Every ceiling we draw for AI becomes the next floor. Most companies are still planning around the old one.
Jeff Schatten designs and tests AI inside working businesses, alongside the executives who have to live with the results. His keynotes examine what starts to strain as old limits disappear, and what leaders should rethink next.
Associate Professor, Washington and Lee University · Co-author of AI Will Take Your Job (And It's for the Best) · Advisor to CEOs and leadership teams
Watch Jeff on stage.
Jeff didn't give us another AI talk. He changed the question. We stopped talking about tools and started talking about how the company itself needs to work differently. Our leadership team was still debating it afterward.CEOFortune 1000 Company
He had the room. People were laughing, taking notes, pushing back, and asking better questions as the session went on. Jeff knows how to make a complicated topic feel immediate without dumbing it down.VPGuardian Alarm
We walked out with a clearer idea of what to build, what to test, and what to ignore.Managing DirectorPer Mar Security
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The Ceiling Becomes a Floor
Every limit we draw for AI has a shelf life.
Strategies, investments, hiring plans, and operating assumptions get built around capabilities that keep moving. This keynote asks which assumptions are already expiring, what leaders have built around them, and where the next advantage may emerge.
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The Manager's New Job
Management was built for a world where experience created an information advantage.
AI is changing that. A new employee can arrive with context and preparation that once took years to acquire. This keynote explores what managers become responsible for when knowing more is no longer enough: coaching, accountability, judgment, development, and performance.
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When the Knowledge Walks Out
The nineteen-year veteran knows which customer needs a call, which job will go sideways, and what the file leaves out.
Then one day that person retires. This keynote is about the knowledge organizations depend on but never captured, what AI changes about institutional memory, and what happens when expertise stops disappearing at five o'clock.
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The Vanishing First Rung
What happens when AI does the work people used to learn on?
Entry-level work has always done two jobs. It gets work done, and it teaches the next generation how the business works. AI is beginning with many of those same tasks. This keynote examines what happens to hiring, apprenticeship, career ladders, promotion, and the pipeline of future leaders when the traditional first rung gets thinner.
If fewer people spend years doing junior work, where do tomorrow's experts come from?
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The Black Box in the Boardroom
What does oversight look like when AI participates in decisions nobody can fully reconstruct afterward?
AI is entering decisions about customers, employees, capital, risk, and strategy. This keynote examines the questions boards and executives need to ask before those systems become ordinary: who owns the decision, what evidence leadership should demand, where human review belongs, and how accountability changes when software has a seat at the table.
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AI Has Left the Camera
The camera was built to tell you what went wrong. Now it is beginning to explain the business.
Cameras increasingly reveal customer behavior, operational friction, staffing patterns, and where margin is leaking. The question for the security industry is who captures the value of what the camera knows.
From the stage to the strategy room.
Signature Keynote
45 to 60 minutes built around one strong argument, memorable stories, and real examples shaped for the audience.
Longer versions are available for internal meetings and offsites.
Keynote + Executive Session
Add 60 to 90 minutes with senior leaders to apply specific ideas and skills directly to the organization.
These sessions often focus on AI implementation, change management, organizational design, or another issue the leadership team wants to work through.
Leadership Offsite
A half or full day with senior leaders to examine where AI changes the work, what deserves redesign, and what to build or test first.
Jeff Schatten works where AI meets real work.
Jeff works with senior leadership teams inside the operations where AI is already running, giving him a close view of what people trust, where processes break, and what managers must do differently.
He is an Associate Professor at Washington and Lee University and co-author of AI Will Take Your Job (And It's for the Best).
His work asks a practical question: what should people do, what should technology carry, and what should leaders build around the difference?
- Professor, Washington and Lee
- Co-author, AI Will Take Your Job (And It's for the Best)
- View CV
An argument about work, careers, organizations, and society as machines become capable of doing more of what people once did.
Book details Bulk ordersGive the room an idea worth arguing about.
Jeff's keynotes are built for leaders making real decisions about AI, people, management, risk, and the future of business.