Speaking

Keynotes, panels, and workshops on applied AI, civic technology, and building teams that ship.

Signature Topics

• AI Corporate Policy & Risk — How to think about AI risk at the organizational level: governance frameworks, liability exposure, and the questions boards should be asking before deploying. Drawn from co-authoring NASA's Responsible AI Policy, advising at the DOD, DOJ, and White House, and supporting venture capital and private equity firms through AI adoption. For: boards, C-suite, legal & compliance teams, policy audiences.
• AI & Your External Ecosystem — An outsider's read on the AI trends, headwinds, and tailwinds reshaping your industry — delivered without the internal assumptions that distort how incumbents see their own space. Strategic questions and frameworks then calibrated to the particular risks and opportunities AI presents in your sector. For: CEOs, strategy teams, investors, board members.
• AI as Internal Business Strategy — A deeper conversation about the workflows and challenges inside your organization, grounded in real-world analogs from other industries. Surfaces where automation creates genuine leverage — and where it quietly hides significant risk in ways that aren't obvious until it's too late. Includes frameworks for building the organizational capability to keep improving as the technology evolves. For: executive teams, operations leaders, chief strategy officers.
• AI in Software Development — What AI means for engineering teams, development velocity, and technical decision-making. From copilots to agents: the productivity gains, the new risks, and how technology leaders should think about team structure, tooling, and what it means to write software going forward. For: CTOs, VPs of Engineering, software teams, technology leaders.
• Emerging Technology & Innovation — What successful organizations actually do differently when it comes to innovation: how they experiment, how they fail productively, and how they build the organizational muscle for sustained creative output. Drawn from NASA, civic tech, and enterprise at scale. For: innovation teams, R&D leaders, executive audiences, academic institutions.
• Creating Cultures of Curiosity — How organizations — and people — build the habits of mind that make AI and innovation energizing rather than threatening. The crowd-pleaser: equally resonant for student audiences and corporate all-hands, and the talk people are still talking about afterward. For: general audiences, students, HR & culture leaders, all-hands and keynote events.

Selected Engagements

• Cloud4Good Social Impact Leaders Conference — Keynote, 2025
• National Association of Forensic Science Boards — Plenary Speaker, 2024
• IEEE Systems & Information Engineering Design Conference — Keynote Speaker, 2024
• American Society for Crime Lab Directors — "A.I. is the Easy Part", 2024

  Highest rated speech of the entire conference.

• CFS | Canadian Fintech Summit — "Imagining Fintech Futures with A.I.", 2024

  "Best reviewed speaker we've ever had." — Peter Misek, CEO, Framework VC

• NYU Innovation Summit — "What History Can Teach Us About Innovation", Keynote, 2024
• Fortune Brands, Edison Labs — "Digital Futures of the Everyday Consumer", Guest Speaker, 2023
• NASA State of A.I. Conference — "Generative A.I. for Aeronautics Research", 2023
• Envoy Consulting — Executive Training & Adjunct Speaker on A.I. (2024–present)
• NASA's Ecosystemic Futures Podcast — Co-Host (2023–present)
• UVA Batten School of Leadership & Public Policy — "Using Policy to Improve Technology", Panel Moderator & Speaker, 2016
• Accenture FinTech Innovation Lab Asia Pacific — "Relative Identity at Scale", 2015

Formats

• Keynote — 30–60 minutes, tailored to your audience and theme
• Executive Workshop — Half or full day, hands-on AI strategy session for leadership teams
• Panel — Moderator or panelist on AI, civic tech, or digital transformation
• Executive Program Faculty — Recurring curriculum for leadership development programs

Book James

Interested in having James speak at your event? Get in touch →