The top 10 Chief AI Officers shaping business strategy, technical builds & customer adoption of applied AI
The rise of the Chief AI Officer has been fast - and it’s reshaping how companies think about innovation. It’s one of the few roles that cuts straight through both the technical and the strategic: leading teams that build with ai while steering the policies, products, and systems that depend on it.
This list comes straight from the {Applied} Speakers network - powerhouses who are defining what real applied AI leadership looks like. They’re influencing how AI is deployed responsibly, scaling it into products that work, and building the playbooks the rest of the industry will follow.
1. Fergal Reid: Chief AI Officer, Intercom
Fergal Reid is Chief AI Officer at Intercom, where he leads AI for one of the most widely used customer communication platforms in SaaS. His path includes a PhD in machine learning and complex networks, co-authoring early work on Bitcoin, founding and exiting a machine learning startup (Synference) to Optimizely, and building ML teams and products across both research and product roles. At Intercom, he’s been central to the company’s push into AI-native support products and agentic customer service.
Fergal brings a deeply applied, product-driven view of AI in SaaS. He’s particularly good at talking about where ML actually moves product metrics, how to go from prototype to “meaningful revenue”, and the messy reality of aligning UX, engineering and models. For product teams, engineers and founders building AI-powered applications, his perspective is very grounded: fewer buzzwords, more “here’s what worked, here’s what didn’t, and here’s what we shipped.”
2. Nitzan Mekel-Bobrov: Chief AI Officer, eBay
Nitzan Mekel-Bobrov is Chief AI Officer at eBay, where he leads AI across a marketplace with decades of behavioural data and billions of listings. His career spans AI leadership roles in healthcare, finance, travel and e-commerce, including senior roles at Capital One, Boston Scientific and Booking.com. At eBay, his work includes “agentic commerce,” individualised shopping experiences, and initiatives like eBay AI Activate, which brings AI tools and training to thousands of small businesses.
Nitzan is a strong voice on AI for platforms, marketplaces and small business ecosystems. He can unpack how to move from personalisation to true individualisation, how agentic systems change search, discovery and payments, and how to make AI accessible to SMEs, not just tech giants. For audiences across retail, commerce, fintech and platform businesses, his talks describe what it looks like to embed AI across an entire customer and seller journey at scale.
3. Berta Rodriguez-Hervas: Chief AI & Analytics Officer, SVP, Pfizer
Berta Rodriguez-Hervas brings deep technical credibility into one of the highest-stakes environments for AI: global biopharma. As Chief AI & Analytics Officer and Senior Vice President at Pfizer, she sits at the centre of how AI is used across discovery, development, and the broader business. Her background spans Tesla Autopilot computer vision, NVIDIA deep learning for autonomous systems, and applied ML research at Mercedes-Benz, giving her a rare combination of hardcore engineering and large-scale product responsibility.
On stage, Berta can bridge frontier AI methods and regulated healthcare reality. She understands what it takes to move from model performance metrics to clinical impact, how to build multi-disciplinary teams across data, engineering and clinicians, and how safety, reliability and explainability show up in real deployment decisions. For audiences in life sciences, healthtech or safety-critical AI, she’s a powerful voice on doing ambitious things without losing rigor.
4. Val Bercovici: Chief AI Officer, WEKA
Val Bercovici has been building “factories” for the cloud and AI era long before it was fashionable. As Chief AI Officer at WEKA, he focuses on AI factories - high-performance data and compute infrastructure optimised for training and inference at scale. His background includes founding roles in cloud storage standards, leadership in the Cloud Native Computing Foundation and Linux Foundation ecosystems, and deep work on smart contracts, blockchain and data provenance. At WEKA, he’s now focused on transforming the token economics and memory constraints of modern AI workloads.
Val’s sweet spot is AI infrastructure, agentic systems and the economics of tokens, GPUs and data. He can unpack how storage, networking and memory architectures limit or unlock what AI systems can do, and why infrastructure matters as much as models in the agentic era. For developer, infra, ML ops and CTO-heavy audiences, he’s an ideal speaker to go beyond the surface-level “LLMs are amazing” narrative and dig into the technical and economic realities of building and running AI factories.
5. Sol Rashidi: Enterprise CAIO Pioneer & AI Strategist
Sol Rashidi is widely recognised as one of the first enterprise Chief AI Officers, with more than a decade in senior AI and data leadership roles and ten patents to her name. Her CV runs through IBM Watson’s early days, Chief Data / Analytics / AI roles at companies like Estée Lauder, Merck, Sony Music and Royal Caribbean, and most recently strategic leadership roles in AI and data at Amazon Web Services and Cyera. She combines deep technical literacy with board-level influence and has been named among the “Top 50 Women in Tech,” “Top 100 AI Thought Leaders” and Forbes’ “AI Maverick & Visionary of the 21st Century.”
Sol is particularly good at talking about AI adoption in large, non-tech enterprises - how to move beyond experimentation, how to avoid “AI slop”, how to design organisations and operating models that actually ship and sustain AI systems. She leans hard into human-first AI, workforce impact, and the soft-skills side of transformation: stakeholder management, communication, and getting executives and engineers genuinely aligned. For audiences wanting a mix of inspiration and brutal realism about enterprise AI, she lands extremely well.
