. She led the Doctorate in Counselling Psychology at Regent’s University London, was Honorary Professor of Psychology at the University of Wolverhampton for five years, and is now Visiting Professor at the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath. Her first trade book, All the Ghosts in the Machine (Robinson, 2019), opened a serious public conversation about digital legacy: what happens to your data, your accounts and your image when you die, and what that means for the people who outlive you. Reset: Rethinking Your Digital World for a Happier Life (Elliott & Thompson, 2024) extends the argument across the full lifespan, from “digital gestation” and sharenting to surveillance, AI relationships and the digital afterlife. For leadership audiences, she connects four conversations executives often run as separate problems: employee mental health, AI adoption, brand trust and data governance. Her recent keynotes for Santander, Deloitte, the NHS, the Royal Society of Medicine and Congreso Futuro have moved leaders away from “digital detox” framing and toward agency, the design question of how a workforce uses AI without losing the cognitive and relational ground organisations actually run on. Key speaking topics Cyberpsychology and digital wellbeing Psychology of AI adoption at work AI companions, grief bots and the future of human connection Digital legacy, data privacy and digital afterlife Attention, surveillance and the extractive attention economy Technology across the lifespan, from sharenting to digital afterlives Ideal for CHROs and Chief People Officers designing wellbeing, engagement and AI-readiness programmes Chief AI Officers and transformation leads embedding AI into employee experience and customer-facing tools Brand, marketing and communications leadership teams working on trust, privacy and AI narratives Boards and risk committees considering the human and reputational dimensions of data, surveillance and AI Audience outcomes A clinically grounded read on what technology is actually doing to attention, identity and relationships at work A vocabulary for talking about digital wellbeing that holds up in front of clinicians, regulators and senior employees A clearer view of where AI companions, grief bots and synthetic relationships intersect with workforce mental health and brand risk A practical sense of what individual and organisational agency look like in an extractive attention economy A framework that connects digital legacy, data governance and employee trust as one coherent leadership question