Meet the team
We’ve assembled an all-star team of the best and brightest experts in AI and digital.
Together, this multidisciplinary team delivers a holistic approach to AI transformation, covering everything from culture to the tech stack.
Nick Villani
Co-Founder
Nick is a well-known face in the digital space, primarily as a leadership coach and learning designer where his company Coteam specialises in the human side of transformation.
Nick overwhelmingly believes that the best AI implementations won’t replace people with machines but instead use the limitless potential of AI to uplift our own creativity, productivity and skillsets.
It’s this passion and curiosity for the power of human-led change that Nick to create Edifai as a brand within the larger Coteam group.
Niall McKinney
Non-exec Chair
Niall McKinney’s contributions to the fields of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Digital Marketing have earned him recognition as a thought leader and expert in the industries.
Niall's expertise in AI and digital marketing led him to be the Chief Growth Officer at Black Crow AI, which uses AI to help advertisers optimise their digital media buying.
When he’s not at Black Crow, Neil can found speaking at AI and digital marketing conferences around the world, sharing his insights on the future of the industry and the role of AI in shaping it.
Joanna Wang
Data Expert
Joana’s experience in data analysis and visualization gives her a unique advantage in understanding the potential of AI.
By working with data, Joana has developed a keen sense of how AI can be used to drive insights and improve decision-making.
Her ability to bridge the gap between technical and non-technical stakeholders and expertise in data analysis are a potent combination for any organization looking to leverage AI for business outcomes.
Was Rahman
Strategy, Ethics & Governance
Was Rahman is an interdisciplinary researcher and consultant in Ethical AI in business.
At Coventry University, he investigates fairness in AI business decision-making, especially in the HR function. At Bonn University, Was is working on “next generation” AI Ethics, and how they will affect the wider world.
Outside academia, he advises business leaders on ethical, responsible AI, having spent 30 years in senior leadership roles at global technology firms such as Accenture and Infosys.
Hazel Swayne
Learning Designer
When the world zigs, Hazel zags! Peru-born and NYC-made, Hazel recently finished a 3-year journey around the world with her family working remotely while homeschooling her 3 children and researching the future of education.
Hazel has vast experience working with distributed teams and creating impactful virtual and in-person learning experiences for teams and senior leaders around the world.
Hazel designs and facilitates transformative learning experiences with organisations such as Google, TUI, Spotify, Disney, Hyper Island, and Dentsu Aegis Network.
Nick Wright
People & Culture Specialist
Over the last twenty years Nick has built and led teams, departments and companies.
He has also mentored hundreds of leaders, guiding them on how to confidently build long-term resilience and sustainable productivity for themselves and their teams.
Jeffrey Ng
Tech Stack
Jeffrey is a co-founder and CTO at Built Ai, an AI-first startup building AI geospatial market analytics and digital twin platforms for the Built environment. He previously has co-founded two AI startups, one of which is a London unicorn.
He spent seven years reverse-engineering the human visual system at Imperial College and ran technology, AI and product teams as CTO. He subsequently advised many companies from medical imaging startups to social fashion platforms to big digital transformation companies. He was an investor at Founders Factory where he focused on the AI sector.
Martin Johnson
Community Manager (HR Focus)
Martin is a dynamic professional with extensive experience in Process Improvement, Human Resources Management, and business transformation consulting across diverse industries. With a Master’s (MSc) in Human Resource Management and certifications in Business Analysis, Martin brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise.
His career highlights include supporting the implementation of new HR technologies, mapping core processes for clients, and providing comprehensive training to improve user experience and efficiency.
Lee Nallalingham
AI in HR
Lee is an 5x International Best-Selling Author, Speaker & Leader and has a proven track record across HR, Technology and Business Transformation.
Lee has pioneered the use of AI across the entire spectrum of HR. In addition, he has led departments in excess of 60 people and project teams in excess of 150 people, delivered over $500m in annual cost savings, efficiencies, and revenue generation, successfully delivered 5 integrations following mergers / acquisitions and worked across 6 continents, 70 countries and with over 100 MNC clients. He has also built multimillion dollar business units from scratch on 4 separate occasions.
