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For boards and executive teamsFor the leadership team that has already had the AI-101 talk and wants the harder conversation: not what the tools do, but where human judgement belongs as they take over the tasks.
Rahim Hirji is a London-based keynote speaker specialising in AI and human judgement, and the author of SuperSkills (Kogan Page, 2026). He founded the skills platform EtonX, later acquired by Eton College, and led Quizlet’s international growth across more than 60 countries.
“We brought Rahim in to speak to our teams in the Corporate Bank about what AI actually changes for the people doing the work. He handled a demanding room and left them with something they could act on rather than only something to think about.”Stuart Foster, Head of Coverage, UK Corporate Banking, Barclays
What organisers say
“I brought Rahim in to speak to the Luminary Community, a group of female leaders and high potentials working in HR and people. I wanted something that would make sense of AI for them without the hype and without the fear. Rahim started with the human rather than the technology, and that reframing was the thing. He made AI feel simple and made us feel capable, which is not a combination I have come across before. Our members left with something they could actually use.”
Boards, executive committees, and senior leadership offsites, in any sector. The audiences that respond most are the ones making real decisions about how their organisation adopts AI: professional-services partnerships, financial-services leadership teams, and executive groups who want a position to react to rather than a neutral overview.
Rahim Hirji delivers a keynote, or a board session that opens with one, built around Drift versus Design: the difference between an organisation that adopts AI through a thousand small decisions nobody quite made, and one that decides in advance where human judgement has to remain. The room leaves with a shared language, a view of where its judgement is leaking, and the specific decisions it now has to make, on accountability, capability and where the humans stay in the loop. It is a conversation about judgement, not a grids-and-dashboards briefing.
For a board that wants a clear argument about AI and human judgement rather than a technology demo, Rahim Hirji is a specialist. He is the author of SuperSkills (Kogan Page, 2026), and his signature session, Drift versus Design, helps leadership teams decide where human judgement should stay as AI takes over the tasks. Google's EMEA People Operations leadership team brought him in to work through AI and human judgement, built from a survey of the team beforehand.
It opens with a keynote and a set of provocations, then turns the room’s thinking into a shared view of where the organisation is drifting versus designing its adoption, where judgement is leaking, and which decisions must stay human. It is about accountability and capability, not tooling.
Yes to both. The framework is cross-industry and shaped around a short fact-find and conversations across the business, and sessions are delivered in person and online worldwide.
A division inside a very large company was allowed to use exactly one AI tool. The constraint had been set centrally and never revisited, so the division's sense of what was possible had been shaped by a single product. After a session on what had actually changed in the field and for their customers, they moved to a sandbox of several tools, with different functions settling on different ones. It was repeated for two or three further divisions.
What this does not show. No measurement either way, and a division running several tools has more governance surface as well as more optionality. What it shows is that a constraint nobody had examined turned out to be a decision nobody had made.
Work with senior leaders across a medium-sized real estate business on the data sources they already had, and where the output could be genuinely augmented rather than merely automated. It changed how the leadership thought about their own data.
What this does not show. Several of the ideas had come up inside the business before and had never been implemented. The session did not invent them, it made them actionable, and no follow-up was taken on whether they were then implemented.
Seven case studies, each one saying what it does not show.
So thought-provoking and so well presented. It set up our board day perfectly.Sam KnightsCEO, Next 15 Group plc
Rahim Hirji speaks to boards, executive teams and leadership offsites on where human judgement belongs as AI takes over the tasks.
Also for HR and CHRO conferences, or see ongoing advisory.
A keynote is one afternoon. If what the board needs is somebody in the room over a period, or a view on one decision, that is board advisory and it is a different arrangement.
Boards ask for a speaker and often need an argument they can act on the following week. This session is built from published research, and the pages below are the working:
Every page above states what its evidence does not support as well as what it does, which is the same standard the talk is held to.
Not every brief is a talk. A board that needs to settle which decisions a machine may make wants a board briefing, a review or a standing advisor, and the five formats are set out side by side with what each one is for.
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