Stephen Yarwood

Boards, councils and executive teams are increasingly being asked to govern technologies, risks and disruptions that barely existed a few years ago.

As a former Lord Mayor, Stephen understands governance from inside the chamber as well as the boardroom. In Future-Ready Governance, he helps directors and elected leaders examine how they govern AI and innovation, ask sharper questions and lead change rather than simply reacting to it.

The result is a practical approach to governance designed for leaders making consequential decisions in fast-changing environments.

Through this presentation, your audience will learn how to:

• Approach the governance of AI and emerging technology.
• Ask sharper questions about innovation, risk and disruption.
• Strengthen decision-making in uncertain environments.
• Understand the role boards and elected leaders play in guiding technological change.
• Move from reacting to disruption towards proactively governing it. 

AI is changing how organisations make decisions, work and create value, but many established leadership models haven't kept pace.

In this keynote, Stephen helps leaders cut through the noise surrounding AI and focus on what the technology actually means for their role, their people and their organisation. He explores how leaders can make confident decisions amid uncertainty while strengthening the distinctly human capabilities that technology cannot replace.

Rather than approaching AI as purely a technology challenge, Stephen positions it as a leadership challenge - giving executives and boards practical questions to consider as they guide their organisations through disruption.

Through this presentation, your audience will learn how to:

• Understand how AI is changing the role of leaders.
• Lead teams more confidently through technological disruption.
• Cut through AI hype and focus on what matters to their organisation.
• Identify the human capabilities that become more important as AI advances.
• Ask better questions about AI at executive and board level. 

Traditional strategy often assumes tomorrow will behave much like yesterday. In a world of accelerating technological and social change, that assumption is increasingly difficult to rely on.

Stephen gives leaders a practical approach to strategic foresight, helping them turn emerging trends into better decisions, test plans against multiple possible futures and build strategies that are more resilient to surprise.

He also explores where AI can genuinely strengthen strategic thinking - using technology to sharpen rather than replace human judgement.

Through this presentation, your audience will learn how to:

• Turn emerging trends into practical strategic decisions.
• Apply foresight thinking to organisational planning.
• Stress-test strategies against multiple possible futures.
• Build plans that are better prepared for unexpected change.
• Use AI to strengthen human judgement and strategic thinking. 

The next leadership advantage isn't simply knowing about AI - it's learning how to work with it.

Stephen has built an agentic operating system across his own work and life, using AI workflows throughout his business, health, home and travel. In this practical keynote, he turns that lived experiment into a case study for leaders considering where and how to begin.

Stephen explores what leaders should automate first, how working with AI can reshape productivity and wellbeing, and why changing the way you lead yourself can ultimately change the way you lead others.

Part live case study and part practical playbook, The Agentic Leader moves the conversation from understanding AI to actually using it.

Through this presentation, your audience will learn how to:

• Identify practical starting points for adopting agentic AI.
• Decide what to automate first.
• Understand how AI can reshape personal productivity and ways of working.
• Explore the relationship between AI, wellbeing and judgement.
• Consider how leading yourself differently can change how you lead others.

Customers, employees and communities are changing faster than many organisational strategies.

AI, longer lives, changing values and shifting demographics are reshaping how people live and what they expect from the organisations around them. In The Future Citizen, Stephen brings these forces together to create an evidence-based picture of tomorrow's citizen and what organisations need to consider if they want to remain relevant.

Audiences are challenged to examine where today's assumptions may no longer hold and consider how products, services, workplaces and communities can be designed around the people who will actually use them in the future.

Through this presentation, your audience will learn how to:

• Build a clearer picture of the future citizen.
• Understand how AI, longevity, values and demographics are changing people's expectations.
• Identify assumptions that may no longer serve future customers and communities.
• Consider how workplaces, services and products will need to evolve.
• Make more informed decisions about remaining relevant as society changes.