Simon Johnson, Head of Global Economics and Management group, MIT Sloan School of Management
Simon Johnson is the Ronald A Kurtz (1954) Professor of Entrepreneurship at the MIT Sloan School of Management, where he is head of the Global Economics and Management group. At MIT, he is also co-director of the Shaping the Future of Work Initiative and a research affiliate at Blueprint Labs. In 2024, Johnson received the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in memory of Alfred Nobel, joint with Daron Acemoglu and James A Robinson, 'for studies of how institutions are formed and affect prosperity'.
Jonathan Ashworth, Chief Economist, ACCA
Jonathan joined ACCA following roles as a China economist at Fathom Consulting, and global and UK economist at Morgan Stanley, and has held economist/global macro strategy positions at Barclays Wealth. He has also worked as an economist in the Productivity & Structural Reform team at Her Majesty’s Treasury, where he did work on the famous ‘Five Tests’ of whether Britain should join the euro. He has a MA degree in Economics from Duke University and a First Class Honours degree in Economics from Hull University. He has been cited in The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times and The Economist magazine, and has appeared on the BBC, Sky News and CNBC. He authored a book ‘Quantitative Easing: The Great Central Bank Experiment’, and his academic work has been cited by major global institutions such as the IMF, OECD, BIS, Fed, BoE and the ECB.
Arvind Narayanan, Professor of Computer Science, Princeton University
Arvind Narayanan is a professor of computer science at Princeton University and the director of the Center for Information Technology Policy. He is a co-author of the book AI Snake Oil and a newsletter of the same name which is read by 60,000 researchers, policy makers, journalists, and AI enthusiasts. He previously co-authored two widely used computer science textbooks: Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies and Fairness in Machine Learning. Narayanan led the Princeton Web Transparency and Accountability Project to uncover how companies collect and use our personal information. His work was among the first to show how machine learning reflects cultural stereotypes. Narayanan was one of TIME's inaugural list of 100 most influential people in AI. He is a recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE).
Alistair Brisbourne, Head of Technology Research, ACCA
As the Head of Technology Research within the Policy and Insights team, Alistair Brisbourne leads on research that supports the ACCA’s global technology and skills agenda. Alistair joined the ACCA from BDO where he managed the Research and Commercial Insights team, and previously lectured at the University of London. He holds an MSc from University College Dublin and a Doctorate from Royal Holloway, University of London.
Vera Cherepanova, Executive Director, Boards of the Future
Vera Cherepanova is the executive director of Boards of the Future, a global non-profit advocating for increased representation of risk, ethics, and compliance professionals on corporate boards. She is also the founding partner of Studio Etica, a boutique consultancy advising companies worldwide on corporate ethics and compliance programmes. Vera serves on the Advisory Council at Ground Truth Intelligence, a global due diligence platform, and the Steering Committee of ComplianceNet, an interdisciplinary network focused on compliance research. She is the author of Corporate Compliance Program, the first book on compliance in Russian, widely used as a textbook in Russian-speaking countries, as well as a contributor to The Transnationalization of Anti-Corruption Law and other guides on business ethics, compliance, and risk management. A prolific writer and speaker, Vera is a columnist at Corporate Compliance Insights and has been featured in publications such as the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, and Law360. She has delivered keynotes, panels, and workshops at leading organizations and events, including The World Bank, OECD, and the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics. Her work has earned her recognition as a thought leader in the fields of risk, compliance, and corporate governance.
Rashika Fernando FCCA, Vice President, RBC Capital Markets
Rashika Fernando is vice president, Portfolio Governance and Analytics, Business Transformation, RBC Capital Markets. He has led large organisational change initiatives at CIBC (Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce) and Scotiabank. He is an FCCA and a CPA (Canada).
Rachael Johnson, Head of Risk Management and Corporate Governance - Professional Insights, ACCA
Rachael Johnson is ACCA's head of risk management and corporate governance for Policy and Insights. She has over 20 years’ experience creating thought leadership on a range of risk and governance topics, from ESG risk and impact investing to risk modelling and ERM. In 2022, she was awarded the DCRO's Risk Exemplar's award. Additionally, she is a member of both Accountancy Europe's (AcE) Corporate Governance Policy Group and the Business at OECD (Biac) Committee for Corporate Governance. She also serves on the Good Governance Academy's ESG Exchange's Technical Committee.
