Kate O'Neill – Keynote Speaker

Companies like Google, Etsy, Cisco, and more look to Kate O’Neill, the “Tech Humanist”, for optimism about the role of technology in the world along with a firm reality check. She is founder and CEO of KO Insights, a strategic advisory firm committed to improving human experience at scale.

O’Neill regularly keynotes industry conferences and corporate events, advocating for the future of humanity in an increasingly tech-driven world. Her insights help corporate and cultural leaders re-think how to succeed long-term by taking a human-centric approach to digital transformation and readiness for the future. Her clients and audiences have included a wide variety of world-leading corporations, non-profit organizations, cultural institutions, professional associations, and industry conferences — as well as states and cities, such as Amsterdam, and even the United Nations.

She is the author of several books including Tech Humanist: How You Can Make Technology Better for Business and Better for Humans, Pixels and Place: Connecting Human Experience Across Physical and Digital Spaces, and her latest, A Future So Bright: How Strategic Optimism Can Restore Our Humanity and Save the World.

Kate O’Neill’s insights and expertise have been featured in WIRED, USA Today, and many other outlets, and she has appeared as an expert commentator on BBC, NPR, Marketplace, NBC, and a wide variety of other national and international news media. She has been named to the 2020 Thinkers50 Radar, a global ranking of top management thinkers.

Kate O’Neill’s prior accomplishments include creating the first content management role at Netflix, developing Toshiba America’s first intranet, leading cutting-edge online optimization work at Magazines.com, building the first departmental website at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and holding leadership positions in a variety of digital content and technology start-ups. She was also founder & CEO of [meta]marketer, a digital strategy and analytics agency. Kate O’Neill is a vocal and visible advocate for women in technology, entrepreneurship, and leadership — she was featured by Google in the launch of their global campaign for women in entrepreneurship.