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Session 1: Professor Vasant Dhar

Professor Vasant Dhar is an Artificial Intelligence researcher, data scientist and host of the podcast, "Brave New World," which explores how AI and other technologies are transforming humanity. He brought Machine Learning to Wall Street in the 90s and subsequently founded the Machine-Learning-Based hedge-fund SCT Capital Management. Dhar’s latest book, Thinking With Machines, tells the story of artificial intelligence from its origins to today from the perspective of one of the first researchers, practitioners, and teachers of this pivotal technology.

Thinking with Machines: How We Got Here and What Comes Next

Artificial intelligence has evolved through decades of research, experimentation, and real-world application. Professor Vasant Dhar traces its journey from early academic foundations to his pioneering work bringing AI to Wall Street in the 1990s. He connects those early breakthroughs in data-driven decision making to today’s challenges of trust, governance, and human judgment in the age of modern AI. Participants will leave with a clearer understanding of how the past informs the next chapter of intelligent systems.

 

Session 2: Professor Foster Provost

AI Strategy and the Economics of Prediction: Driving Value in the American Market

AI deployments often fail not due to technical flaws, but due to a misalignment between machine learning capability and core business strategy. This session provides senior executives with a clear, non-technical framework for translating AI/ML projects into demonstrable economic value, with a focus on competitive dynamics and deployment best practices common among successful U.S. technology leaders.

For more than 25 years, Professor Provost has helped leaders in business and government understand how data science, artificial intelligence, and machine learning technologies can add value. His book Data Science for Business is required reading in many of the top business schools, and was listed as one of Fortune Magazine's "must read books for MBAs." He has designed AI/machine learning systems for some of the largest companies in the world and worked with the DoD on the application of AI/machine learning to counter-terrorism.

Session 3: Professor Anindya Ghose

Professor Ghose is Academic Director of the MSBAi program, a first mover among b-schools. He is recognized by Thinkers50 as one of the Top Management Thinkers globally most likely to shape the future of how organizations are managed and led in the next generation and recipient of the Distinguished Achievement Award Nomination for 'Digital Thinking'. His newest book is titled THRIVE: Maximizing Well-Being in the Age of AI.

Blueprints for an AI Driven Economy: Regulation, Reskilling, and Transformation

This talk will open with an overview of the emerging AI technology stack and its regulatory risks based on the ringside testifying experience of Professor Anindya Ghose in the highly visible and closely watched antitrust lawsuits brought by the US and European governments against Google and Meta during the last 5 years. He will then showcase how businesses can unlock value with the “House of AI” -- a structured approach to adopting descriptive, predictive, causal, and prescriptive AI methods using his academic research and consulting experience with over 45 companies across 20 countries and 12 industries over the last two decades. The framework calls for a Marshall Plan–style effort to reskill the workforce for an AI-augmented economy and is based on his best selling and award winning books, THRIVE and TAP. The talk will also include his recent academic work on the economics of generative AI, highlighting some unexpected outcomes in the digital economy.

Session 4: Professor Michael Posner

AI, Ethics, and the Global Corporation

AI doesn’t just transform productivity—it challenges our ethical foundations. Professor Michael Posner, a former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, will explore the complex human rights questions emerging from widespread AI adoption. From algorithmic bias to supply chain transparency, this session will offer executives a clear-eyed look at the risks—and responsibilities—of leading with AI at global scale.

Michael Posner is the Director of the Center for Business and Human Rights at the School, the first-ever human rights center at a business school. Prior to joining NYU Stern, he served in the Obama Administration from 2009-2013 as Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor.

Capstone Panel Discussion:
 Professor Scott Galloway
 Professor Jonathan Haidt
Professor Suzy Welch

Capstone Panel

Participating virtually

Scott Galloway is Professor of Marketing at NYU’s Stern School of Business and a serial entrepreneur. He was named one of the world’s best business professors by Poets & Quants. Scott has founded nine companies, including Prophet, RedEnvelope, L2, and Section School, where he also teaches. He is the New York Times–bestselling author of The Four, The Algebra of Happiness, Post Corona, Adrift: America in 100 Charts, The Algebra of Wealth: A Simple Formula for Financial Security, and Notes on Being a Man. Scott has served on the boards of directors of The New York Times Company, Urban Outfitters, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, Panera Bread, and Ledger. He has won multiple Webby and Best Podcast awards, and his books have been translated into 28 languages. Across his Prof G Pod, Prof G Markets, Raging Moderates, Pivot podcasts, No Mercy / No Malice newsletter, and his YouTube channel, Scott reaches millions.

Jonathan Haidt (pronounced “height”) is a social psychologist at New York University’s Stern School of Business. Since 2018 he has been studying the contributions of social media to the decline of teen mental health and the rise of political dysfunction. In his most recent release, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness he brings to light the “great rewiring of childhood” in which play-based childhood has been replaced by phone-based childhood. Jon continues to push towards the reforms to put an end to the youth mental health crisis through his public health campaign, The Anxious Generation.

Haidt is also the author of The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom, and of The New York Times bestsellers The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, and The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas are Setting Up a Generation for Failure (co-authored with Greg Lukianoff). He has written more than 100 academic articles, which have been cited nearly 100,000 times. In 2019 he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was chosen by Prospect magazine as one of the world’s “Top 50 Thinkers.” He has given four TED talks and strives to shine a light into what makes morality with his continued work.

Over the course of her multifaceted 40-year career, Professor Welch has been a crime reporter in Miami, a consultant at Bain & Co., and a columnist for O: The Oprah Magazine. A graduate of Harvard University and Harvard Business School, she has been (and remains) a contributor to the Today Show and an op-ed contributor to the Wall Street Journal.

With her late husband, Jack Welch, Professor Welch is the author of two international bestsellers, Winning, in 2005, and The Real-Life MBA, in 2015. On her own, she is the author of the 2008-2009 New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller 10-10-10: A Life-Transforming Idea, a decision-making concept she originally wrote about as a columnist for O: The Oprah Magazine. Professor Welch’s newest book is Becoming You: The Proven Method for Crafting Your Authentic Life and Career.

Professor Welch joined the faculty of NYU Stern School of Business in 2020 as a clinical professor of management practice, teaching “Becoming You: Crafting the Authentic Life You Want and Need” and “Managing with Purpose”. Professor Welch is also the director of the NYU | Stern Initiative on Purpose and Flourishing, a community of management scholars and practitioners committed to advancing the discovery of authentic meaning.

Human After All? AI, Work, and What We Need to Get Right
A no-holds-barred conversation on the myths, risks, and real opportunities of AI in the workplace.

In this wide-ranging conversation, three of the most influential voices in business and society tackle the uncomfortable truths about AI and the workplace. From the unraveling of middle management to the rise of algorithmic decision-making, this session will challenge conventional thinking about leadership, culture, and the human role in a tech-dominated future.

No scripts. No softballs. Just straight talk about where we’re headed—and what it will take to lead through the turbulence.

For more information, please reach out to the Executive Education team.

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