Artificial Intelligence (AI) Keynote Speakers
AI is already in your organization.
The question is who helps you lead it.
Our AI speakers don't lecture audiences on technical specifications. They help leaders, organizations, and communities understand what artificial intelligence actually means for them with clarity, humanity, and a genuine sense of possibility.
Why Outspoken
Most AI talks leave audiences more anxious than when they arrived. Ours don't.
Accessible to every audience
Every speaker on this page has demonstrated the ability to make AI meaningful for non-technical audiences, from association members to healthcare professionals to senior executives who've never written a line of code.
Every perspective, every angle
AI ethics. AI strategy. AI and culture. AI and health. AI and justice. AI and the future of work. We've curated ten speakers who collectively cover every dimension of AI that matters to organizations today matched to your specific audience and goal.
Empowerment, not anxiety
The best AI talks don't make audiences feel overwhelmed. They leave people feeling equipped with a clearer view of what's actually happening, what it means for them specifically, and what they can do about it. That's the standard we hold our speakers to.
Chris Barton
FOUNDER, SHAZAM | APPLE’S 6TH LARGEST ACQUISITION | 12 PATENTS
Entrepreneurship ★ AI Origins ★ Innovation
Before there were AI apps, there was Shazam. Chris Barton built the world's first consumer AI application — an app that could identify any song from ambient audio — at a time when MIT and Stanford professors told him it was impossible. He built the algorithm, created the world's largest music database from scratch, and waited six years for the App Store to arrive so the world could catch up to his idea. Acquired by Apple for $400 million. Downloaded over two billion times. Now, a founder of Guard — using AI to detect drowning in swimming pools. A holder of 12 patents, dyslexic visionary, and one of the most genuinely joyful storytellers on the AI speaking circuit. His keynote isn't a warning about AI — it's an invitation into the mind of someone who saw its possibilities 25 years ago and built something magical with it. Especially powerful for audiences who need to feel excited about AI rather than afraid of it.
Dr. Brandeis Marshall
FOUNDER & CEO, DATAEDX GROUP | AUTHOR, DATA CONSCIENCE
AI Ethics ★ Data Equity ★ Accountability
Computer scientist. Former professor at Spelman College. Faculty associate at Harvard's Berkman Klein Center. Stanford PACS Practitioner Fellow. NSF TRAILS researcher. And the clearest, most practical voice on AI accountability working today. Dr. Brandeis Marshall's book Data Conscience: Algorithmic Siege on Our Humanity (Wiley, 2022) is the counter-argument to Silicon Valley's "move fast and break things" — a direct, accessible, and urgently needed guide to building responsible, human-centered AI from the inside out. Her PRISM of data equity, making data and AI concepts "snackable" from the classroom to the boardroom, has been deployed at Harvard, Stanford, the ACLU, the Urban League, and Fortune 500 companies. She doesn't make AI scary. She makes it honest and gives audiences the specific tools to do their part.
Ruha Benjamin
PRINCETON PROFESSOR | MACARTHUR “GENIUS” | AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR
AI & Society ★ Race & Tech ★ Justice
A 2024 MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Fellow and Princeton professor of African American Studies whose work sits at the radical center of the most important AI conversation happening right now: who builds our digital world, and whose lives are shaped by it. Author of Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code—required reading in technology programs, policy schools, and corporate DEI initiatives across the country—and Imagination: A Manifesto, which argues that our ability to imagine differently is the prerequisite for building differently. Ruha's keynote is not a lecture on bias in training data. It is a challenge to every audience about what kind of world they're building when they decide which technologies to trust, which to question, and which to refuse. Essential for academic, nonprofit, and any organization serious about responsible AI.
Dr. Cori Lathan
NEUROSCIENTIST | INVENTOR | AUTHOR, INVENTING THE FUTURE
AI & Health ★ Neuroscience ★ Innovation
MIT PhD neuroscientist and co-founder of AnthroTronix — a woman-owned R&D company she led for 22 years, delivering projects for DARPA, NASA, NIH, and NSF that range from robots for children with disabilities to virtual reality experiments on the International Space Station. Her FDA-cleared brain performance platform won a Gold Edison Award. Named to MIT Technology Review's Top 100 Innovators, Fast Company's Most Creative People, and permanently installed in a Smithsonian exhibit on women in STEM. Now CEO of De Oro Devices and bestselling author of Inventing the Future: Stories from a Techno-Optimist. Cori's keynote asks the question at the heart of AI—not "what will technology do to us?" but "what can technology help us become?"—and answers it with three decades of evidence that the future belongs to those who design AI with humanity at the center.
