Helping business 
owners succeed

Kate Barton is the Global CEO at Dentons, the world’s largest law firm with over 160 offices in more than 80 countries. Kate is also a public company director, philanthropist, and business advisor with a strong passion for leadership and innovation. Her career began at Ernst & Young, a $50B organization operating in 150 countries, where she worked her way up from intern to serve as Global CEO of Ernst & Young's Tax, Law, and People Advisory Services business (2018–2023), leading a workforce of 70K+ professionals, generating $12B+ in revenues, and achieving #1 in brand and market share.

Benjamin Van Durme hails from Johns Hopkins University (JHU), where he is a faculty in the Computer Science and Cognitive Science departments, the technical advisor to the Human Language Technology Center of Excellence (HLTCOE), and a member of the board of directors of JHU’s Data Science and AI Institute (DSAI). His group focuses on collaborative AI in professional contexts, aiding information analysts and government policy makers. He publishes broadly in areas of information retrieval, reasoning, content understanding, and large language models.

Bjoern Lasse Herrmann is an entrepreneur, leadership coach, researcher and corporate executive with 20 years of experience in the technology space at large in the US and Europe, with a focus in AI, innovation and organizational development. He successfully built and sold multiple businesses and led large scale transformation processes in the corporate setting. He has lectured at the top business schools in the US and Europe; and mentored both startup and corporate executives. He is also engaged in sociopolitical, socioeconomic development and collective trauma healing work.

Chris Mazzei is a global business leader with a proven track record for strategy, corporate development, innovation, operational P&L responsibilities, and data analytics. As a senior leader for over 23 years at Ernst & Young, Chris has a legacy of creating enterprise value through building and standing up successful businesses, leading growth strategy, developing and overseeing complex business and digital transformations, and providing practical advice on emerging technologies. Chris is now an adjunct professor at Cornell and NYU, teaching about the intersection between AI and business model design.

Deepak Swaroop is a former Ernst & Young senior partner, having spent 30 years in Big Four accounting firms. An expert in building and running scaled offshore delivery capability, he successfully built and and led delivery centers across 5 countries and led adoption of robotic automation alongside AI based tools in 600 plus processes. Educated at prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, he had an MBA from Tulane University, and later studied strategic management at Harvard and impact of AI on business at MIT. He currently teaches Mathematics in a state school in London, where he lives.