SPEAKING
One question changes how a room thinks.
We are living through a moment when the most powerful question is not ‘what can the technology do’ but ‘what does it make us responsible for’.
Ada’s keynotes are built from that question and the two years of research it generated. They are for rooms where something needs to shift, not just be said.
KEYNOTE — FLAGSHIP
What We Create Is Creating Us
AI, Legacy, and the Intelligence of Institutions
We have been so focused on what AI can do that we have not asked what it is doing to us, to our capacity for judgment, for relationships, for the kind of wisdom that only accumulates across time.
The real competitive advantage in the AI transition is not the technology. It is the intelligence that the technology cannot replicate: the pattern memory held across decades of decisions, the relational wisdom accumulated across generations of leadership, the values that reveal themselves only under pressure.
This keynote gives leadership teams a method for reading that intelligence, and using it deliberately, before it is lost.
What audiences leave with:
A new frame for AI that centres institutional intelligence rather than technological capability.
A method for reading the pattern memory already present in their organisation.
The question that changes how they make decisions about the next decade.
Suited to:
Leadership conferences · AI strategy summits · Annual leadership gatherings · Institutional milestone events
KEYNOTE — SECOND
The Ancestor Question
Decision-making for leaders building in deep time
We make decisions as if they belong only to us, in this moment. They do not. Every significant decision is also an act of inheritance, it shapes what the next generation of leadership will have to work with.
This keynote introduces a temporal frame that changes not just how we decide, but what we notice when we do. It has direct implications for strategy, culture, and governance. It is not a philosophical question. It is a practical one.
What audiences leave with:
A practical temporal frame that changes how decisions are evaluated — not philosophically, but in the room.
Language for the gap between stated values and the choices an organisation actually makes under pressure.
A method for reading inherited organisational intelligence as a strategic asset, not a constraint.
Suited to:
Organisations in significant transition · Institutions with long histories navigating relevance in changed conditions · Leadership teams building 10–30 year strategies · Generational leadership handovers
KEYNOTE — THIRD
Power, Paradox & Presence
Leadership through irreversible change
The conditions that made an organisation successful rarely survive the conditions that change the world. We are not short of frameworks for managing that gap. We are short of the capacity to stay present inside it, to read what is actually happening rather than what we expected.
Drawing on systems foresight, regenerative design, and twenty years inside complex institutions, this keynote maps the three capacities that distinguish leaders who navigate irreversible change from those consumed by it.
What audiences leave with:
A clear account of the three capacities that distinguish leaders who navigate irreversible change from those consumed by it.
A framework for reading the power dynamics present in any room, and choosing how to respond rather than react.
A different relationship to paradox: not as a problem to solve, but as the terrain that complex leadership actually inhabits.
Suited to:
Leadership teams facing structural change · Senior leaders navigating the tension between stability and transformation · Culture and values summits
PAST STAGES
TEDx Amsterdam · Oxford University · Tate Modern · The Next Web · Mental Health First Aid England · House of Beautiful Business · Katapult Cloud · University of the Underground · Step Dubai · VCCP · Unilever
FORMAT
Keynote (30–60 min) · Fireside conversation · Half-day workshop · Bespoke institutional session
Ada works closely with event producers before every engagement, arriving early, reading the room, and ensuring the talk lands inside the specific context rather than beside it.
BOOKING
To enquire about availability, fee range, and fit: use the contact form or email adah@adahparris.com
▸ Bureau bookers: speaker one-pager, fee guide, and technical rider available on request.
“Ada hosted me in a lively and challenging discussion with BIMA about the future of humans in an age of intelligent machines. Her grasp of the issues raised in my book Clear Bright Future was thorough, and I actually learned stuff about my own work. It was one of those discussions you have to spend days unpacking in your head - and I can’t wait to encounter her ideas and expansive imagination again.”