Theresa Payton
FIRST FEMALE WHITE HOUSE CIO | CYBERSECURITY EXPERT | CBS's HUNTED
Digital Trust ★ AI Strategy ★ Cybercrimes
The first woman to serve as White House Chief Information Officer, securing systems for President George W. Bush before founding Fortalice Solutions, a Forbes-featured cybersecurity firm advising Fortune 500 boards on AI strategy and threat mitigation. A patented inventor, author of Manipulated (one of The Guardian's Top 10 Books About Cybercrime), and the real-world intelligence expert behind CBS's Hunted. She makes AI and cybersecurity jargon-free and immediately actionable for non-technical audiences, which is why she's been invited back to the same organizations four and five times, and why her keynotes consistently rank as the best of the conference. Especially powerful for insurance, legal, healthcare, and government audiences navigating AI adoption with real operational risk.
Josh Levine
AUTHOR, GREAT MONDAYS | CULTURE STRATEGIST
AI-Ready Culture ★ Future of Work ★ Leadership
The organizational question most AI speakers ignore: even if your AI strategy is right, is your culture ready for it? Josh Levine has spent two decades helping companies answer that question including IBM, Microsoft, PagerDuty, and dozens of others. His book Great Mondays: How to Design a Company Culture Employees Love (McGraw-Hill) is a practical playbook for building the kind of culture where AI adoption becomes a shared endeavor rather than a source of anxiety. His keynote sits at the intersection of culture design and AI transformation—giving HR leaders, people teams, and executive audiences a framework for how human beings actually adopt new technology: through trust, meaning, and identity, not mandates and memos. If your organization is trying to get its people to embrace AI rather than fear it, Josh Levine is the speaker who connects those dots.
Louisa Loran
THINKERS50 RADAR 2026 | AUTHOR, LEADERSHIP ANATOMY IN MOTION | BOARD ADVISOR
AI & Strategy ★ Transformation ★ Executive Leadership
She was at Google when AI was reshaping global supply chains, at Maersk when digital transformation doubled a company's share price, and at Diageo when data changed how iconic brands understood their customers. Now a Thinkers50 Radar 2026 honoree and author of Leadership Anatomy in Motion (Fast Company Press, 2025)—endorsed by Marshall Goldsmith as "a practical guide to reclaiming clarity, alignment, and thoughtful leadership in the midst of it all." Louisa's AI keynote is for senior executives and leadership teams who need to understand AI not as a technical implementation challenge but as a leadership and human challenge — how do you lead with AI without losing the judgment, presence, and connection that make great leaders irreplaceable? Featured in Fortune, Fast Company, the Financial Times, and on CNBC Squawk Box.
Rina Bliss
RUTGERS SOCIOLOGIST | AUTHOR, RETHINKING INTELLIGENCE
AI & Equity ★ Intelligence Science ★ Human Potential
Associate Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University, Human Genome Synthesis Project member, consultant to the National Academies of Science and PBS's Finding Your Roots. Her award-winning book Rethinking Intelligence (HarperCollins) challenges the IQ-and-DNA assumptions baked into how organizations evaluate and develop people—the same assumptions increasingly encoded in AI hiring and performance tools. Her latest, What's Real About Race? (W.W. Norton, 2025), extends that argument to the genetic fictions shaping AI systems in healthcare and medicine. Rina's AI keynote is one of the most important on the market for healthcare, HR, and education organizations: it shows precisely where AI's assumptions about human ability, health, and potential go wrong and what a more accurate, humanizing approach looks like. NSF-funded research that lands like a revelation for any audience.
