Charles Hayes was the Executive Managing Director of Asia and a Partner at IDEO. He was responsible for driving the growth of IDEO’s business in Asia ranging from guiding programs that deliver innovation for clients, providing strategic advisory to executive teams and building creative teams and new ventures for clients and for IDEO. He was a member of IDEO’s global leadership team..Charles is currently based out of Singapore.

Dr. Laura Herman  is the Head of AI Research at Adobe, where she leads a team of UX Researchers covering Generative AI for Creative Cloud, and is the Co-founder of the InclusiveAI Lab at Utrecht University. Laura received her PhD from the University of Oxford’s Internet Institute and has held research roles at Harvard, Princeton, and Intel. Laura has worked with arts institutions such as the Serpentine Galleries, the Tate, Studio Olafur Eliasson, and Ars Electronica; her research has been covered by venues including the BBC, Forbes, Artnet, New Scientist, Newsweek, and the Wall Street Journal.

Prof. dr. Payal Arora is a Professor of Inclusive AI Cultures at Utrecht University and Co-founder of the InclusiveAI Lab. She is a leading digital anthropologist with two decades of user experiences in the Global South to help shape inclusive AI enabled designs and policies. She is the author of award-winning books including ‘The Next Billion Users’ with Harvard Press and From Pessimism to Promise: Lessons from the Global South on Designing Inclusive Tech with MIT Press, which has won the 2025 Axiom Silver Prize for Emerging Trends in AI. Forbes called her the ‘next billion champion’ and the ‘right kind of person to reform tech.’ 200+ international media outlets have covered her work including The BBC, WIRED, Financial Times, and The Economist.

Prof. Preeti Nikhil Shroff-Mehta currently serves as a Professor at Medill. She has more than 25 years of experience in international projects and academic management with global institutions including the World Bank, USAID, UN, World Learning, John Hopkins’, University of Maryland, and School for International Training (SIT) in Washington DC, Vermont and around the world. She offers courses in Circular Economy and Business Sustainability, Change Management Leadership, Strategic Communications, and Place Branding. She is working on multiple book publications on Global and Digital Governance Reform, Women’s Leadership Path, ESG Maturity: Digital, Start-Ups to Legacy Organizations.

Siddhi Gupta is a designer and educator with a decade of experience leading projects in equity design and digital storytelling with global stakeholders. As design director and field lead at the Inclusive AI Lab, she has led teams on the ground for diverse projects including for IDRC to build a digital rights campaign for women gig workers, for Adobe in co-designing representative datasets with diverse underrepresented groups, and conducted family ethnographies for a UN related project on ‘Edtech from Below.’

Birgit Geiberger is the Global Head of Product UX Design at IKEA Group Digital and an IKEA Foundation Ambassador, bringing over a decade of expertise in design leadership and strategy. With a focus on improving lives, she excels in systems thinking, connecting people, projects, and opportunities within complex ecosystems. Birgit has a proven track record in creating consumer-centric, inclusive experiences informed by data while fostering strong relationships and building high-performing, diverse teams.

Fattori McKenna is the Lead Researcher on the Data Lifeboat Project at the Flickr Foundation. Tori’s research delves into the politics of blockchain within the arts and heritage sector. Her work specifically explores the implications of this technology on access to art markets and the long-term ownership and storage of collective cultural heritage. Fattori has held various roles including semiotician, brand strategist, and curator in cities such as New York, London, and Helsinki.