How to Find an AI Keynote Speaker: {A Buyer's Guide.}
A practical guide for event planners on sourcing, vetting, and briefing an AI keynote speaker — from someone who has booked them and been booked.
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FREQUENTLY FEATURED IN:
Signature innovation keynotes.
{One track record.}
Keynotes and workshops on building innovation that ships, not just inspires. Built from a $1.1B portfolio and innovation centers on five continents. 45 to 90 minutes, in person or virtual.
Leadership in the Age of AI: The Practical Playbook
Leaders are approving AI budgets, vendors and roadmaps they cannot evaluate themselves, in front of teams that are anxious about all of it. Alex hands your audience the decisions only a leader can make, and the words to bring their people with them.
Educating for the Unknown: Preparing Students for a Future That Doesn't Exist Yet
Students adopted AI faster than any technology in campus history. Alex, who has advised the California State University system, gives presidents, provosts and faculty a pragmatic AI strategy: governance, teaching and student outcomes.
The AI Opportunity for You, Your Industry & Your Organization
Most keynotes are scripted. This one is built from your questions. After a detailed intake, Alex writes the session for your industry and your organization: research, industry benchmarks, expert answers, and an extended live Q&A that runs until the questions do.
Booking an AI speaker is harder than booking almost any other category right now: the supply of people who can talk fluently about AI massively exceeds the supply of people who have done anything with it. Fluency and experience look identical on a website. They diverge about eleven minutes into Q&A.
Step 1: Decide what you need the audience to do differently
Not what topic you want covered — what behavior you want changed. "We need an AI keynote" produces a generic session. Write a brief specific enough to disqualify most of your list.
Step 2: Match the speaker type to where your organization actually is
A futurist is right when leadership hasn't accepted change is coming. A researcher is right when the audience needs to understand the technology itself. A practitioner is right when the decision to act has been made and execution is the problem.
Step 3: Source from more than one channel
Speaker bureaus offer vetting at a markup. Direct booking is more flexible. Peer referrals from other event organizers are the highest-signal source available and the most underused.
Step 4: Ask the five questions that actually separate candidates
What have you personally built, funded, or shut down? What do you sell besides speaking? What does your customization process look like? What will my audience be able to do on Monday? Can you show verified audience feedback, not selected testimonials?
Step 5: Watch for the red flags
Talks built entirely on public examples. An inability to discuss governance or procurement. Sessions that end on inspiration with no artifact. Content not refreshed for the current model landscape.
Step 6: Brief properly, then protect the outcome
Give the speaker your real internal context, including what has already failed. Then plan the follow-through: who receives the output, what meeting it enters, what gets checked at 30, 60, and 90 days.
ALEX, BY THE NUMBERS
Ask the {Five Questions That Actually Separate Candidates}
What have you personally built, funded, or shut down? What do you sell besides speaking? Can you show verified audience feedback, not selected testimonials?
Innovation for everyone
Alex turns AI into practical concepts that land with executives, HR, sales, engineering and faculty alike. It is the same approach he used building and running Cisco's Global Innovation Centers in 14 countries, anchored at universities and spanning cultures and generations.
Built around your audience
Across 310+ keynotes, workshops and advisory engagements on six continents, no two have been the same. Alex builds every program around your audience's challenges, industry and goals, from agentic AI strategy and the future of work to innovation culture.
Value that lasts
Alex's programs end with deployment: frameworks used inside Cisco, Dell, Pfizer and IBM and documented in his WSJ bestseller Fearless Innovation. Workshops and advisory install them in your team, so they keep running long after the session.
Proven where it counts
Two decades of AI and innovation work where the stakes are real: Alex shaped Cisco's $1.1B innovation portfolio, ran innovation programs for three Olympic Games and has advised Dell's GenAI practice, Amgen and the California State University system. Every engagement is measured through verified attendee feedback.
Your team will thank you
A keynote, a hands-on workshop, a virtual session or multi-month advisory, for enterprises, universities and associations alike. Last quarter, 99% of 676 verified attendees found his talks valuable.
Request Alex's availability for your engagement. From Silicon Valley to Singapore, and everywhere in between.
310+ Keynotes, Workshops & Advisory Engagements
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In Their Own Words
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Frequently asked questions
If you don't see what you need, message Alex directly via the form below — answers usually within one business day.
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