Neil Perkin
Agile, People & Culture
Neil is a renowned writer, keynote speaker and the founder of Only Dead Fish, a digital consultancy that specialises in applying strategic understanding of digital and emerging technologies to help businesses and leaders optimise their effectiveness within the new, digital-empowered business environment.
Neil is the author of two best-selling books on digital transformation, ‘Building The Agile Business’ and ‘Agile Transformation’ and hass been named by the British Interactive Media Association) as one of the most influential people in the UK digital industry, and by SAGE as a TOP 100 global business influencer.
Kathyrn Webb
Creative Applications
Kathryn has spent over 8 years innovating at the crossroads of technology and marketing.
For the past 6 years, she has been delivering AI applications, specialising in chatbots and generative experiences. Her portfolio includes work for Usher, Nike, Fender and many more.
In recent times, Kathryn's roles within WPP's CTO team have focused on designing platforms and initiatives that empower agencies and designers through AI-driven tools. She has also led efforts on AI education, training, and strategy to ensure WPP’s large network was prepared for an AI-driven future.
Daniel Solomons
Digital Transformation
Daniel leads transformational education programmes that help organisations thrive in a digital age.
Daniel has over 20 years’ experience in advertising and marketing.. Most recently, Daniel headed up the Google Digital Academy team that designed and delivered ground-breaking education programmes and workshops for advertisers, agencies and Googlers across EMEA.
Daniel has a passion for the more human aspects of digital transformation, and now works with C-suite and senior management to help them lead the changes in culture, company and customer-centricity, enabling them and their teams to adapt and grow in an ever-evolving, VUCA, digital world.
Gina Wessels
Marketing
Gina is a strategic digital marketing and digital transformation consultant with over 17 years’ global experience across a range of B2B and B2C industries. Her clients include Google, Shell, GSK and Emirates Airlines.
Gina has facilitated learning sessions for over 15,000 people face-to-face and online. She is currently leading Google’s Executive Leadership Transformation Summit enabling meaningful conversations around the application of AI in businesses exploring how teams can organise themselves to leverage AI to work more effectively and create space for innovation, creativity and experimentation.
Iñaki Escudero
Ethics, People & Processes
Iñaki Escudero is a versatile professional dedicated to inspiring a passion for learning.
With nearly 11 years of experience as a Learning Designer, Executive Coach, Teacher, and Global Keynote Speaker, he has established himself at the forefront of innovative education.
Currently, Iñaki is merging his teaching of Brand Strategy and Storytelling to empower brands to harness the potency of narratives. Leveraging his expertise in management consulting and learning design, he facilitates transformative change for both individuals and organizations.
Venkata Maddisetti
Finance
Venkata Maddisetti is a finance professional who focuses on helping finance teams to leverage AI for financial modeling and risk management.
He has academic projects that involve the use of machine learning algorithms for portfolio optimisation and valuation.
Chris Allan
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
Chris is a D+I practitioner with a qualification in ‘Managing Equity, Diversity and Inclusion’.
He is wholeheartedly committed to awareness, education and equal representation. Inspired by his own experience with workplace discrimination, Chris is on a life-long mission to create equal opportunities for all.
Chris started Your D+I to support businesses to instil authentic diversity and inclusion into their organisation and to provide a platform where everyone is seen, valued, and supported on an equal playing field.
Martin Talks
People & Culture
Martin is a highly experienced professional who helps organisations and their people innovate, change and transform.
He has a strategic understanding of AI, based on practical experience as an entrepreneur: he floated the financial information company, ADVFN, on the London Stock Exchange and he also founded and sold a digital strategy business, Blue Barracuda.
He has also held various senior executive positions, including Global Digital Lead of the FCB Group of marketing agencies. He believes in engaging and exciting people about the future and helping them use their imagination as well as looking at trends and data.
Josefin Ittichai
Marketing & Customer Service
At the edge of AI, society and data ethics, Josefin brings a desire to help shaping a desirable, more responsible future. Josefin has worked with digital & emerging technology transformation and learning programmes spanning across all business functions.
