Abigail Posner

“THE HUMAN CODE”

Anthropologist and former director, U.S. Creative Works, Google. Becoming irreplaceable in an AI world.

Abigail Posner speaker, conferencias, human code, AI
English
Futurist and Technology · Innovation and Creativity · Strategy and Corporate Culture

Abigail Posner 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.

 

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.

 

Then, for thirteen years as director of U.S. Creative Works at Google, Abigail Posner 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.

 

At Google’s Creative Works, Abigail Posner 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.

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.​

She regularly shares perspectives on innovation, creativity, and the human-technology relationship at conferences and business gatherings all over the world.

Conferences

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Activate AI Like a Boss: A Leader’s Playbook for Getting Your Team On Board, Moving, and Winning with AI.

AI isn’t going to replace your team. But a team that knows how to use AI will replace the one that doesn’t.

AI is changing how work gets done, what teams look like, and what leadership actually requires. Most organizations know they need to become AI-native. What they don’t know is how to get their people there – genuinely, not grudgingly.

The problem isn’t that teams don’t understand AI – it’s that no one has given them a clear path forward. Leaders have issued the mandate. But the gap between “we need to embrace AI” and “here’s exactly how we do that” is where momentum dies and quiet resistance takes root.

This keynote fills that gap. As CEO of FutureThink, Lisa Bodell didn’t just study AI adoption – she led it, using her own team as a live case study. What she discovered wasn’t a technology problem. It was the absence of a clear, human-centered approach to getting started.

Lisa shows leaders how to reframe AI as an amplifier of human talent, not a threat to it – starting small and visible, picking the right first use cases: low-stakes, high-annoyance work everyone is glad to hand off, so early wins build trust faster than any town hall. Organizations that follow this roadmap don’t just adopt AI – they build cultures where AI is embraced, used, and continuously improving alongside their people.

This isn’t a tour of AI tools. It’s something harder and more valuable – how to get your team to actually adopt AI and make it stick. The leaders who win won’t be the ones who moved fastest. They’ll be the ones who brought their people with them.

Key Takeaways:

• A strategic roadmap for becoming an AI-native organization – from team alignment to building, measuring, and scaling AI in practice.
• A framework for mapping work into what to automate, what to keep human-led, and what to protect as distinctly human.
• The language, rhythms, and practices that build genuine momentum and make adoption stick.
• The confidence to go first – and the tools to bring your team with you.

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