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
As leaders are pressured to adopt AI and struggle with the rapidly changing AI terrain, Alex speaks to leaders in their own language. Through real-world leadership perspectives and Forbes-recognized strategies, Alex helps leaders understand how to lead, and thrive, alongside AI.
Adapt or Vanish
A wake-up-call keynote on why organizations that treat agentic AI as optional won't get a second chance — and the moves to make while there's still time.
The Agentic Enterprise: Winning the Next Wave of AI Transformation
Agentic AI has moved from answering questions to executing work. Alex gives enterprise and innovation leaders a pragmatic playbook for the agentic enterprise — where to deploy AI agents first, how to govern them, and how to turn scattered pilots into measurable business outcomes.
The Future of Work: Leading Human + Agent Teams
The next workforce isn't human or AI — it's both. Alex shows leaders how work changes when every employee manages AI agents, which skills matter most, and how to build a culture where people and agentic AI make each other better.
Revenue, Reinvented: Selling in the Age of Agentic AI
Buyers now research, compare, and shortlist with AI before they ever talk to a rep — and AI agents are rewriting every step of the revenue engine. Alex shows sales and GTM teams how to win when agents sit on both sides of the deal.
The AI-Ready Campus: Higher Education in the Agentic Era
From admissions to advising to the classroom itself, AI is transforming higher education faster than any technology before it. Alex helps presidents, provosts, faculty, and staff turn AI disruption into institutional advantage — with governance, strategy, and student outcomes at the center.
AI for Associations: Leading Your Members Into the Agentic Era
Your members are asking what AI means for their profession — and they are looking to you for the answer. Alex gives associations and member organizations a clear, hype-free briefing on AI agents, tailored to your industry, so every member leaves your event with a plan.
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 — not techspeak — that land with executives, HR, sales, engineering, and faculty alike. It's the same approach he honed building university-anchored innovation centers across 14 countries, bridging cultures and generations.
Built around your audience
Across 310+ keynotes, workshops, and advisory engagements on 6 continents, no two have ever 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
Most programs end at applause. Alex's end with deployment — the same frameworks proven inside Cisco, Dell, Pfizer, and IBM and documented in his WSJ bestseller Fearless Innovation. Workshops and advisory install them in your team, so they're still running long after the event.
Proven where it counts
Two decades leading AI and innovation where the stakes are real — a $1.1B portfolio at Cisco, three Olympic Games, 300,000+ employees, and AI transformation for Fortune 100s, governments, and America's largest public university system. Every engagement is measured, so you see the ROI.
Your team will thank you
A 60-minute keynote, a hands-on workshop, a virtual session, or multi-month advisory — for enterprises, universities, and associations alike. Whatever the format, 98% of audiences say they would recommend him.
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
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