She has guest lectured at MIT, Columbia Business School and IT University of Copenhagen and has acted in several roles as a catalyst for change and driving factor for implementation.She brings 13 years of experience from working with leading retailers, manufacturers and consumer brands worldwide.
Fredrika Magnusson
Delivery Manager
Fredrika is an experienced mind-body coach, accomplished DJ and entrepreneur.
Today's world is a massive source of technological input, speed, and dreaming of something "else." Fredrika blends her experience of helping people achieve their full potential with astute attention to detail to help build and deliver transformative experiences, whilst also being grounded in reality.
Louis Ellison
Senior Learning Consultant
Louis manages all aspects of client deliveries and success for Edifai. As well as his experience in both business development and account management, he’s always looking for ways to use AI to automate and augment existing workflows.
He believes happy clients are repeat clients, and also share a deep passion for integrating learning and development into companies of all shapes and sizes.
Nigel Sheldon
People & Processes
Nigel has extensive experience in advising clients on digital strategy, developing training programmes, facilitating workshops, and delivering digital transformation projects. Nigel is a founder partner of Gencrea – the new Generative AI marketing service from the Digital Leadership Forum.
For the last 6 years, he has been a Google Partner running and facilitating regular training Labs for Google’s clients globally on Brand Activation and Data-Driven Marketing. In the last 2 years, he has co-created and facilitated workshops and webinars for the Sainsbury’s and Argos’ Marketing Excellence Programme.
Ray De Villiers
Strategy
Ray is a professional speaker and consultant on the Future World of Work, with a focus on always on the human implications of a technology or strategy shift.
He has worked with executive and other leadership teams around the world to bed down the leadership, cultural and people dynamics within Digital Leadership Transformation.
Ray is able to bridge the divide between business & execution functions and build & delivery teams, making the high-level technical concepts of AI understandable to business leaders.
Kiril Kamburov
Tech Stack & Cyber Security
Kiril Kamburov is a cybersecurity expert with a specific focus on AI. He has worked on developing AI-driven security solutions as well as a wealth of experience in technology-driven consumer businesses.
Dave Katz
Data & Ethics
Dave Katz has been working as a trainer/facilitator in the fields of data, digital, and digital transformation full and part time over the last 10 years.
Most recently, he has been working as consultant/co-founder of intuizi, a mobile data processing/analytics business based in the US and providing global services to a multiplicity of businesses in various fields.
Dave has an enormous wealth of experience in running training sessions for corporates, as well as facilitating roundtable and cross-party discussions across companies, and on behalf of industry trade bodies.
Robert Gillespie
Marketing
Robert Gillespie is a marketing veteran who specialises in delivering AI-driven marketing strategies.
He has experience in using machine learning algorithms to help marketing teams to optimise their customer segmentation and personalised marketing campaigns.
Sam Dickinson
SME
Sam has been working in the field of innovation and digital transformation for almost 20 years, firstly with the consultancy ?What If! (now part of Accenture) and latterly at Google where he is currently Head of Digital Transformation in the Google Digital Academy.
Most of his time is spent with senior teams from Google’s largest Customers in the Ads and Cloud spaces who want to imagine a more ambitious future for their business then take practical steps to make it happen.
Cate Sevilla
SME
Cate has managed and led editorial teams for some of the world’s largest media and tech companies, including Google and Microsoft, and was a founding member of BuzzFeed UK.
Her writing has appeared in The Independent, iNews, The Big Issue, Insider and Grazia Magazine. Her first book, How To Work Without Losing Your Mind was published by Penguin Business and the paperback is available now.
Pilar Barrio
Marketing
Pilar Barrio is a digital transformation consultant and a facilitator, who has been at the forefront of emerging technology and its application to business, media and customer experience since 2006.
Pilar has trained thousands of people in areas of digital strategy, innovation and creativity through her work with the Google Digital Academy, ISDI Digital MBA, General Assembly, Emeritus and IESE business school among others. She has a huge interest in applying generative AI into business processes to free up strategic and creative minds to use their talent in more rewarding and efficient ways.
