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For conferences and all-hands eventsFor the annual conference, the all-hands or the association event that wants a keynote on AI people actually remember: one clear argument and a takeaway, not a product demo and not a generic motivational slot.
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.
Corporate conferences and all-hands events, and industry and professional-association gatherings, where AI or the future of work is the theme. It suits a mixed audience, from the front line to the leadership team, because the argument is human and universal: what happens to people, work and judgement as the machines take over the tasks.
Rahim Hirji opens or closes your conference with 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 audience leaves with one idea they remember, a shared piece of language, and a sense of agency rather than anxiety. It is pro-AI and pro-human, current and specific, not a tools demo or a doom-and-hype survey.
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.”
For a conference that wants a clear, memorable argument about AI and the future of work rather than a demo or a motivational slot, Rahim Hirji is a strong fit. He is the author of SuperSkills (Kogan Page, 2026), and his signature keynote, Drift versus Design, gives a mixed audience one idea they remember and can act on.
From a few hundred to several thousand, as an opening or closing keynote, in person or online, internationally.
Neither, exactly. It is an argument about people and judgement, pro-AI and pro-human, rather than a tools demo or a hype-and-doom survey.
A technology scale-up mid-transformation had its technical teams moving fast on AI and its non-technical staff adopting nothing and frightened of it. The two groups were in open conflict. Booked at very short notice, the forty-minute session went from the head office in central London to about 1,500 people dialling in, and the brief was to move a divided audience in one sitting. It became executive coaching on how the change was being communicated, and coaching for team leads.
What this does not show. Nothing was measured before or after, and the account of what shifted comes from the people who commissioned it.
An agency business brought its people together from Asia, Asia-Pacific, EMEA and North America into one event, with multiple stakeholders describing the same transformation in incompatible language. The contribution was naming the recurring situations. The company took that wording into its ongoing strategy and retained an advisory role for three to six months to carry it through the business.
What this does not show. Shared vocabulary makes a disagreement legible. It does not resolve it, and no commercial outcome was measured.
Seven case studies, each one saying what it does not show.
We are pretty selective about the speakers we put in front of our audience: they come to our events to learn, be engaged and inspired. Rahim was a standout speaker. He told our audience something they did not especially want to hear, and explained it in a way that encouraged them to take action. He was as generous with his wisdom in the room afterwards as he was on stage.Rebecca McKinlayManaging Director, Oystercatchers
Rahim Hirji opens and closes corporate and association conferences with a clear, human argument about AI and the future of work.
Also for boards and offsites and HR and CHRO conferences.
Nothing in this session is asserted without something behind it. The research the main-stage argument is drawn from:
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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