Dr Kate Barker was Vice President at SAP Asia Pacific, based in Singapore, and a Partner in the Consulting Practice at PwC Asia. She now advises boards, chief executives and governments on artificial intelligence across Asia-Pacific, the Middle East, Europe and North America, as a global executive advisor and the world’s first Chief Futurist, and holds a TIME100 AI Impact Award. She has lived and worked in Singapore, Hong Kong and India, and her work has reached more than twenty million people through workforce and capability transformation.
Asia is not debating whether to deploy AI. It is deploying it at infrastructure scale. The governance question is arriving faster here than anywhere. Dr Kate has sat on both sides of it: inside an enterprise software business selling the systems, and inside the boardrooms now accountable for them.
Her work is anchored in the Executive Cognitive Advantage Index, her diagnostic for the human capabilities that become more valuable as AI scales: judgement and discernment, cognitive agency, relationship capital, executive alignment, and human + AI decision performance. Across six thousand executive leaders, her research found 82% saying AI has made their decisions faster, against 54% who believe it has made them better.
In Singapore the operating question is regional. Executive teams here run decisions across a dozen markets, regulators and cultures at once, and relationship capital is the capability that carries them. It is also the one AI cannot automate and can quietly displace.
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.
World Economic Forum, Davos · Fortune Global Forum · Bloomberg New Economy Forum · UN Global Futures Forum · World Government Summit, Dubai · Business and human resources conferences across six continents
How leaders turn human and AI capability into measurable organisational value.
What every board and executive team must decide as intelligent systems move from advice to action.
How AI is changing behaviour, belief, influence and performance inside organisations.
Delivered as mainstage keynotes, closed-door board briefings or full board retreats.
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Dr Kate Barker is the world’s first Chief Futurist and a Strategic Board Advisor at NEOM. She advises heads of state, boards and global chief executives on AI, built the Board AI Index, and holds a TIME100 AI Impact Award. Her Asia-Pacific career includes Vice President, SAP Asia Pacific, based in Singapore, and Partner, Consulting Practice, PwC Asia, having lived and worked across Singapore, Hong Kong and India.
Human judgement as AI moves from advice to action, the capabilities organisations sharpen or surrender in the process, and what boards must be able to evidence about oversight. Grounded in doctoral research across six thousand executive leaders and set out in Hidden Power.
Yes. Eighty engagements are accepted each year across four regions, with a twelve-week minimum lead time.
Twelve weeks minimum lead time. Eighty bookings a year. Every enquiry is read personally.