Nikolas Badminton
FUTURIST | AUTHOR, FACING OUR FUTURES
Futures Thinking ★ AI Strategy ★ Hope Engineering
Chief Futurist at Futurist.com, Fellow of the Royal Society for Arts, and the strategist 500+ of the world's most impactful organizations call when they need to understand what AI means for the next five, ten, and twenty years — including NASA, Disney, Google, Microsoft, the United Nations, the U.S. Department of State, and the UK Home Office. His book Facing Our Futures was selected as JP Morgan's "Next Gen Pick" in their Annual Summer Reading List and named by the Next Big Idea Club. What makes Nikolas different from most AI futurists is his explicit optimism and why his framework is called Hope Engineering™ for a reason. He doesn't sell fear. He shifts mindsets from "what is" to "what if" to give organizations the curiosity, the strategic foresight, and the genuine excitement to lead transformation rather than be led by it. For audiences overwhelmed by AI anxiety, he is exactly the voice that turns dread into agency.
Mary L. Gray
MACARTHUR FELLOW | MICROSOFT RESEARCHER | AUTHOR, GHOST WORK
AI & Labor ★ AI Ethics ★ Futur of Work
A 2020 MacArthur "Genius" Fellow and Senior Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research where she chairs the only federally-registered institutional review board for AI ethics in the tech industry. Faculty associate at Harvard's Berkman Klein Center. Faculty in Indiana University's Luddy School of Informatics. And the author of Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass (Financial Times Critic's Pick, 2019), which exposed the massive invisible human workforce that makes AI appear to work by itself — labeling data, moderating content, training systems. Serving on Stanford's AI100 Standing Committee and the California Governor's Council of Economic Advisors. Mary's talk reveals the most human story inside the most automated technology and gives every audience a more honest, more complete picture of what AI is actually built on. Especially powerful for HR, policy, and leadership audiences grappling with the workforce implications of AI adoption.
Who Books These Speakers
AI is relevant to every industry.
These speakers know how to meet each one where it is.
Healthcare
AI in diagnostics, clinical decision-making, bias in health data, and the human skills that technology cannot replace.
Legal
AI and professional responsibility, bias in legal AI tools, cybersecurity and client privacy, and the future of legal knowledge work.
Government & Defense
National security and AI, cybersecurity strategy, AI policy and governance, and the leadership decisions that shape how governments adopt and regulate AI.
Financial Services
AI risk and compliance, algorithmic accountability, AI-ready culture, and the leadership shifts required for transformation.
Corporate & Enterprise
AI adoption strategy, culture change, workforce transformation, AI-ready leadership, and building trust in AI systems across large organizations.
Retail & Consumer
AI in customer experience, supply chain intelligence, consumer trust and data privacy, and what AI-era brand loyalty actually looks like.
Education
AI in the classroom and administration, academic integrity, data equity in education technology, and human intelligence in the age of automation.
Nonprofit & Foundation
AI and social impact, responsible use of AI in mission-driven work, AI funding and philanthropy, and AI tools for resource-constrained organizations.
Frequently Asked Questions
What event planners ask us most about AI speakers.
How do I pick the right AI speaker for a non-technical audience?
Look for speakers who translate, not just explain. The best AI speakers for non-technical audiences use story, analogy, and human consequence to make AI real. Every speaker on this page has demonstrated this ability. Tell us about your audience and we'll match you to the right voice and the right angle.
What AI topics are most in demand for conferences right now?
In 2026, the highest-demand AI topics for conference audiences are: AI strategy for non-technical leaders, responsible and ethical AI, AI's impact on specific industries (healthcare, legal, insurance, education), the workforce and culture implications of AI adoption, and AI and the future of human work. The right topic depends heavily on your audience's role and industry — share those details with us and we'll narrow it down for you.
We want our audience to feel empowered about AI, not scared. Which speakers do that best?
Chris Barton and Nikolas Badminton are the most explicitly optimistic AI voices on this page — they are built for audiences that need to feel excited and empowered. Cori Lathan and Josh Levine are also strong choices for organizations focused on AI as a tool for human flourishing. For audiences that need both honesty and hope, acknowledging AI's risks while offering practical paths forward, Mary L. Gray and Louisa Loran provide that balance with particular grace.
How do I book an AI keynote speaker for my event?
Fill out our speaker inquiry form with your event date, audience type and size, industry focus, and what shift you want the speaker to create in the room. We'll respond within one business day with specific recommendations and handle all contracting, logistics, and coordination from there.
AI is changing everything.
Let's make sure your audience leads that change.
Tell us about your event, your industry, and your audience. We'll send tailored recommendations within one business day. No obligation, no pressure.