Abigail Posner
Becoming Irreplaceable in an AI World
Why Book Abigail Posner
- ANTHROPOLOGY MEETS GOOGLE INNOVATION: Abigail inspires leaders and their organizations to create game-changing ideas that move people and drive business growth.
- TRANSFORM BIGGER AND FASTER: Abigail’s anthropology and creative background felt out of place at a tech company, yet that lens gave her the ability to see what others missed. Her insights helped Google’s biggest customers achieve extraordinary results.
- NEW WAYS TO AMPLIFY LEADERSHIP IMPACT: Abigail shows leaders how to create originality, influence, and ideas competitors can’t copy by accessing their expansiveness edge. It’s the sum of their interests, knowledge, experiences, and perspectives that make leaders irreplaceable.
- GO BEYOND CREATIVITY: Creativity without execution is inspiration without impact. With her decades of leading creative teams, Abigail shows how to turn curiosity and imagination into ideas that actually land – and become a defining competitive advantage.
- ADAPT QUICKER TO TECH-DRIVEN CHANGE: Abigail created Humanizing Digital at Google – a first-of-its-kind practice that uses cultural anthropology to help leaders read the emotional and human impact of new technology, so change succeeds with employees, customers and markets.
- A TECH MIND-FLIP: As tech got smarter, human qualities became more valuable. For Abigail, it’s not “what tech can do” that matters; it’s “what tech and we can do together.” Understanding the difference changes everything.
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Abigail Posner spent 13 years at Google, but don’t make assumptions about her based on that fact.
Abigail didn’t start in tech. She started out studying people, earning a degree from Harvard in social anthropology, driven by one question: Why do humans do what they do? That lens proved to be the most valuable thing she ever brought to the boardroom at top advertising agencies where she shaped brand identities and communication to achieve tangible results.
Then, for thirteen years as director of U.S. Creative Works at Google, Abigail brought cultural anthropology to the data and technology, leading a team crafting AI-powered technologies and winning strategies for YouTube’s top global advertising clients. Her most pioneering work: Creating the Humanizing Digital thought leadership series which explored our emotional relationship with technology. While everyone asked, “What can tech do?” – Abigail asked, “What does tech do to us?”– and then used those insights to create valuable strategies.
One thing became clear: As tech got smarter, humanness got more valuable. Now in her post-Google career, Abigail founded the Human Code Company to answer the question so many leaders were asking her: How do we create the future when change is coming at us so fast? The answer lies in the ability for leaders to think expansively and harness their Human Code as the ultimate competitive edge in an AI world.
The Human Code is the art of combining your unique experiences, interests, and perspectives to lead with more impact, more originality, and an edge that’s entirely your own. Abigail helps leaders unlock innovation and drive real organizational transformation by blending AI and data intelligence with creative vision and human-centered thinking. She shows leaders that AI also stands for “amplify impact,” and that combining it with their most human qualities creates results no algorithm can replicate.
That’s the overview – but let’s dig a bit deeper.
At Google’s Creative Works, Abigail led a multidisciplinary team developing data-driven, AI-powered advertising and branded content strategies for YouTube’s top global advertisers. She pioneered Humanizing Digital, an anthropology-based thought leadership series exploring our emotional relationship with technology. She also helped guide a cultural transformation initiative for Google’s 4,000+ sales professionals, building unity and renewed purpose across regions; and earlier, created and scaled a global culture of insights program that deepened customer understanding both within Google and across client organizations.
Before joining Google, Abigail served as executive vice president of Brand Strategy at Publicis New York and Strategy Team Director at DDB New York, where she led major global client initiatives and new business efforts that shaped brand identities across industries.
Her work has been recognized with the United Nations Media Impact Award, and her insights have been featured in outlets including The New York Times, Forbes, Fast Company, CNBC, and elsewhere. She regularly shares perspectives on innovation, creativity, and the human-technology relationship at conferences and business gatherings all over the world.
