Board AI governance fails quietly. Programmes get approved, dashboards turn green, and months later no one at the table can say who owns the decisions the system now makes. Much of what the institution actually runs never reaches the dashboard: shadow AI, the unsanctioned use of consumer tools for company work, keeps the reasoning behind real decisions outside anything a board can inspect. By the time a paper reaches the pack its framing has been shaped by systems nobody voted on, which makes the live question not whether AI should hold a board seat but how much influence it already exercises without one. Dr Kate Barker’s AI governance keynotes and board sessions are built for exactly that moment: whether a board is asking the right questions, receiving the right information, and governing at the right altitude without slipping into the operational.
Her work is anchored in the Board AI Index, the five-level diagnostic of institutional AI readiness, human judgement and oversight that runs from Reactive through Alert, Architecting and Owned to Integrated. As an AI expert for boards she advises chairs, committees and sovereign institutions directly, and she is the world’s first Chief Futurist with a TIME100 AI Impact Award. The sessions are delivered as mainstage keynotes, closed-door board briefings or full board retreats. The same questions arrive at the multilateral level, and she has taken them there: the AI for Good Global Summit in Geneva, convened by the ITU and the United Nations.
Kate treats AI as infrastructure rather than another technology cycle. She understands where the systems are heading, but also asks whether our institutions, governance and leadership are keeping pace. That ability to connect technological change with institutional consequence is rare.
World Government Summit, Dubai · PIF Leadership Forum, Riyadh · The Economist Impact Summit · NEOM Leadership Summit
A short FAQ. For longer conversations, please write directly.
Boards look for speakers with genuine board-level advisory work. Dr Kate Barker advises chairs and boards on AI oversight, built the Board AI Index used to assess board AI readiness, and is the world’s first Chief Futurist.
Who owns each decision the system will shape, what information the board needs to oversee it, where accountability escalates when it fails, and which human judgements the organisation will deliberately keep. Dr Kate’s research finds 88% of boards cannot name a decision owner for their AI systems and almost two thirds of directors lack the information to oversee them. Dr Kate’s board sessions work through all four.
A five-level diagnostic of a board’s AI readiness, human judgement and strategic oversight, running from Reactive to Integrated, set out in Hidden Power and applied in board and sovereign engagements.
Twelve weeks minimum lead time. Eighty bookings a year. Every enquiry is read personally.