DR LAURA HERMAN

Dr Laura Herman is not your typical tech leader. For the last three years, she has been straddling roles as a PhD researcher at Oxford University, a curator with work exhibited on the international stage, and a business leader at Adobe, where she makes cutting-edge research insights tangible and actionable for the organisation.

Laura's expertise lies in how emerging technologies are reshaping human creativity. As the Head of AI Research at Adobe, she is in the room where pivotal decisions about the future of AI and the creative industries are made—decisions that affect over 33 million customers.

In 2024, she completed her doctoral research on AI at Oxford University. Through her thought leadership, Laura also uplifts the voices of historically marginalised communities—particularly those of the Global South. Laura advocates for a radically inclusive, ethical, and transparent approach to emerging technologies, sharing both the ethical policies and technological solutions that her team has developed to mitigate harmful outcomes. In fact, both Arts Council England and the UK’s Department for Culture, Media, and Sport have consulted Laura on policies to ethically protect creativity in the age of AI.

As a keynote speaker, Laura unravels the complexity of new technologies using easy-to-understand language and compelling visual examples. At the same time, she is uniquely positioned to surface intricacies and nuances that enlighten and connect with C-level audiences. Beyond simply revealing changes, Laura provides her audiences with calls to action and step-by-step frameworks that will shape how they handle these changes for themselves, their teams, and their organisations.

Furthermore, Laura is a creative herself, having exhibited projects at the Tate Modern in London and Ars Electronica in Austria. She has even spent time working alongside one of the most famous living artists of our time, Olafur Eliasson, as his “Researcher in Residence.” Recently, the Serpentine Galleries in the UK asked Laura to influence the art world’s approach to emerging technologies by contributing to their Future Art Ecosystems report. Furthermore, Laura’s curatorial and research work has been covered by reputable media outlets such as the BBC, Forbes, Artnet, New Scientist, Newsweek, and the Wall Street Journal.

Selected coverage on AI: BBC, Newsweek, Forbes, New Scientist, Wallpaper, Wall St Journal, The Conversation

Selected Awards & Achievements

• Earned a doctorate in AI from Oxford University and held pivotal research roles at prestigious institutions, including Princeton and Harvard.

• United States Fulbright Research Award Winner

• Awarded a UK Arts & Humanities Research Council Fellowship 

• Zonta International Women in Technology Award Winner

• Dieter Schwarz-Oxford Internet Institute AI & Work Fellowship

• Webby Award: Creative Production App People’s Voice Winner 

• Awarded the George A. Miller Princeton University Prize in Cognitive Science
  

Thought Pieces

• Contributor for Serpentine Galleries’ Future Art Ecosystems Report

• Amsterdam University Press book: Feminist Futures of Work: Reimagining Labour in the Digital Economy (chapter)

• Blog Post for Erasmus University Rotterdam FemLab.Co

• Author & Editor of “A Practical Guide to Inclusive Research,” a series of 8 posts co-published with experts from Airbnb,

• Uber, Adobe, and Cisco

• Author of a “Hot Spot” for the Journal of Cultural Anthropology

• Author of blog post for XD Ideas

• Author of blog post for Adobe Blog
  

Past talks

• MIT’s Media in Transition Conference 

• White House Women in STEM Roundtable 

• 99U Conference

• Princeton University

• San Francisco Mayor’s Office of Civic Innovation 

• Adobe MAX

• Sorbonne Neurohumanities Conference 

• International Conference of Computational Creativity 

• Inclusive Work & the Platform Economy Conference

• Augmented World Expo 

• OpenIDEO