Through the Human Code newsletter and her writing in outlets such as The Drum, Abigail shapes global dialogue around culture, technology, and human behavior. She also hosts the Human Code podcast, bringing these conversations to life with industry leaders and cultural figures.
Abigail sits on the corporate board for ENDI Corp (OTCMKTS: ENDI).
A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard University in social anthropology, Abigail lives in New York City, where she raised her three adult children.
Speech Descriptions
Expansiveness Edge: Becoming Irreplaceable in an AI World
What’s my edge now? That’s what leaders are asking as they try and spark innovation and organizational transformation in an AI-driven revolution.
It’s a paradox: We have access to the most powerful technology in human history yet we have a fear of becoming obsolete (FOBO). The problem isn’t AI, it’s that most leaders have been conditioned to compartmentalize the very things that make them irreplaceable.
An anthropologist, former senior executive at Google and in advertising, Abigail shows leaders how to lead with more originality and impact and an edge that is unmistakably their own by leveraging all of their passions, skills, and experiences – their expansiveness. Think of it like this: you’re not a single instrument. You’re a musician who knows how to play several. Expansiveness is knowing which one the moment calls for. It’s NOT about bringing your whole self to work. It’s a different game entirely.
Abigail’s energy, storytelling, real-world examples, and audience engagement unpack how the future belongs to leaders who generate results by digging into their expansiveness to create something no algorithm can predict and no competitor can replicate.
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Tangible Takeaways:
- Learn to use expansiveness to fuel innovation in ways strategy alone cannot.
- How relentless curiosity about yourself and others sparks deeper questions, richer connections, and ideas no one else would have thought to pursue.
- Hone the ability to recognize which skill, which experience, which side of yourself is the most useful at the moment and activate it with intention.
- Leave with a curated set of hands-on exercises designed to leverage your personal Expansiveness Edge right now.
- Learn how to use expansiveness to uncover opportunities hidden in plain sight that create a competitive edge.
Wired to Create: Tap Your Innate Creativity to Drive Bolder Ideas and Bigger Breakthroughs
Too many people don’t think they’re capable of generating the breakthrough ideas their organization desperately needs. They’re wrong. And this presentation inspires them how to contribute in ways they never imagined.
Creativity isn’t reserved for the “naturally gifted” — it’s wired into all of us. The problem isn’t that people lack creative capacity. It’s that they’ve never been shown how to find it, trust it, and activate it. In an era of AI, that capacity matters more than ever, freeing us to refocus on what humans do best: bold ideation, collaborative insight, and imaginative thinking at its most powerful.
In this electrifying, mind-expanding talk, Abigail Posner, a force of nature on stage, shows every person in the room how to unlock their innate creative potential. She hands them a rich toolkit spanning anthropology, neuroscience, real-world business examples, and AI-powered analysis to generate bold ideas and compete in times of seismic change.
Audiences leave equipped with concrete tools to activate their creativity immediately.
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Tangible Takeaways:
- Discover why the most valuable currency isn’t technical skill, it’s distinctly human creativity. Curiosity, imagination, and collaborative sense-making are now the defining competitive advantage.
- Be inspired to nurture, trust, and activate your innate creative potential to generate bold ideas that move the needle.
- Understand a cross-disciplinary set of lenses drawn from anthropology, neuroscience, technology, and creative development to unlock new dimensions of thinking.
- Get a full-spectrum toolkit for strategically deploying each to unearth the freshest, most generative ideas for any challenge, using a full-spectrum toolkit for uncovering ideas: from ethnographic observation and behavioral research to quantitative data and AI-powered analysis.
Ingenuity Unleashed: Using AI to Make Human Imagination More Powerful Than Ever
Everyone is using AI to do the same things faster. Almost no one is using it to think bigger. The creative potential of AI is vastly underestimated and almost entirely untapped.
Your boldest ideas and sharpest instincts have always been there. But ingenuity, the ability to apply those ideas to solve real problems, can only go so far when it’s buried under the mental load of everything else. AI changes that. It takes on the rote and the analytical, freeing your most original, emotionally intelligent thinking to finally unleash its full force and take what’s possible further than ever imagined.