Nell Watson
Ethics & Safety
Eleanor ‘Nell’ Watson, a pioneering ethics and machine intelligence researcher, has been a driving force behind some of the most crucial AI ethics standardisation and certification initiatives from organisations such as the IEEE.
She advises leaders all over the world on ethical and effective management of world-changing organisations.
Jeremiah Johnson
Community Manager
Jeremiah is a software developer who specialises in productivity applications to reduce the friction between tech and productivity.
Jeremiah’s also known for writing articles on how AI can be incorporated into industries such as law, finance, and real estate.
Nick Sorros
Tech Stack & LLM’s
Nick is the founder of Mantis NLP, an AI consultancy specialising in Natural Language Processing.
Prior to setting up Mantis NLP, Nick worked as a data scientist with over for over a decade, including at the Wellcome Trust, where he set up and then led the data science team.
It was there that Nick found himself working more and more with NLP problems, and identified the gap for a data science consultancy focused on these problems. Mantis NLP was born and has quickly become gone on to build an impressive portfolio of worldwide clients.
David Asboth
Data scientist
David is a "data generalist"; currently a freelance data consultant and educator with an MSc. in Data Science and a background in software and web development. With over 5 years experience teaching, he has taught everyone from junior analysts up to C-level executives in industries like banking and management consulting about how to successfully apply data science, machine learning, and AI to their day-to-day roles.
He is the author of Real-World Data Science, a book about the data skills that aspiring analysts actually need in their jobs, which will be published by Manning in 2024.
Eva Agapaki
Product SME
Eva is an experienced AI product management leader and executive advisor with 10 years of leadership and diverse technical product experience in industry, academia and startups.
She has launched products in the technology, manufacturing and oil & gas industries. She has received multiple AI leadership awards (featured as one of 60 AI leaders, 2022 Outstanding Leadership Award, US National Academy of Engineering) and is a featured speaker at AI conferences.
Katie Roden
Marketing & Creative expert
With over 30 years' experience in marketing, content creation, publishing, fan engagement and digital transformation, Katie has worked with high-profiles brands across multiple sectors, from education, charity and not-for-profit to retail, telecommunications, book publishing, sports and entertainment. She is also a trainer and facilitator for the Google Digital Academy, helping businesses to maintain best practice in all aspects of marketing, attribution and business operation.
She is now working closely with clients in all sectors to explore the possibilities and challenges of AI, from creative innovation, content creation and audience targeting to transformational automation and IP protection.
James Phoenix
AI in Marketing SME
James Phoenix has a background in building reliable data pipelines and software for marketing teams, including automation of thousands of recurring marketing tasks.
He has taught 60+ Data Science bootcamps for General Assembly, and is pleased to be a part of the Edifai team.
Alexander Salas
AI for L&D specialist
Alexander Salas is a learning facilitator, learning experience designer, and LMS administrator with 15 years’ experience specialising in multimedia design and learning technologies. Alex has worked for Fortune500 enterprises such as Centene Corporation, Dell Technologies, and Philips Healthcare. He holds dual Master’s degrees in education and leadership. When he’s not presenting at conferences, Alex helps clients of all sizes optimise their AI learning solutions and technology programmes.
Edmond Driscoll
Data Scientist and Software Developer
Edmond has led immersive boot camps at General Assembly drawing on 10+ years’ in digital product delivery and data science experience to help over 250 students start in their data science/ analyst careers. Edmond now adapts the same skills to teach LLMs.
Alex Santiago
AI Business Strategist - Marketing
With over 25 years of experience in the telecommunications and automotive industries, Alex is a leading expert in AI-driven transformations across marketing, sales, and customer experience.
Focused on practical AI implementations, he ensures businesses in Mexico and LATAM optimise operations and achieve sustainable, data-driven growth. Known for his hands-on approach and his commitment to inspiring young generations by teaching applied AI to university students, Alex strikes the right balance between strategy and execution, empowering companies to leverage AI for high-performance teams and exceed market expectations.