- New York
Abigail Posner Keynote Speaker
- Harvard-trained anthropologist who brought her human focus to drive growth and innovation at Google and the world's top ad agencies.
- Pioneered Humanizing Digital; anthropology-based series exploring how, as tech got smarter, humanness became more valuable.
- Helps leaders master what makes them uniquely powerful—their Human Code—to create sharper ideas, deeper influence, and become irreplaceable in an AI world.
Abigail Posner's Biography
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.
SPEAKS ABOUT: Leadership • Innovation • Creativity • Strategic Thinking • Becoming Irreplaceable • Navigating Change • Human-AI Collaboration • Organizational Culture • Generating Big Ideas
Abigail Posner's Speaking Topics
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.
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 needs. They’re wrong—and this presentation shows 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 a lack of creative capacity, but a lack of tools to find it, trust it, and activate it. In an era of AI, that capacity matters more than ever.
In this electrifying, mind-expanding talk, Abigail Posner shows every person in the room how to unlock their innate creative potential using a toolkit that blends anthropology, neuroscience, real-world business examples, and AI-powered analysis.
Audiences leave equipped with concrete tools to activate their creativity immediately.
Tangible Takeaways:
- Understand why distinctly human creativity is the new competitive advantage
- Learn how to nurture and activate creative potential to generate bold ideas
- Apply cross-disciplinary thinking from anthropology, neuroscience, and technology
- Use a full-spectrum toolkit—from observation to AI analysis—to uncover new ideas
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 remains vastly underestimated.
Your boldest ideas and sharpest instincts have always been there—but ingenuity, the ability to apply those ideas to solve real problems, is often buried under the mental load of everything else. AI changes that.
By taking on the rote and analytical, AI frees your most original, emotionally intelligent thinking to reach new levels of impact.
In this inspiring, provocative talk, Abigail Posner reframes AI as a tool for expanding human capability and provides a practical framework for using it to think bigger, not just faster.
Audiences leave with their thinking expanded and a clear path to applying AI as a creative force multiplier.
Tangible Takeaways:
- Understand ingenuity as the combination of creativity and execution in an AI-driven world
- Learn how AI amplifies human creativity in new and emerging ways
- Explore a new lens on human–technology partnership grounded in anthropology
- Apply a practical framework to push thinking further using AI
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