Ada Parris.
From 2023 to 2025, I stepped back from the public circuit. I worked privately with senior leaders across sectors, mapped twenty years of pattern work, and wrote the book. Leadership Legacy (Wiley, 2026) is the result. The keynotes are built entirely from that research.
My art and advisory work are not separate. The maps are the research. That research shapes a Salon conversation, and the Salon becomes a keynote. This whole cycle, not any one part of it, is what makes me useful as a coach and advisor.
People come to me because they want someone honest, someone they can trust with what that honesty uncovers.
How the work begins
Before strategy, frameworks or answers comes the chance to stop. I created the SOIL salon practice so people can hear what is really happening in the room.
Where the questions come from
My ancestral DNA research traces seven lineages (East African, West African, Coptic Egyptian, Ashkenazi Jewish, South Indian, Southern European, and British/Irish) and informs my central artistic research project, Cartography Is Not Home, to be shown publicly in 2026. As an Honorary Fellow at Arts University Plymouth, my ongoing research explores material intelligence through sonic field recording, DNA sonification and mycelium-printed structures. The frameworks (Four Freedoms™ 2018, Cyborg Shamanism™ 2019, The Myth of the Ego 2020) come from this research, not from following trends.
Six years, six frameworks
Each framework arrived alongside a major shift in AI. That is not a coincidence. Each one returns to the same underlying question as the technology changes.
- 2018Four Freedoms™
What if identity, culture, economics and ecosystems were never separate problems?
GDPR came into force, the same year Cambridge Analytica broke. Algorithmic accountability entered public debate for the first time.
- 2019Cyborg Shamanism™
What if technology was never separate from consciousness?
OpenAI withheld GPT-2, calling it too dangerous to release. The first time an AI lab staged a release around fear rather than capability.
- 2020Myth of the Ego
What if colonialism, capitalism and climate collapse are the same pattern wearing different faces?
GPT-3 launched as Covid pushed daily life online almost overnight. A leap in capability landing on a population with no choice but to live through screens.
- 2024Five Elements / TERRA Method™
What if complexity has a shape you can actually navigate, not just survive?
Generative AI went fully mainstream. The EU AI Act passed, the first real attempt to draw legal boundaries around a technology that had already outpaced them.
- 2025Presence as Technology
What if slowing down is itself the technology, not the thing standing in its way?
The conversation shifted from what AI can do to what it's doing to us. Agentic AI raised new questions about consent and control.
- 2026Cartography Is Not Home
What if the map was never the territory, and we've been living inside the map?
The UN General Assembly passed the “Correct the Map” resolution, 164 to 1. The first time a body of that scale formally acknowledged that inherited data systems encode historical bias at civilisational scale.
Longlisted for Computer Weekly's Most Influential Women in UK Tech every year for the last seven years. The questions I ask have become harder, not easier. The fact that the industry keeps recognising the work is what gives me hope.
What the work leaves behind
I developed Source Patterns Intelligence™, the TERRA Method™ and Threshold Sittings. I have held rooms for Google, Meta, Lloyds Banking Group, National Grid, Adidas, Unilever, Shelter, Tate Modern, the Buckminster Fuller Institute and TEDx. Forbes has recognised me among the world's most influential futurists. I am a member of the IEEE Global AIS Flourishing Initiative.
What the work is for
I am the author of Leadership Legacy (Wiley, 2026) and Chair of Mental Health First Aid England. My work on Cyborg Shamanism™ was published in Atmos in 2024. My central artistic research project, Cartography Is Not Home, will be shown publicly in 2026. It is the long-running research that everything else builds on.
KES Summit · Brazil · 2023- Author, Leadership Legacy: A Manifesto for Mindful Thriving (Wiley, 2026)
- Chair, Mental Health First Aid England. Over one million people trained
- Contributor, IEEE Global AI Systems Flourishing Initiative
- Member, WWF Innovation Wisdom Council
- Seven times longlisted, Computer Weekly Most Influential Women in UK Tech
- TED Global Emerging Innovator · Fellow, RSA · Honorary Fellow, Arts University Plymouth
- Clients include Google, Meta, Lloyds Banking Group, National Grid and Adidas
- Forbes Brazil: one of the world's most influential futurists
- Trustee, School of Communication Arts 2.0
- Stages: Google · Meta · Lloyds Banking Group · TEDx · Tate Modern · CogX · Klosters Forum · Deeply Human Summit · World Trade Centre Amsterdam · Medicine Festival · IAB Italia
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