Speaking
Talks, executive sessions, and board briefings for leaders in business, government, and philanthropy. John comes to these rooms as someone who still runs an institution — twenty-five years leading organizations, and work on AI since 2010. The talks are built for the decision actually in front of the room: what AI changes about how you lead, what it doesn't, and who benefits from the choices being made right now.
Talk 1 — The most consequential decisions stay human
Frameworks help — but after every framework a residual remains: the judgment call no model can make for you. On the novel-or-noise conundrum, the limits of what any framework can settle for you, and how leaders keep the most consequential decisions where they belong. Built from work on AI since 2010 and twenty-five years leading education and leadership organizations, including at Harvard, Stanford, and Berkeley.
Talk 2 — Who benefits? Leadership and ethics in the age of AI
The AI conversation is dominated by two unhelpful voices: fear and froth. This talk offers a third — judgment — grounded in the standing test John has taught from Harvard to Berkeley: expand the benefits so they're broadly shared, reduce the harms. And the question that cuts through every hard case: who benefits from this choice, and who bears its costs?
Talk 3 — Old questions in new clothes
Most of what AI asks of leaders is old questions in new clothes — and a lot of what you need to meet this moment, you already have. A working executive's counter to the alarmist market: which questions are genuinely new, which are generations old, and why leaders already own most of the toolkit.
The content is cross-sector by design. At Stanford he built executive programs for leaders in industry, government, and civil society, and teaches the CEO Roundtable on AI. He has taught modules and workshops on AI for nonprofit leaders, AI for grant-makers, and what AI does to the ethics of healthcare, among others. His teams have run the AI trainings for the European Parliament, the White House, Congress, and Nobel Peace Prize Laureates. He has led some of the largest AI trainings in the U.S. federal government. Separately, his programs have reached officials in 40+ countries and all 50 U.S. states — spanning leadership, policy, and other topics, not solely AI.
Keynotes · executive and leadership-team sessions ·
board briefings · moderated conversations.
For speaking inquiries:
Views expressed here are John's own, in his personal capacity — he does not speak for Berkeley or the Fung Institute.