Most executives are sold on AI. Far fewer know how to make it actually work. 60% of CEOs have deliberately slowed their AI rollouts. Most large companies report little measurable impact despite enormous investment. The gap between AI enthusiasm and AI results is the defining leadership challenge of 2026 — and it is almost never a technology problem.
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Emilie Sydney-Smith has led transformation initiatives inside 14 of the world’s largest organizations. She has been the executive accountable when change stalls, when culture resists, and when billions of dollars of potential sits unrealized. She knows exactly where organizations freeze — and how to unfreeze them.
Keynote fees from $45,000. Available for keynotes, executive roundtables, and board strategy sessions.
"Bravo, that presentation was excellent! Exactly how we wanted to kick off our annual event"
John Eldh, President, ScanSource
"Probably the best speaker I've seen in 4 years"
Keynote Topics
1. Why Smart Companies Get Stuck on AI — and How to Get Unstuck
The session every leadership team needs before their next AI strategy offsite.
Most organizations aren’t failing at AI because the technology doesn’t work. They’re failing because the bottlenecks are human: ambiguous governance, middle managers who can’t coach AI adoption, employees whose identity feels threatened, and a gap between what the C-suite announces and what actually changes on the ground.
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Emilie has seen these patterns across 30+ major global enterprises. She names them, maps them, and gives leadership teams a clear diagnostic for where their own organization is stuck — and a practical roadmap for what to do next. She shares her own case studies of achieving average 70X Return on Investment for tech adoption initiatives. Audiences consistently say this is the first AI talk that described their actual situation.
Best for: C-suite, senior leadership teams, HR and culture leaders, board strategy sessions.
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2. The AI Edge: Building Competitive Advantage That Lasts
Moving from AI experimentation to AI that actually shows up in results.
AI investment is accelerating. AI results are not. The companies pulling ahead aren’t the ones with the most tools or the biggest AI budgets — they’re the ones who understand what AI changes at the level of decision-making, org design, and culture, and lead accordingly.
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Drawing on her work leading transformation at some of the world’s most complex organizations and building her own AI company, Emilie shares the patterns that separate companies winning with AI from those perpetually ‘piloting.’ Practical, evidence-backed, and calibrated for the executive who has heard enough theory and needs to show ROI within months.
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Best for: C-suite, strategy and innovation leaders, executive teams of mid-to-large companies.
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3. Designing Billion-Dollar Opportunities with AI
For organizations ready to move beyond cost reduction to wealth creation. AI will create trillions of dollars of new value. Most organizations are using it to do existing things slightly faster. The real opportunity — new revenue streams, new business models, new markets — requires a different kind of thinking.
Emilie walks through her proprietary process for identifying and designing high-profit, high-impact new ventures, backed by case studies from 30 of the world’s largest companies. Their transformation programs averaged a 70X return on investment. This session shows how that happens — and how to replicate it.
Best for: CEOs, innovation leaders, boards considering strategic pivots.
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4. Geopolitical Risk: Preparing Your Organization for a Dangerous World
Strategic foresight and operational readiness — in one session.
Supply chain fragmentation, cyberwar, the realignment of global trade — the risks facing organizations today are not hypothetical. Emilie has run operational simulations with major global corporations preparing for exactly these scenarios — and then developed risk management initiatives that were also very lucrative. This session moves leadership teams from anxiety to strategic clarity to high-ROI action: what to prepare, what to prioritize, and where the unexpected opportunities lie.
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One of the most distinctive and highly rated sessions in Emilie’s portfolio. Consistently praised for reducing the ‘fight or flight’ response in teams facing genuine uncertainty.
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Best for: Boards, C-suite, risk and operations leaders, government agencies.
"Working with you was life-changing" and by far the most exciting work of my career"
numerous client executives
Signature Workshop
Wargaming Your Future: A One-Day Operational Resilience Simulation
An immersive simulation that prepares executive teams and boards to respond to cyberwar, geopolitical disruption, and operational crises — before they happen.
Teams work through escalating threat scenarios: protecting assets, fixing supply chains, maintaining revenue under pressure. The afternoon converts insights into a concrete preparedness plan they can act on immediately.
95% past participant rating. Available for single organizations or multi-organization cohorts.
Best for: Boards, C-suite, risk and operations teams, government agencies.
About Emilie
Emilie Sydney-Smith is a keynote speaker, AI transformation advisor, and founder based in New York. Her authority comes from a simple fact: she has been the executive in the room when transformation stalls, succeeds, and scales — inside some of the world’s most complex organizations.
She is not a researcher who studied transformation. She is not a consultant who advised on it from the outside. She led it, was accountable for it, and has seen every way it can go wrong — and right.
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Chief Transformation Officer, Aboitiz
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Led AI-powered transformation across a, $10 billion 18,000-person organization — the Philippines’ second-largest conglomerate. Created new business lines with nation-building scale and double-to-triple industry profit margins. Built programs to transform operations, culture, and leadership capability across the group.
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CEO, ExO Works
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Led corporate transformation engagements for Visa, HP, BHP, Siemens Energy, Rio Tinto, Vodacom, Boston Scientific, and 6 other global enterprises. Those engagements averaged a 70X return on investment and tripled talent retention — by redesigning how organizations grow, not just how they operate. She built around 60 high-performing, low-politics teams where members typically described it as the most exhilarating work of their career and massive skills boost.
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Private Equity Investor, Energy Technology (2006–2014)
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Sourced and evaluated $20–$400M private equity investments in energy technology startups globally, reviewing approximately 100 opportunities per year. This decade of pattern recognition — watching which transformations delivered and which collapsed — informs every keynote she gives today.
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Entrepreneur who built a startup to a $300 million valuation in 2 years
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3rd most influential leader in a tech-driven energy company.
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Founder & CEO, Vereme
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Currently building Vereme, an AI platform delivering personalized guidance across beauty, wellness, and appearance. A live proof of concept for the AI startup principles Emilie teaches from the stage — built in a fraction of the time and cost of a traditional venture with AI as the Co-Founder.
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Emilie has delivered keynotes from intimate board sessions to thousands-strong annual conferences across North America, Asia Pacific, Europe, Latin America and the Middle East. She is consistently praised for making complex, high-stakes topics both memorable and immediately actionable — and for speaking to what is actually happening in organizations, not what looks good in a slide deck.
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She has lived and worked in New York, Sydney, London, Los Angeles, Manila, Singapore, Luxembourg, Houston, Dallas, and Bali.
Book Emilie
Emilie works with a limited number of clients each year to ensure every engagement is fully tailored. She is available for keynotes, executive roundtables, board strategy sessions, and panel appearances. She can also curate the coaches who helped her achieve the 70X returns in some of the world's top companuies to help you create such AI transformation initiatives of your own, in practice.
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If your organization is navigating an AI transformation — or struggling to make one land — reach out to discuss whether there’s a fit.
