Why Book Alexandra Samuel?
- She’s a practitioner, not just a theorist. Alex spent over a year building and working with her own custom AI coach, Viv. She brings real-world, in-the-trenches experience to the stage, sharing insights that can only be learned through deep, personal experimentation.
- She translates technology into human strategy. Drawing on her background as a journalist, Alex excels at making the complex dynamics of AI accessible. She moves beyond the technical jargon to focus on the most critical element: how AI is reshaping human interaction and what leaders must do about it.
- She delivers actionable frameworks that you can use today. Alex moves beyond the headlines to provide practical tools for individuals and organizations. Her talks feature powerful, memorable strategies that teams can implement immediately to foster creativity within their culture.
What Does Alexandra Samuel Speak About?
Alex moves beyond the hype to address the fundamental human questions of our automated age. She doesn’t just discuss productivity hacks—she decodes the profound impact AI has on our creativity, our collaboration, and our agency. Her talks are built on deep research and personal experience, delivering actionable frameworks for audiences grappling with the future.
Her core topics include:
Collaborating with your AI interviewer
- How can we use AI to bypass our “internal editor” and surface truly innovative ideas?
- What happens when you stop asking AI for answers and start making it interview you?
- How can a simple shift in prompting unlock the tacit knowledge hidden within your team?
Building a corporate culture that resists “AI-solation”
- What is the cultural risk when employees default to AI instead of their colleagues?
- How do you establish a “human-first default” to protect collaboration and trust?
- Why is the friction-free convenience of AI one of the biggest threats to your company’s culture?
Shaping AI (instead of letting it shape you)
- How do we shape AI to reflect our organization’s values, not the other way around?
- Why is accepting the default settings on AI tools an abdication of leadership?
- How can the process of building a custom AI clarify your own strategic intentions?
Alexandra Samuel’s Keynote Topics
The Best Coach You’ll Ever Have: Building an AI Tool to Unlock Your Full Potential
When we’re facing a tough decision, we often look for other people to coach us. But what if the best coach you’ll ever have isn’t a human at all? Tech journalist and frequent Wall Street Journal contributor Alexandra Samuel built an AI coach as a 10-week experiment—and the results taught her more than she could have expected about work, creativity, and what it means to be human.
In this hands-on talk, Alex shares the story of her 10-week experiment building “Viv,” a custom AI coach that helped her navigate a critical career pivot. She argues that the true power of AI lies not in getting it to do your work for you, but in using it to clarify your own values, goals, and strategic intentions—and she moves beyond the story to give you the blueprint for building your own custom AI coach.
Audiences will learn her signature “AI interviewer” method, a technique that forces you to take your “internal editor offline” and surface unfiltered, authentic insights. She introduces practical tools like the “reverse feedback sandwich” designed to stop AI from being a sycophant and instead force it to challenge your assumptions. Whether you need a ruthless strategic critic or a creative muse, Alex provides the specific prompts and frameworks to customize a tool that fits your unique needs.
“If you are engaging with AI, you need to think of it as an imaginative tool, rather than a search engine,” she says. “Entering into this space of imagination and creativity can open up much bigger possibilities than just copy-editing something 12% faster.”
AI-Powered Collaboration: The Future of Teamwork
The rise of AI isn’t just changing how we work as individuals—it’s transforming how we work together. In this practical and engaging talk, Alexandra Samuel shows how leading teams and organizations are using AI to reshape collaboration, communication and innovation. You’ll learn how AI can help break down silos, foster creativity, and ensure every team member’s strengths are utilized to their fullest potential. Alex will share real-world examples of AI-driven collaboration, and provide a roadmap for integrating AI into your own collaborative processes.
In this illuminating session, you’ll discover how to use AI to streamline workflows, enhance communication across distributed teams, and break down organizational silos. You’ll learn strategies for leveraging AI to facilitate more inclusive brainstorming, provide real-time language translation for global teams, and analyze team dynamics for improved performance. Alex offers inspiring case studies of organizations that have successfully integrated AI into their collaborative processes, and you’ll leave with a practical roadmap for transforming your own team’s approach to collaboration.
“AI gives us an unprecedented opportunity to rethink how we work together,” Alex says. “The organizations that thrive will be the ones that harness AI to create more vibrant, engaged and productive teams.”
Re-Imagining AI
What happens when machines think for us? The rapid adoption of ChatGPT and other generative AI tools has raised profound questions about the future of critical thinking, learning and innovation. But AI doesn’t have to be the end of the human story: Instead, it can open a new chapter—once we reckon with how AI transforms our relationship to knowledge, creativity and one another.
Drawing on her AI stories for The Wall Street Journal and Harvard Business Review, Alexandra dismantles the false choice between either uncritically embracing AI’s productivity gains or rejecting it as an existential threat. Instead, she argues for using AI to hone our own human capacities for creativity and critical thinking and provides practical tactics you can use and share.
You’ll gain a new framework for thinking about AI—one that will transform how you approach your own work, your relationships, and ultimately, how you help others navigate this new landscape.
Humanizing Work in the AI Era
AI can boost individual performance, strengthen teams and drive organizational innovation—once we embrace the tactics that ensure AI makes the most of our human talents.
In this engaging talk, journalist and technology researcher Alexandra Samuel shows you how to apply the approaches she covers in her AI stories for The Wall Street Journal and Harvard Business Review. When we use AI to address the chores and frictions that drain our energy and chip away at our relationships, Alex shows, it can become a catalyst for more effective, rewarding and collaborative work.
In this talk, Alex shares specific tactics that deliver on the promise of AI-supported collaboration, so that you leave with a new understanding of AI, and concrete steps to put it into practice.
See Alex in Action
Frequently Asked Questions about Alexandra Samuel
What makes Alexandra Samuel a unique AI speaker? Alex combines her deep research with hands-on practice. She doesn’t just talk about AI in the abstract; she builds with it, lives with it, and shares fascinating, real-world stories and frameworks that are both provocative and immediately applicable.
What is the “AI Interviewer” method? The AI Interviewer is Alex’s core framework for flipping the script on AI. Instead of asking AI for answers, you prompt it to interview you or your team, a technique that surfaces deep knowledge, bypasses social filters, and unlocks a more authentic and powerful form of creativity.
What industries would benefit most from Alexandra Samuel’s keynotes? Leaders in technology, marketing, finance, HR, and any industry focused on innovation, team culture, and future-proofing their workforce will find Alex’s insights essential for navigating the next wave of technological change.
How to Book Alexandra Samuel for Your Next Event
Ready to bring Alexandra Samuel’s essential insights to your next event? Contact us today to check her availability and discuss how her message can be tailored to your audience.