Alec Manning FCCA, Head of Data Science, Three UK
Alec leads Three UK’s data science team. Having started his career in accounting and senior finance roles in industry, he became captivated by the transformative power of data science, prompting a pivotal shift in his professional trajectory through an MSc in Data Science.
Joanna J Bryson, Professor of Ethics and Technology, Hertie School
AJoanna J Bryson has been Professor of Ethics and Technology at Hertie School, Berlin since February 2020. She is globally recognised for expertise in intelligence broadly, including AI policy and impacts. Her original academic focus was behavioural ecology, using AI for scientific simulations of intelligence. During her PhD on systems engineering of AI, she observed the confusion generated by anthropomorphised AI, leading to her first ethics publication Just Another Artifactin 1998. In 2010 her work in AI ethics was first recognised by a policy body when she was invited to participate in the UK research councils’ Robot Ethics retreat, where she coauthored the UK’s (EPSRC/AHRC) Principles of Robotics, the world’s first national-level AI ethics soft policy. Her present research focus is the impact of intelligent technology on economies, security, and human cooperation. She also studies transparency for and through AI systems, technological impacts on power, interference in democratic regulation, the future of labour, redistribution, and digital governance more broadly. She consults frequently on policy and science including to government entities in Germany, the UK, the EU (EP/EC), US, Singapore, Switzerland, and Canada; transnational organisations including Unesco, the UN, OSCE, OECD, CoE, EuroMed; NGOs such as the Red Cross, Chatham House, IEEE, WEF. In 2020, Germany nominated her to the Global Partnership of AI, where she chaired an AI Governance committee. She holds two degrees each in psychology (BA Chicago & MPhil Edinburgh) and AI (MSc Edinburgh & PhD MIT). From 2002-2019 she was Computer Science faculty at the University of Bath, where she founded and led their AI research group; she has also held postdoctoral, sabbatical, or visiting positions at Harvard (Psychology), Oxford (Anthropology) Nottingham and Mannheim (Social Science), The Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research, and the Princeton Center for Information Technology Policy.
Michael Mainelli FCCA, Chairman, Z/Yen Group
Michael is a scientist and economist promoting societal advance through better finance and technology. Originally a research scientist in aerospace (rocket science) and computing (architecture & cartography), educated at Harvard, Trinity College Dublin, he gained his PhD from the London School of Economics, where he was also visiting professor in innovation and IT. He became a senior partner of accountants BDO Binder Hamlyn, and corporate development director for the Ministry of Defence’s Defence Evaluation & Research Agency. During a mergers & acquisitions spell in merchant banking with Deutsche Morgan Grenfell, in 1994 he founded Z/Yen, the City of London’s leading think-tank. Z/Yen is renowned for its Global Financial, Green Finance, and Smart Centres indices, as well as notable ‘firsts’ in technology research. Michael has decades of experience with technical and commercial aspects of AI & predictive analytics, as well as machine learning since 1978, bringing support vector machine approaches to the UK from within the MoD, and has built almost 50 operational systems, several of which are still in operation today. Michael has decades of experience with community enforced standards markets and is senior non-executive director of UKAS, the sole national accreditation body for standards and laboratories.
Ciarán Hickey, Partner, AI & Data, EY Ireland
Ciarán is a partner in data & analytics, specialising in data science and artificial intelligence, leading the AI team across the island of Ireland. Ciarán partners with EY’s clients to understand their challenging business problems and to develop innovative solutions, leveraging data, analytics and AI services to support them in transforming their operations.Prior to joining EY, Ciarán worked with IBM where he led the cognitive & analytics practice in Ireland and was a global instructor for data science, training the global analytics teams in best practices, complex analytical problem solutions and innovative ways of working. Ciarán holds a first class Honours MSc in Business Analytics from UCD & is a Master Certified Data Scientist. He was awarded the ‘Analytics Practioner of the Year’ award in 2020 by the Analytics Institute of Ireland.
