Daniela Busse, Ph.D.

About Daniela

Daniela Busse translates AI disruption into product innovation, strategic clarity, and meaningful impact. Her work sits at the intersection of emerging technology, human insight, product and business strategy, and organizational transformation. She brings a rare combination of AI and human-centered development expertise, senior product and innovation leadership, and a deeply human understanding of how people, teams, and organizations make sense of technological change. Daniela has held leadership roles in strategy, incubation, and corporate transformation at Meta, Microsoft, Samsung, and Citi Ventures, with a track record of scaling breakthrough innovations and driving large-scale change. Her work has helped organizations navigate major technology shifts, from enterprise platforms and mobile ecosystems to wearables, social technology, consumer experiences, and now AI-native products and organizations. Her experience spans the full arc from research and opportunity discovery through strategy, incubation, product development, launch, and scale. Having spent much of her career inside product and technology organizations, she brings an operator's understanding of what it takes to move an emerging idea beyond the innovation stage and into the core business. Across Fortune 50 companies, AI-native technology organizations, and high-growth start-ups, Daniela helps leaders make sense of what is changing, identify where new opportunities are emerging, and translate those insights into products, experiences, capabilities, and strategies that create durable business and human value. She holds a Ph.D. in AI / Cognitive Modeling and advises CEOs and executive teams at Fortune 500 companies and high-growth start-ups on AI-native human-centered product and business strategy, innovation, scaling, and organizational transformation. Her speaking and advisory work focuses on AI-native products, experiences, and business models; enterprise and agentic AI transformation; human judgment and leadership in the AI era; responsible AI, governance, autonomy, and accountability; and emerging technology as a driver of innovation and future growth. Her industry experience includes enterprise software, consumer technology, fintech, social technology, digital platforms, mobile, wearables, venture innovation, and the Silicon Valley start-up ecosystem. Daniela is also an active ecosystem builder in Silicon Valley. She serves as Co-Chair of the AI Leaders’ Club, a network of 2,000+ product and technology Director+ leaders including from OpenAI, Google, Meta, Snowflake, Glean, AWS, and other leading AI and technology organizations. She also serves as Vice-Chair of GABA's Board of Directors, an award-winning transatlantic organization that acts as an innovation catalyst connecting the European ecosystem with Silicon Valley. She co-founded and helped build GABA’s Founders’ Hub & Masterclass series, supporting European start-ups entering the U.S. market through founder education, executive programming, and Silicon Valley ecosystem connections. GABA's annual awardees include Europe's most successful innovators, entrepreneurs, business leaders, and investors. As a speaker, panelist, workshop leader, and moderator, Daniela draws on decades of operating experience at the intersection of emerging technology, product, strategy, and transformation. She combines executive-level substance and practical experience with warmth and clarity, helping audiences move beyond AI hype toward sharper questions, better judgment, and more actionable insight on AI innovation, leadership, and the future of organizations. She regularly convenes and moderates senior executive discussions with technology leaders, founders, investors, and operators, creating conversations that are both intellectually rigorous and highly engaging. Audience and peer feedback has described her as “an exceptional moderator,” “deeply thoughtful,” and “able to make complex topics feel clear, relevant, and energizing.” Her sessions are known for combining executive-level substance with human-centered perspective, creating conversations that are both intellectually rigorous and highly engaging. ******************************************************************************** Selected Speaking, Moderation & Thought Leadership ✨ The Economist / "Future-proofing business for the AI economy" (Sept 2026) Invited by The Economist to join its “Future-proofing Business for the AI Economy” panel, alongside the CTO of Box and other technology and business leaders. Daniela brought her perspective on how leaders can identify what AI makes newly possible, translate those opportunities into differentiated products and growth strategies, and build the organizational capabilities required to deliver them at scale. ✨ Chief Product Officer Summit San Francisco | “The Great Product Reset: Leading in the Agentic AI Era” (Oct 2026) Invited main-stage panelist at the CPO Summit, an invite-only gathering of C-suite product leaders, alongside the Chief Product Officers of Ingram Micro, NetApp, and Samsara. The discussion explores how agentic AI is resetting product leadership, from how products are conceived and built to the organizational models, judgment, and leadership capabilities required in an AI-native era. ✨ SXSW 2027 Proposal | “Beyond the Binary: How AI Changes Who We Become” (Submitted) AI is moving us from a digital era built on fixed categories, profiles and reductive signals toward context-driven interaction that is fluid, relational and unpredictable. Through the lenses of strategic forecasting, tech futuring, and product innovation, this panel explore how leaders can preserve human complexity and turn an expanding field of possibility into relevant systems and futures that deepen rather than diminish our humanity. Daniela Busse, Ph.D., Marieke van der Poel, and Abi Awomosu. South by Southwest (SxSW) is one of the premier gatherings for innovators and visionaries shaping business and tech. ✨ Stanford / Corporate Innovation in the Age of AI (March 2026) Invited panelist at a Stanford corporate innovation discussion focused on how AI is changing the practice of innovation, venture building, and strategic transformation, alongside JLL Spark Managing Partner Raj Singh, Health2047 CEO Larry Cohen, Ph.D., and former Nike innovation leader Singari Seshadri. Core themes included how AI compresses experimentation cycles without replacing strategic judgment, why organizational capacity is often the bottleneck rather than technology access, and how established companies can create protected but connected spaces for AI-enabled innovation. ✨ AI Leaders’ Club | Co-Chair, Moderator & Convener (2026-present) As Co-Chair of the AI Leaders’ Club, a Silicon Valley network of 2,000+ product and technology leaders, Daniela regularly convenes, speaks at, and moderates executive conversations on enterprise AI, generative AI, agentic AI, AI governance, product innovation, and organizational transformation. Recent and prior speakers have included senior AI, product, and technology leaders from Meta AI, Google Cloud, OpenAI, Snowflake, Adobe, Glean, AWS, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Gartner, and Hitachi Ventures. Recent topics include AI agents in production, autonomy and accountability, enterprise AI adoption, AI-native product and business strategy, and the future of intelligent organizations. https://aileadersclub.org/ ✨ Human + Technology Week | “The Irreplaceable Core: Human Emotion and Leadership in the AI Transformation” (May 2026) Daniela joined Human + Technology Week’s Thought Leadership Forum as a featured panelist in a discussion on the human side of AI transformation, alongside Google AI Transformation VP Ryan Vauk, and John Hagel, former founder and co-chair of Deloitte’s Center for the Edge and long-time Silicon Valley thought leader. The session explored why emotion, trust, identity, curiosity, judgment, and leadership matter more, not less, as AI reshapes work and organizations. Key themes included the need to move beyond efficiency-only narratives, design AI transformation around human capacity and meaning, and help leaders build organizations where people can adapt, learn, and contribute at a higher level. ✨ TechEx / Digital Transformation Week North America | AI, Enterprise Transformation & Platform Strategy (May 2026) Daniela moderated at TechEx / Digital Transformation Week North America, a large-scale technology conference with 8,000+ attendees, bringing together enterprise leaders, technologists, and innovators across AI, digital transformation, IoT, cybersecurity, cloud, data, and automation. Her session focused on how AI and platform strategies are reshaping enterprise transformation, with discussion across product, technology, organizational readiness, customer value, and the operating models required to turn emerging capabilities into real business impact. ✨ CHIEFx San Francisco | AI Transformation (Nov 2025) Invited panelist at CHIEF's prestigious CHIEFx event in San Francisco. As a founding member of CHIEF and an active contributor to the San Francisco executive community, Daniela has spoken, hosted, and facilitated conversations for senior women executives on AI, innovation, leadership, and the future of work. Her CHIEF-related work includes as invited panelist at CHIEF's flagship CHIEFx event alongside senior leaders such as a Salesforce SVP and a frontier model company VP, as well as ongoing AI thought leadership for the CHIEF SF community. Her sessions help executives move beyond hype toward clearer strategic questions: where AI creates value, how leadership changes in the AI era, and what organizations must do differently to stay adaptive. ✨ CHIEF | Leading Through AI Disruption with John Hagel III (April 2026) Daniela conceived and hosted an intimate executive conversation with renowned Silicon Valley strategist and author John Hagel III, exploring what AI disruption demands of leaders and organizations. Designed as a highly interactive session for a select group of senior executives, the conversation examined how leaders can move beyond fear-based responses to technological change, develop opportunity-based narratives, and build the organizational capacity to learn, adapt, and create new value through disruption. The session was produced in partnership with CHIEF and John Hagel’s Center for Growth. ✨ GABA Founders’ Hub | Co-Founder & Ecosystem Builder (2025 - present) Daniela co-founded and helped build GABA’s Founders’ Hub, a platform supporting European start-ups entering the U.S. market. Through founder education, executive programming, and Silicon Valley ecosystem connections, the Founders’ Hub helps entrepreneurs sharpen their U.S. market strategy, understand customer and investor expectations, and build stronger bridges between European innovation ecosystems and Silicon Valley. ✨ Responsible AI, Ethical AI & AI Governance Daniela’s responsible AI work combines technical grounding, governance perspective, and human-centered judgment. She holds a Responsible AI certification, has spoken on responsible AI and AI accountability through the AI Leaders’ Club, and has been invited to join the global board of Women in Ethical AI. Her perspective focuses on how organizations can build AI systems that are useful, trustworthy, accountable, and aligned with human and organizational values. ✨ Awards, Recognition & Invitations Daniela was shortlisted for the Women in Innovation award 2025 and was invited to join the TED Vancouver community (2026), reflecting recognition of her voice at the intersection of AI, innovation, product strategy, and human-centered transformation. Earlier recognition includes Samsung’s Outstanding Inventor Award. In 2025, during her service as Vice-Chair, GABA received the German-American Friendship Award from the Government of the Federal Republic of Germany for its work strengthening transatlantic innovation, entrepreneurship, and business exchange between Europe and Silicon Valley.

Speaking topics

Thought leadership

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