In this inspiring, provocative talk, Abigail Posner reframes AI as the latest in a long human tradition of using tools to expand what we’re capable of and gives people a concrete way to use it differently. Audiences leave knowing not just why AI is a creative force multiplier, but exactly how to deploy it that way, with their thinking cracked open and a practical framework to put it to work immediately.
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Tangible Takeaways:
- Understand how ingenuity – creativity plus the ability to make big ideas actually land – is innate in all of us. It becomes your most powerful force in an AI world.
- Learn provocative new thinking on how AI amplifies human creativity in ways that are still emerging, full of possibility, and overturning what we thought we knew.
- Embrace a new lens, drawn from years of anthropological research on how humans have always partnered with technology to expand their capabilities and what that means for right now.
- Discover a practical framework for activating your boldest thinking so AI doesn’t just support what you do, it takes it further than was ever possible before.
Speaker Resources
Frequently Asked Questions
Abigail Posner is an anthropologist, former Director of U.S. Creative Works at Google, and founder of the Human Code Company. A creativity, innovation, and AI keynote speaker, she helps leaders and organizations harness the distinctly human qualities that become more valuable as technology gets smarter. Drawing on her background in social anthropology, creativity, technology, and more than a decade at Google, Abigail shows audiences how to unlock originality, amplify their impact, and create ideas no algorithm can replicate.
Abigail Posner speaks about human creativity, innovation, AI, leadership, human potential, and the relationship between people and technology. Her keynotes explore how leaders can harness their Human Code — the unique combination of experiences, interests, perspectives, curiosity, imagination, and creative intelligence that makes their contribution distinctly their own — to lead and innovate in an AI world.
Abigail offers three signature keynote programs: Expansiveness Edge: Becoming Irreplaceable in an AI World, Wired to Create: Tap Your Innate Creativity to Drive Bolder Ideas and Bigger Breakthroughs, and Ingenuity Unleashed: Using AI to Make Human Imagination More Powerful Than Ever. Across these programs, she explores how leaders and teams can activate their full range of human potential, unlock innate creativity, and use AI as a force multiplier for human ingenuity.
Abigail brings a rare combination of anthropology, creativity, technology, and business experience to the stage. During 13 years at Google, she led U.S. Creative Works, pioneered the anthropology-based Humanizing Digital thought leadership series, and helped organizations understand the human and emotional impact of technology. Today, she translates those insights into provocative, practical ideas that help leaders think more expansively, generate greater originality, and harness their distinctly human strengths as AI transforms how we work.
Abigail is a strong fit for leaders, teams, and organizations focused on AI, innovation, creativity, leadership, transformation, and the future of work. Her message is especially relevant for organizations navigating technology-driven change and looking to unlock more original thinking, human creativity, and innovation. Her keynotes are well suited to conferences, leadership meetings, corporate events, executive programs, and business gatherings.
Audiences can expect a high-energy, thought-provoking experience combining vivid storytelling, audience engagement, real-world business examples, and ideas drawn from anthropology, neuroscience, technology, and creative development. Abigail challenges audiences to rethink what makes them valuable in an AI world and equips them with frameworks and practical tools to activate their creativity, curiosity, imagination, and uniquely human perspectives.
Abigail’s keynote themes can be aligned with an organization’s audience, objectives, and the challenges it is navigating. Her three signature programs provide distinct ways to explore human potential, creativity, innovation, and AI, allowing event organizers to identify the message most relevant to their audience and event goals.
Yes. In addition to keynote presentations, Abigail offers fireside chats, moderated conversations, and audience-driven Q&A programs. These formats allow organizations to explore innovation, creativity, the human-technology relationship, and other issues most relevant to their audience.
Contact the D’Amelio Network to check Abigail Posner’s availability, discuss your audience and event objectives, and begin the booking process.
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