This opening session sets the tone for the day by engaging directors and CEOs in a shared leadership conversation about how organizations govern AI as it accelerates from experimentation to enterprise impact. Rather than focusing on specific use cases and debating winners and losers, the discussion will center on the board–management partnership: how C-Suites and Boards stay aligned as AI reshapes how decisions are made, who makes them, and how quickly consequences materialize when the pace of change outstrips traditional oversight models.
The format is deliberately interactive. A panel of CEOs will frame a small number of foundational questions—about pace, accountability, escalation, and governance boundaries—and then turn the conversation to the room. Attendees will break into short table discussions to reflect on how these tensions are playing out inside their own organizations, before returning to the panel to surface patterns. The session culminates in a shared view of the leadership agenda boards and CEOs must own together in 2026: how to move with urgency while strengthening—not eroding—the trust that underpins long-term value.
CEO, PagerDuty; Board Member, The Estée Lauder Companies Inc.
CEO and co-founder of SeekOut, former advisor to Bill Gates
This highly interactive session will help directors and CEOs pinpoint where AI is creating—or quietly eroding—value faster than boards expect. A panel of experts will frame the conversation with pointed questions: why some companies escape pilot purgatory while others stall, which business models are already shifting under AI pressure, and what early signals indicate an initiative is drifting off course.
Then the real work begins. After each panel exchange, participants will break into rapid table discussions to pressure-test the ideas against their own organizations—surfacing hidden value, diagnosing barriers to speed, and debating which AI bets should be accelerated or abandoned. It’s a working session designed to connect expert perspective with real-world boardroom implications by sparking debate and challenging leaders to look differently at where competitive advantage will emerge next.
Questions You’ll Answer:
Board Member, Portland General Electric; Former Chief Legal Officer, eBay and Agilent Technologies
Chief Executive Officer, Calix
As AI moves from pilots into core operations, boards must oversee not just where it creates value, but where it introduces risk. This session will introduce a framework for practically governing AI across five areas: risk classification (Triage), data integrity, continuous monitoring, human oversight, and technical documentation.
The conversation will focus on what this looks like in practice, with a deeper dive on how organizations classify AI use cases by risk and determine where board visibility and oversight are required. Attendees will then apply this lens in a brief table discussion, examining how their own organizations are prioritizing AI use cases—and where governance may not yet match the level of risk.
Global Data Innovation
During lunch, attendees select one of three concurrent workshops designed for deeper, application-focused learning in smaller groups.
AI is rapidly reshaping how deals are sourced, evaluated, and integrated—often in ways boards don’t fully see. This workshop explores how leading companies are using AI to accelerate diligence, surface hidden risks, assess cultural and operational fit, and improve post-deal integration outcomes—while also examining where over-reliance on AI, poor data quality, or weak governance can quietly undermine deal value. Attendees will leave with a practical lens for evaluating when AI strengthens M&A decisions—and when it introduces new, often invisible, risks.
Partner, Latham & Watkins
Generative AI is rapidly becoming a quiet but powerful partner in board oversight—helping directors synthesize complex materials, compare strategic scenarios, and challenge management’s assumptions with greater precision. In this practical, hands-on session, we’ll show how boards are incorporating AI into their meeting preparation, committee work, and strategic reviews without crossing the line into management territory.
The focus is on governance, not software: simple prompts that elevate oversight, examples of how AI can streamline agenda prep and risk reviews, and the boundaries directors must uphold to avoid accuracy, confidentiality, and over-reliance pitfalls. You’ll leave with a practical “Boardroom AI Quick-Start Guide” outlining the 5 highest-value, lowest-risk ways directors can begin using AI immediately.
Head of Board Advisory, Americas & Asia-Pacific, Nasdaq
This facilitated tabletop session shifts the focus from AI tools and tech to AI leadership—helping directors and CEOs assess where their board and senior team are on the maturity curve and where leadership readiness gaps most often emerge. Participants will benchmark their organization’s AI leadership maturity against peers and examine the common dilemmas that cause teams to stall, fragment, or lose momentum as AI adoption accelerates.
Using a simple AI leadership maturity framework and a visual “heat map,” the discussion will surface recurring challenges around pace, accountability, incentives, talent, and change ownership—long before they show up as workforce resistance or execution failure. The session emphasizes human judgment over technical fluency: the ability of boards and senior leaders to recognize these dilemmas as they arise and respond in ways that strengthen alignment, credibility, and organizational readiness. You’ll leave with a clearer view of your leadership posture and the implications for culture, talent, and workforce engagement as AI reshapes how work gets done.
Executive Vice President, APTMetrics
Participants will break into a second set of concurrent workshops to look at what boards must be asking next.
