Gerd Leonhard

One of the most influential people in the world of Artificial Intelligence and Humanity. As a Futurist and Humanist, Gerd tells the story of People, Planet, Purpose and Prosperity.

Books

Friction is Fiction: The Future of Content, Media & Business, Technology vs Humanity: The coming clash between HUMANITY man and machine

Language (s)

English, German, working knowledge of French

Travels From

Zurich, Switzerland

Engagement Fee

Europe 10,000-25,000, North America 25,000-40,000, Vegas 50,000

Biography

Gerd Leonhard is a renowned futurist and keynote speaker, with unparalleled expertise in a wide range of topics centered around future developments and their associated implications for business and society. With years of experience in future thinking, Gerd has been credited with playing a vital role in shaping the future of the world, influencing business leaders and policymakers in creating long-term futuristic plans.

From his early years as a musician, Gerd emerged as a powerful voice within the technology sector and became a highly informed and respected thought leader in future thinking. He has taken his powerful presentations and seminars to some of the most prestigious organizations around the world, including Google, Facebook, the European Commission, and the United Nations to name a few.

Through his speeches and written works, Gerd talks about emerging technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence, automation, and sustainability, and how they impact humanity and businesses. He emphasizes the need for a paradigm shift in our approach to business as we undergo the rapid changes occurring in our world today. Gerd believes that an exponential mindset is a key driver of innovation and must be embraced to ensure that we are prepared for the vast array of challenges that will inevitably arise.

Gerd is an accomplished author and has written widely on topics related to future thinking, including his bestselling book “Technology vs. Humanity,” which addresses the ethical and moral implications associated with advances in technology. He also created the FutureShow on YouTube, where he explores the impact of emerging technologies on the world around us and how individuals and organizations should react accordingly.

Today, Gerd is widely recognized as one of the world’s foremost futurists, with a highly sought-after voice that educates and inspires all audiences alike. His unique blend of insightful knowledge, humor, and intuition makes for highly engaging presentations that stand to enlighten anyone who hears them. With an ability to integrate a range of specialized knowledge into easily digestible takeaways, Gerd’s audiences depart wiser, but most importantly, with renewed hope in our capacity to forge a better tomorrow.

“People, Planet, Purpose and Prosperity” is Gerd Leonhard’s motto, and helping to create ‘The Good Future” is his key objective. Gerd is one of the top-rated futurists worldwide; he has presented at over 1700 leading conferences and events over the past 20 years and has worked with the likes of Microsoft, NBC, Visa, Google, the European Commission, L’Oréal, Audi, Deloitte and IBM. Gerd has influenced and inspired Millions to “imagine and create a better tomorrow”. He was named as one of Wired UK’s Most Influential Europeans in 2015 and is listed as #7 in the global ranking of futurists.
As a leading voice on the future of humanity, and the bestselling author of “Technology vs Humanity: The Coming Clash Between Man and Machine”, Gerd has built a storied reputation as the go-to keynote speaker and thought leader when it comes to digital ethics, human-centric technology, sustainability, and the need for a new, future-fit economic logic.

Since 2020, Gerd has further developed his uniquely immersive ‘keynote television’ style and has quickly become one the most popular virtual keynote presenters worldwide. Gerd is also a former professional musician, a critically acclaimed film-maker and producer, a successfully failed .com paper-millionaire, a fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts (London), and a Visiting Professor at the Fundação Dom Cabral in Brazil.
Gerd is no stranger to media, frequently sharing his often controversial but always prescient views in publications such as The Guardian, Harvard Business Review, Business Insider, Wired UK, and contributing interviews to the BBC, CNN, Arirang TV, Swiss SRF, ZDF, ARD, ARTE, and appearing as special guest in many documentaries.

Gerd Leonhard in Action

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Testimonials

Gerd is an inspirational and re-assuring voice of common sense and future focus. He makes sense of a near time reality that is full of uncertainty, excitement and challenge. I would recommend Gerd to any group looking to examine how their business can succeed in the next frontier.

Simon Baggs,

President, Brand Protection Corsearch Inc.

A big Thank You to Gerd: your professionalism, great content, fantastic coordination and enthusiasm made our event a huge’ success.

Marilena Pappa

KPMG Greece

Gerd has the ability to take you on a journey into possible futures without fear. A call for us all to spend time thinking about the future and being ready for it when it arrives – hugely inspiring and thought provoking. Everybody can benefit from listening and talking to this man!