Sarah Lane, Head of Ethics and Assurance, ACCA
Sarah is head of ethics and assurance within ACCA’s Policy and Insights team, representing ACCA globally in ethics across different countries and industries, including ACCA’s Global Ethics Forum. She leads ACCA’s policy on ethics and assurance matters, contributing to policy and insights thought leadership publications and responses to consultations in relation to ethics and assurance. In this work, Sarah takes a holistic view on how our fundamental principles underpin ethics for professional accountants, reflecting the professions recognition of its public interest responsibility. Before joining ACCA, Sarah worked in risk and compliance across various industries. Sarah has a degree in Business Studies and prior to joining ACCA, began her career in auditing and accounting across various industries and countries, including KPMG Dublin specialising in auditing clients, mainly within the financial services industry before consulting for Mazars. Sarah has also worked with Chartered Accountants Ireland on a technical basis and is a Fellow of CAI.
Pradeep Debata FCCA, Doctoral Researcher, University of Cambridge
Pradeep Debata is an expert on AI strategy and governance with over 20 years of academic and industry experience. He is currently a doctoral researcher at University of Cambridge and holds an honorary position at the Cambridge Judge Business School; where his research focuses on the impact of AI adoption on the business model and how organisations can adopt AI responsibly, balancing innovation with enterprise risk and regulatory accountability. He has contributed to both industry and academic publications in the areas of AI adoption, AI governance and financial education. During his time at JPMorgan and Nomura, Pradeep led valuation governance and model risk initiatives across complex derivatives portfolios and contributed to developing new benchmarks in the global financial services industry. He has experience in managing risk amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars dynamically in highly autonomous model driven environment, which he believes is a benchmark for AI adoption in high-risk environment. Pradeep frequently moderates industry panels on AI adoption and transformation, bridging theory and practice.
Georgiana Marsic
Georgiana Marsic is a digital leader with over 25 years of experience in artificial intelligence, data science, data analytics and digital transformation. At Jaguar Land Rover, she has led enterprise-wide AI initiatives, designed JLR’s Ethical Data & AI Governance Framework, authored JLR's Data and AI Ethics principles, key AI policies and processes, established and chaired JLR's AI Steering Group, transformed Corporate Audit into a data-driven function, while also enhancing the organisation’s literacy in AI and other data-driven digital technologies. With a PhD and MSc in AI / NLP, she has delivered impactful AI solutions across automotive, energy, healthcare, and academia. She collaborates with ISO and BSI on international AI standards and supports AI education at the University of Warwick. Her ability to pair strategic vision with a collaborative mindset has consistently driven transformative business results, establishing her as a trusted authority in responsible and impactful AI development.
Jamie Lyon FCCA, Global Head of Skills, Sectors and Technology, ACCA
Jamie is based in London and leads a team of policy and insight experts who are dedicated to exploring the most significant challenges impacting the business world and global economy. Aside from his leadership responsibilities, Jamie particularly specialises in the future of work, human capital, and talent management issues impacting the workplace today.
Andrew Chong FCCA, CEO and Founder, uPledge BV
Andrew is a serial entrepreneur in the field of fintech and proptech. He has built a global career with a strong foundation in corporate finance and a passion for innovation. He transitioned from EY Malaysia to becoming a key player in EY Global's Transaction Services innovation, as well as EY Wavespace's Centre of Excellence in Artificial Intelligence. Andrew is also a member of ACCA's Global Technology Forum, as well as the ACCA Malaysia Digital and Technology Taskforce, sharing his expertise in artificial intelligence, fintech, and strategic product development.
Dr Ansgar Koene, EY Global AI Ethics and Regulatory Leader, Ernst & Young LLP
Dr Ansgar Koene engages with policy developments around the governance and regulation of artificial intelligence (AI). He works with policymakers, regulators, industry leaders and other stakeholders to support the trustworthy use of AI for the benefit of people, society and organisations. Ansgar is actively engaged with the AI standards development and advises on AI and data ethics for various NGOs and research consortia. Ansgar has a multi-disciplinary research background, ranging from policy and governance of algorithmic systems, data-privacy, AI ethics, AI standards, robotics to computational neuroscience. He holds an MSc in Electrical Engineering and a PhD in Computational Neuroscience.
Narayanan Vaidyanathan, