Amanda Johnstone is an Award-winning AI technologist, STEM advocate and inclusion champion. She’s a TIME Next Generation Leader. International Keynote Speaker

"Leadership is about creating space where all voices are heard and valued." – Amanda Johnstone

Amanda Johnstone is one of the world’s most recognised voices on artificial intelligence, digital responsibility, and the future of human leadership. A TIME Next Generation Leader, LinkedIn Top Voice in AI, Salesforce Top 16 AI Influencer, and Start Up Executive of the Year from The CEO Magazine, she stands at the forefront of the global movement redefining how humanity and technology coexist. Her work spans neuroscience, ethics, human machine symbiosis, digital mental health, and the design of equitable systems for the age of AI.

As CEO of Transhuman Inc., which she founded in 2014, Amanda pioneered conversations about AI ethics, the Internet of Bodies, emotion AI, and digital wellbeing long before these topics became mainstream. Her suicide prevention technologies have reached over 80 countries and assisted more than 20,000 people in moments of vulnerability, demonstrating how responsible innovation can quite literally change and save lives.

Her perspective is clear: technology either reinforces inequality or helps dismantle it. The future hinges on which path we choose.

The IWD 2026 Theme: Balance the Scales

Amanda’s keynotes for International Women’s Day 2026 are designed to meet the moment. They can explore what it truly means to balance the scales in a world increasingly shaped by algorithms, data, and emerging technologies. She illuminates how digital systems can either amplify gender inequities or correct them, depending on the integrity of the leadership behind them.

The sessions are weaved together with storytelling, lived experience, leading technology insights, and practical strategies grounded in evidence, neuroscience, and organisational psychology.

Keynote topics include:

AI and the Gender Divide

• How AI systems encode bias and how these biases disproportionately affect women and girls.
• Why ethical design, transparent datasets, and accountability frameworks matter for gender equity.
• How emerging technologies such as emotion AI, wearable and implantable devices, and the Internet of Bodies are already influencing daily life, workplaces, education, and safety for women worldwide.

Ethics in the Age of Data

• How to navigate the tension between innovation, privacy, fairness, and human dignity in AI driven organisations.
• Tools for identifying bias, managing risk, and building cultures of trust and transparency.
• Ethical leadership frameworks that help organisations use AI to rebalance power rather than concentrate it.

Structural Leadership and Balancing the Scales

• How to move from performative equality to systemic equity that is measurable and lasting.
• Practical methods for redesigning workplace systems so women from all backgrounds, abilities, and identities experience psychological safety and genuine opportunity.
• The neuroscience of decision making and unconscious bias, and how leaders can actively recalibrate these systems to create more just environments.

The Future of Work for Women

• How AI agents, automation, and new workforce structures will reshape job pathways for women.
• Why reskilling, digital empowerment, and accessible AI literacy programs will determine economic equality in the next decade.
• How organisations can ensure women are not only included in AI powered futures but positioned to lead them.

Human Machine Futures

• How emotional, cognitive, and biological data flows are becoming part of everyday technology.
• The implications for autonomy, consent, dignity, and the safety of women and girls.
• How leaders can prepare for the ethical frontier across AR, VR, wearable computing, implantables, and smart cities, all of which influence gendered experiences in subtle and profound ways.

What makes Amanda’s approach unique:

Amanda brings more than keynote inspiration. She brings frameworks, tools, and future literacy that help organisations rebalance the systems that shape leadership, hiring, safety, performance, wellbeing, and everyday interactions.

Drawing from her work advising governments, Fortune 500 companies, national AI bodies, and global think tanks, she provides a roadmap for building equitable, tech enabled organisations that genuinely balance the scales for women and girls.

The outcome is an IWD experience that resonates long after the event and leaves leaders with clarity, language, and actionable strategy.

Booking Amanda Johnstone for IWD 2026 and beyond:
Available for in person, virtual, or pre recorded keynotes tailored to your organisational needs.

Bookings and enquiries: bookings (@) amandajohnstone.com