Simon Hocquard

Director General

We invited Gerd for our primary guest speaker at “The Human-Centric Future” event, Online and in Milan in January 2021. Gerd’s extraordinary, inspirational vision of the future was much appreciated by our clients

Elisa Robustelli

Sponsorship Manager ManpowerGroup

Gerd Leonhard has delivered a highly acclaimed, thought provoking and insightful keynote speech on the Sustainable and Digital Transformation at our global DHL Auto-Mobility conference.

Fathi Tlatli

President Global Auto-Mobility DHL

Gerd really made a big difference to our event because when he speaks about the future changes, technology, behaviors, he worries about connecting all of these changes with the audience reality, showing that it is possible to succeed, as humans, in this new world. He connects to the audience in a way that we feel that there is space for both humans and technology to live together.

Patricia Bastos

Communications Director Tetra Pak, Brazil

In our Annual Meeting, we had Gerd with us (virtually). This meeting’s motto was “It is up to you”, looking forward to BA Glass future. It was fundamental to count on Gerd participation to take us into the Future. Gerd did an exciting presentation around the opportunities and risks we have in hand, reminding us that asking “how the Future will be?” is the wrong question. “The Future will be what we will make of it!”, he wisely said. Thank you Gerd, for your enormous inspiration.

Sandra Santos

CEO BA GLASS

Gerd allows the audience to travel to and from the future. The result remains long after the conference, when you rewind his presentations after a few years, and see it happening in front of your eyes. I had the pleasure to hire Gerd when I was at Pestana Hotel Group, and this specific event reached the highest score ever in 4 decades. Gerd is a pleasure to work with, and I highly recommend his services.

Nuno Pires

CEO SPORT●TV

Working with Gerd was an excellent experience, and he definitely pushed our executives’ thinking forward. Not only did he outline major technological and societal trends affecting our business, he did so in a way that was engaging and personal

Adam Carroll

VP, Global Talent Management Inter Public Group

CommunicAsia was truly honored to have Gerd Leonhard as one of our keynote speakers for this year. Gerd’s addition to the Summit has been breathtaking and inspirational. His visionary address on The Next 5 years in Global Digital Transformation truly captivated the audience. Thank you for being with us!

Jaime Ng

Conference Director Singapore Exhibition Services

Your presentation was a huge success. You managed to scare delegates to death and give them hope at the same time – quite a feat and exactly what they needed! Thank you also for crafting your ideas so that it tied very directly into our business, rather than being just a rehash of a standard presentation.

Clive Viegas Bennett

CEO MGI Worldwide London

Gerd was the opening keynote speaker at our social media and content marketing event and made a huge impact to all 400 listeners. People discussed and quoted him through-out the day and in many blog posts afterwords. We organizers were all very happy about this

Sanna Salovuori

Co-founder PING Helsinki event

Gerd came in remotely and lit up our Conference, everyone was talking about his thought provoking insights throughout the rest of the day!

Jeremy Hope

Head of IT Sales and Solutions

Gerd provided amazing collaboration and partnership during our recent futurist-focused client event in Southern, California….our client was thrilled and the attendees took away a great wealth of information that will surely help them increase revenues and surpass their competitors using the technology-focused information provided during his presentation.

MD

T.A. Cook and SAP

Gerd was this year’s opening speaker at InnoTown – Next Technologies. From the first contact Gerd was a pleasure to work with, and his talk was an absolute thrill, with his high energy presentation style and great visuals. He received top-notch ratings from the InnoTown-crowd

Dag Lausund

Managing Director InnoTown

We’ve hired Gerd a number of times over the years to keynote our events. Gerd is super professional, collaborative, efficient, absolute pleasure to work with. Perhaps more importantly he is also an inspirational speaker who not only gets tech/marketing but also the bigger picture around society, behaviour and business. And he used to be a professional guitarist – what more could you want?

Ashley Friedlein

Founder, Econsultancy & Chairman Ably GmbH

Gerd made a great contribution and was a pleasure to work with on our FODM event. His session was a fantastic addition to the programme and a great success. He was delivering a great presentation about future trends.

Kelly Head

Speaker Liaison Executive Econsultancy London

Gerd Leonhard distinguishes from other futurists trough his emphaisis on the human factor in the story between man and machine. While some focus on predicting what technology will bring soon, he actively searches a positive story for humanity and he clearly sets limits on technology

Kristoff Vandermeersch

Stimulearning HR Expo

Eye-opening, thought-provoking, brilliant….. Gerd’s visionary speech challenges the very core of our beliefs, he can link seemingly unrelated trends and deliver a presentation in engaging and entertaining fashion.