02

The Listening Crisis

Intelligence is not something we possess. It arises through relationship — with soil, with body, with those who came before, with the more-than-human world.

We built systems that forgot this. That's not a technology problem. It's a listening crisis.

After two years immersed in research for her book, Leadership Legacy (Wiley, 2026), and the artistic research project Cartography Is Not Home, Ada returns to the stage in 2026.

Download speaker pack (PDF)
Ada Parris on stage at TEDxAmsterdamTEDxAmsterdam · 180 Upon Reflection

One idea. Three rooms.

For technology, leadership & innovation conferences

Cyborg Shamanism: Leading Alongside AI

Your delegates have sat through the AI briefings. They know the tools. What they haven't been given is language for what they're actually sensing — that something more fundamental has shifted, and acceleration alone won't address it.

The most urgent question in any room right now is not "how do we use AI?" It is "why have we stopped listening?" These are not separate questions. This keynote reframes the AI conversation as a question of attention — and gives leaders the precise language for what they have been sensing but could not say.

Audiences leave with:

  • — A new frame for AI adoption that reduces resistance and increases coherence
  • — Language for the cultural shift that strategy documents can't capture
  • — A diagnostic question every leader can apply immediately to their team

For arts, culture & research spaces

Cartography Is Not Home

Your audience works at the edge of knowledge — questioning whose frameworks get funded, whose intelligence gets cited, whose future gets imagined. They've felt the limits of the inherited maps. They want someone who can name what the maps leave out.

The maps we inherited — of knowledge, of intelligence, of what counts — were drawn on the wrong assumption. Drawing on ongoing artistic research across Egypt, Guyana, and Nigeria, this keynote asks: what do we find when we listen to what the maps left out? The knowledge systems closest to the answer are the least consulted.

Audiences leave with:

  • — A framework for epistemic diversity that goes beyond representation
  • — Practical methods for surfacing the intelligence your systems aren't designed to see
  • — A new way to talk about decolonial leadership without the language that shuts rooms down

For regenerative, ecological & purpose-driven spaces

Human. Humility. Humus.

Your audience is already committed to regenerative thinking. What they're looking for is depth — a speaker who can hold the ecological and the personal together, and who speaks from practice rather than theory.

Three words from the same root. This keynote traces what we forgot when we built systems that untether from the source — and what becomes possible when we return. A practice in deep listening for leaders navigating ecological responsibility, regenerative transformation, and the question of what it means to lead from the soil up.

Audiences leave with:

  • — An embodied, memorable framework for regenerative leadership
  • — A somatic entry point that makes ecological thinking felt, not just understood
  • — Practical language for purpose that connects daily decisions to long-term legacy

Keynote · 45–60 minutes

Extended Session · 90 minutes with structured audience dialogue

Immersive Experience · Multi-day, incorporating live field recordings, material objects, and structured audience practice

For AI ethics, technology, futures & foresight conferences

New · In development

Who Owns Intelligence?

Nature Wrote the Code First — and Now They've Put a Fence Around It

Your audience is navigating AI strategy while sensing that something deeper is at stake. They've read the policy papers and the risk frameworks. What they haven't been given is a frame for the central question: who gets to own intelligence, who is granted access, and who bears the cost of the infrastructure that powers it.

This keynote traces the extractive logic underneath the technology we've been asked to trust — from the architectures that were copied and fenced, to the communities that paid the cost while the value was extracted. It moves from the current crisis of access toward the longer research question: what does intelligence look like when it grows instead of maps?

Audiences leave with:

  • — A frame for AI sovereignty that goes beyond regulation and policy
  • — Language for the extractive logic underneath AI infrastructure — usable in boardrooms, not just activist spaces
  • — A research proposition connecting ancestral intelligence to the most urgent questions in responsible AI

All talks tailored to your context. Bespoke programmes available.

Google · Meta · Lloyds Banking Group · Unilever · NatWest · Klosters Forum · Tate Modern · TEDx · CogX · World Trade Centre Amsterdam · IAB Italia · London Interdisciplinary School · Medicine Festival

"Adah gave a fresh perspective the audience really held onto, and fired us all up to think differently, out of the day-to-day detail."

— Fiona Couper, Chief Marketing Officer, VCCP

"Her grasp of the issues was thorough, and I actually learned things about my own work. One of those discussions you spend days unpacking."

— Paul Mason, journalist and film-maker

"Adah brought fresh thinking and unconventional exercises, and pushed us all to reflect on what really matters. So much positive feedback from the team."

— Barbara Ryl, Global Brand Manager, Unilever

"Adah connects across topics to put together the bigger picture. Immediate, actionable learnings and real food for thought. Invaluable."

— Andy Postert, Google

Download speaker pack (PDF)

Speaking enquiries — adah@adahparris.com