6. Lambert Hogenhout: Data, AI, Privacy & Responsible Tech Leader, United Nations
Lambert Hogenhout leads Data and AI, privacy and responsible technology for the UN Secretariat, a uniquely complex environment spanning data governance, ethics, regulation and real-world impact. His role covers AI strategy, data architecture, data literacy (including training thousands of staff), principles for ethical AI, and the UN’s personal data protection and privacy frameworks. He also runs R&D initiatives on deep tech and frontier technologies, and advises senior UN leadership on digital transformation and AI risk.
Lambert’s perspective is invaluable for anyone wrestling with governance, ethics and public-sector AI. He speaks from experience about designing principles that actually get used, not just written; building AI systems that respect privacy and human rights; and how international organisations think about safety, accountability and long-term impacts. For conferences focused on AI policy, regulation, responsible AI, or AI for good, he brings a rare mix of hands-on implementation and high-level policy work.
7. Philippe Rambach: Chief AI Officer, Schneider Electric
As Chief AI Officer and SVP at Schneider Electric, Philippe Rambach is driving AI across one of the world’s most important industrial and energy players. With a background in strategy, innovation and P&L ownership across automation and energy, he sits at the intersection of industrial automation, sustainability and digital transformation. Under his remit, AI is being applied to optimise factories, buildings and grids, enable more resilient and efficient energy systems, and scale “AI at the edge” in industrial contexts.
Philippe is a perfect example of AI in heavy industry and sustainability, rather than pure software. He can speak to how AI changes energy management, predictive maintenance, and industrial control; what AI-native products look like in OT environments; and how enterprises can both decarbonise and grow using data-driven optimisation. For audiences in manufacturing, energy, industrial IoT and climate tech, his perspective shows what applied AI looks like when it’s connected to physical infrastructure and the energy transition.
8. Gaia Bellone: Former Chief Data & AI Officer, Prudential
As Former Chief Data & AI Officer for Emerging Markets at Prudential, Gaia Bellone was responsible for designing and executing a multi-year data and AI strategy across diverse geographies, regulatory regimes and business models. Her remit included building the underlying data and AI infrastructure, defining governance and responsible AI frameworks, and leading the development of AI solutions for customer experience, distribution, pricing and risk. Before this, she led data science teams at KeyBank and JP Morgan Chase, driving predictive modelling and “next best action” systems in financial services.
Gaia specialises in turning fragmented, multi-country environments into coherent AI platforms. She understands what it takes to standardise data and models while still adapting to local markets, and how to embed responsible AI into financial services products used by millions of customers. For audiences in finance, insurance, or any global enterprise dealing with emerging markets, her talks are rich with battle-tested lessons on scaling responsibly and building high-performing AI teams.
9. Sajindra Jayasena: Chief AI, Digital and Information Officer, Targray
Sajindra Jayasena operates at the sharp end of markets, where milliseconds, risk and margin all matter. As Chief AI, Digital and Information Officer and a member of the executive team at Targray, he leads AI strategy, data monetisation and end-to-end digital transformation across global commodity trading, biofuels, energy storage and agriculture. His track record includes turning around a loss-making fintech, cutting eight-figure cost bases, and scaling capacity 10x with tightly targeted tech and AI investments.
Sajindra’s work is a masterclass in AI for trading, risk and operations. He’s implemented AI-driven price signals for traders, logistics optimisation platforms, intelligent document processing and hyper-automation across complex value chains. For events focused on financial services, trading, energy, or applied AI in quant and operations, he brings a very practical perspective on how to deliver ROI, not just prototypes, and how to balance innovation with control in high-risk environments.
10. Joe Atkinson: Global Chief AI Officer, PwC
As Global Chief AI Officer at PwC, Joe Atkinson is responsible for steering AI strategy across a network of more than 370,000 professionals. His remit covers everything from embedding AI into services and delivery models to upskilling the firm’s global workforce so they can actually use the tools, not just talk about them. Previously, he served as US Chief Digital Officer and then Chief Products & Technology Officer, where he helped build the digital foundation PwC is now scaling AI on top of.
Joe’s focus on responsible AI at enterprise scale makes him particularly relevant for audiences dealing with risk, regulation and legacy systems. He speaks fluently about moving from pilots to production, building “agentic” workflows around real business processes, and how leadership teams should think about value, governance and workforce impact. If you want a systemic view of AI in complex, global organisations, Joe is the archetype CAIO.
Bringing these voices to your own event agenda:
What unites these ten Chief AI Officers isn’t just their titles - it’s the fact they’ve shipped AI into places where failure is expensive: global finance, pharma, industrial systems, energy, the UN, hyperscale marketplaces and SaaS. They’re operating at the edge of what’s possible in industry right now, but with a clear handle on governance, safety and business value.
If you’re curating an AI summit, leadership offsite, or industry conference and want to move the conversation beyond generic keynotes, hiring speakers like this is the fastest way to get there.