Ernst & Young

Solution: Working with EY’s Global Digital and Business Disruption Leader, I curated a 20-speaker lineup across eight plenary sessions and two keynotes, securing high-profile speakers such as Stanford’s James Landay and MIT physicist Max Tegmark. Each speaker was assessed against the summit’s vision and what a C-suite audience would value: I reviewed their past talks and interviewed them directly to test their point of view and how they’d hold a room. Once confirmed, every speaker was briefed on the audience and their session’s goals, and their materials were reviewed ahead of time so each talk landed on theme. On site in San Francisco, I was the main point of contact for all 20 speakers, working with production to manage arrivals, timings, and last-minute changes so they could focus on their sessions.

A summit about innovation risks hearing from the same voices. I advocated for more women on stage and for speakers from the humanities, not just technology and business. The clearest example was Holly Herndon, who joined as both speaker and performer. Holly uses AI to replicate her own voice and invites other people to sing with it. Her session moved the room past the risks of AI to its creative possibilities, a perspective a lineup of technologists alone wouldn’t have offered.