As interest in agentic AI accelerates, boards face a new strategic question: not whether agents are possible, but where they make sense. Boards are increasingly being asked to approve initiatives without a clear strategic frame for why agents are being deployed—and to what end. This workshop will help directors and CEOs evaluate the strategic business case and operating implications for agentic AI before questions of oversight, controls, and accountability arise. The discussion will focus on when agentic AI should be viewed as workforce augmentation rather than automation, how operating models and organizational design must adapt, and why architectural choices—such as sovereign or enterprise-controlled agents—matter more than most boards realize. We’ll focus on the questions boards should be asking management at the decision stage: what problem is truly being solved, what human roles are being changed, and what dependencies are being created that may be difficult to unwind later.
Group Chief Technology Officer, Atos
As AI begins reshaping how work is performed across the enterprise, boards must oversee not only integration of technology investments but the workforce transformation that follows. In this workshop, directors will explore how organizations are rethinking roles, skills, and workflows as AI becomes embedded in core functions—and what questions should be asked of management as those shifts unfold. The discussion will examine how companies decide where AI enters the workflow first, when to retrain existing teams versus bring in new capabilities, and how leadership can manage the cultural and operational impact of these changes. The goal is to help directors oversee workforce transformation in a way that supports long-term performance while ensuring technology and talent reinforce each other. You’ll leave with a framework to advance strategic human capital priorities, accelerate AI integration and link workforce plans to long-term enterprise value.
Leader, U.S. Center for Corporate Governance, BDO
People Strategy & Solutions Segment Leader, BDO
Founder and CEO, FourOne Insights
People Strategy & Solutions Segment Leader, BDO
As AI evolves into agentic systems, boards face a step-change in governance. Systems are no longer just informing decisions, they are initiating and executing them. This session frames the shift from AI governance to agentic governance, where authority, control, and accountability must be designed into systems operating at speed and scale, and shows where risks emerge as they begin to act.
From a boardroom lens, we focus on decision rights, control boundaries, and accountability. What remains human-controlled? Where can authority be delegated? How do boards ensure visibility, auditability, and effective escalation as decisions move to machine execution? The session will outline the governance architecture required to maintain oversight and trust as these systems scale.
CEO & Founder, Cantellus Group
Managing Director, Cantellus Group
President, Cantellus Group; Former Chief Data and AI Officer, Mastercard
AI regulation—both in the U.S. and abroad—is collapsing the distance between “we’re monitoring this” and actual board liability. This briefing will cut through the noise to focus on what matters most for public-company directors and executives: the enforcement trends already underway, the provisions of the EU AI Act that will hit U.S.-listed companies first, and the accelerating expectations emerging from the SEC, FTC, DOJ, and state attorneys general.
This isn’t a legal update—it’s a line-of-sight warning. You’ll walk away with a clear understanding of where regulators are concentrating scrutiny, where your disclosures and board processes are most exposed, and what must change now to avoid becoming the next headline example of AI oversight failure.
Global Chair of the Artificial Intelligence Practice, Latham & Watkins
Partner, Latham & Watkins
In this live demonstration, KYP.ai will show how AI can move beyond pilots and into real operational impact—by starting with a simple but often overlooked question: how does work actually get done inside your organization? The result is a fundamentally different starting point for AI: not use cases driven by intuition, but opportunities grounded in real operational data—complete with a clear business case for action.
Following the demo, Adam Bujak and Vahe Torossian will join our editor for a conversation on how AI-native companies approach problems differently—and what traditional organizations often miss.
Rather than starting with tools or use cases, AI-native companies begin with a deep understanding of how work actually happens, using data to challenge assumptions, redesign workflows, and identify where intelligence can be embedded for real impact. This shifts not just execution, but decision-making: from intuition to evidence, from static processes to continuously adapting systems.
The discussion will explore how this mindset changes the way companies prioritize investments, think about productivity, and define competitive advantage—and what boards and CEOs should take away as they rethink how their own organizations adopt and scale AI.
CEO & Co-Founder, KYP.ai
Chairman, KYP.ai
AI is reshaping the world. The choices companies make today will determine whether they shape this next era—or are upended by it. Drawing on a unique resume that spans frontier AI, software development and the boardrooms at some of the most influential companies in the world, Jason Warner will offer his pragmatic perspective on where AI is headed, why it will get there faster than you think, and what the unexplored implications will be. We’ll pull together the themes of the day, challenging directors and CEOs to think more strategically about how to assure their companies win a place in a future that is arriving with unparalleled speed and impact.
CEO and Co-Founder, poolside; Board Member, Bridgewater Associates
President & Chief Legal Officer, Salesforce
This final discussion ensures every participant leaves with an actionable commitment tied directly to board leadership.
Questions You’ll Answer: