Trusted in consequential rooms.

“Kate challenged some of the assumptions sitting underneath our decisions about AI. We came away from the session having changed how we approached two significant decisions. That is unusual. Most executive sessions generate discussion. This one changed what we did.”

“Kate changed the quality of the AI conversation at board level. We moved beyond asking whether AI was being managed to whether we had the evidence to challenge the answers we were given. The Board AI Index exposed where confidence was running ahead of evidence. It changed what we brought to the board and the questions directors asked.”

“Kate made us look at AI adoption through a very different lens. We were measuring what the technology was enabling, but not what our people might be losing as they relied on it more. Her work gave us visibility into that. It changed some of our assumptions about AI and became part of how we think about developing leaders and managers.”

“Kate understands something easily missed in transformation at this scale: technology can move faster than the organisation’s ability to absorb it. She identified where capability needed to be in place before the technology arrived. That changed the sequencing of the work and gave us greater confidence in the organisation’s ability to deliver the strategy.”

“Kate is exceptional on stage. She can take a room of senior leaders, challenge what they think they know and keep them completely engaged while she does it. She is provocative, deeply informed and genuinely inspiring, but what distinguishes her is how she brings the audience into the conversation. People leave still debating the questions she raised. That is why we invited her back.”

“Kate works from an unusually substantial evidence base and is prepared to follow the findings when they challenge established assumptions. What makes the work particularly valuable is the connection between rigorous research and the decisions leaders and organisations are actually facing.”

“Kate is exceptional on stage. She combines real energy with the ability to challenge a senior audience on questions that matter. She is provocative, deeply informed and highly engaging, moving easily between what is happening now and what leaders need to be thinking about next. Our leaders came away with a different perspective on the choices ahead and what those choices will demand of them.”

“What struck me about Kate was her ability to make a familiar conversation feel entirely different. She takes ideas an audience thinks it understands and finds the question nobody has asked yet. She is dynamic, deeply insightful and compelling on stage, but it is the originality of her thinking that stays with you. You leave seeing possibilities, and consequences, that were not obvious when you walked in.”

“Kate knows how to challenge a senior audience. She brings strong evidence, commercial judgement and a clear understanding of the business questions behind the technology. The keynote was sharp, provocative and highly engaging, but never provocative for effect. She challenged assumptions that deserved to be challenged and gave the room a much more rigorous way to think about what comes next.”

“Kate had the room from the moment she began. She has a very natural way of drawing people into complex ideas, challenging established thinking without losing the audience along the way. There was real energy in the room, but also substance behind it. What impressed me most was how quickly the audience moved from listening to participating in the conversation.”

“Kate understands a senior audience exceptionally well. She brings pace, energy and intellectual depth to the stage, without ever oversimplifying the subject. What stood out was how quickly she connected complex ideas to the realities leaders were dealing with. She challenged the room, held its attention throughout and made the implications impossible to dismiss.”

“Kate brought a perspective our leaders needed to hear. In an industry managing profound technological, workforce and economic change at the same time, she connected those forces in a way that was both challenging and highly relevant. She is dynamic on stage, but the substance is what carries the session. Our leaders left looking beyond the immediate transformation to the decisions that will shape what comes next.”

“Kate knows how to create momentum in a room. She is engaging, direct and highly relevant, with a strong instinct for the ideas that will make an audience stop and think. She challenged our leaders to look differently at questions we thought we understood and created a conversation that extended well beyond the keynote itself.”

“Kate holds a mainstage audience on a subject that defeats most speakers. She is substantive without being dry, she does not hide behind slides, and an audience leaves with something they can act on rather than something they were impressed by. From a programming point of view, that is the whole job.”

“Kate brought clarity to one of the hardest questions in adopting AI: which decisions should remain human, even when they can be automated. She identified where human judgement remained critical and translated that into clear decision rights. Those decision rights are now part of how we operate.”

“I asked Kate what our leaders still needed to be exceptional at as AI became part of how they worked. Her findings challenged some of our assumptions about leadership. We changed part of our leadership development as a result, particularly where we had assumed technology would compensate for capability rather than change what capability was required.”

“Kate raised an issue we are increasingly seeing with clients: as AI takes on more of the work, what happens to the capability of the people using it? She brought evidence to a question that had largely been based on assumption. It has influenced how we think about AI transformation and some of the conversations we now have with clients.”

“At this level, the value of an external adviser is not having someone tell you what to do. It is having someone who understands the context, challenges your assumptions and is prepared to say what others may not. Kate brings that combination of independence, judgement and candour. I have found her perspective particularly valuable when the decisions are complex and the consequences matter.”

“Despite a strong board, executive team and advisory network, I lacked a true external sounding board. Kate provided that. She enabled me to articulate my thinking clearly, pressure-test decisions before they reached the boardroom, and challenge assumptions I might otherwise have missed. Her input sharpened my judgement and clarified which decisions I needed to own and where I was defaulting to the easiest path.”

“As a CHRO, I am often the first point of support for others, with limited space to process my own challenges. Kate created that space for me. I could speak openly about emerging issues, uncertainty and live decisions without filtering or managing perception. She consistently challenged my thinking, brought an external perspective I could not access internally, and strengthened both my clarity and confidence in high-stakes decision-making over time.”

“Kate asks a question that often gets lost in the conversation about AI: as the technology becomes more capable, what do our people need to become better at? Her work brings much-needed focus to the capabilities organisations should continue to build deliberately rather than assume the technology will replace.”

“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.”

“Building the systems is the part we understand. What happens to the people working alongside them is the part almost nobody has measured. Kate has, and her work on where machine output improves performance and where it quietly degrades it is the most practical treatment of that question I have come across.”

“Kate held the first Chief Futurist role at NEOM at a point when we were making thirty-year commitments with very little precedent to draw on. What she did was make foresight usable — long-range work turned into choices we could actually put in front of a board and act on that quarter. That is a rarer skill than it sounds.”

“Kate has operated inside a global technology business and now advises the boards buying from one, and she is unsentimental about both. She understands what these platforms can genuinely deliver, what an organisation has to change to get it, and what it costs when that change is skipped. Executives take her seriously because she does not oversell.”

“Boards in our industry are being asked to oversee systems that move faster than their reporting cycles. Kate brings evidence rather than opinion to that problem, and she is practical about what a board can actually govern versus what it should leave alone. In a conversation full of assertion, that is worth a great deal.”

“Dr Barker has spoken at our forum in three consecutive years, which is not something we extend lightly. She addresses the questions our international delegations actually arrive with — how a city governs technology it did not build, where accountability sits, and what its institutions and workforce will need to be good at a decade from now. She is substantive, she is direct, and she is equally effective with a government audience and a commercial one.”

“Dr Barker's counsel is sought where the consequence is national rather than commercial — capability, readiness and the pace at which a population can absorb change. She is direct, she brings evidence, and she is entirely free of the theatre that surrounds this subject. That is why she is in the room.”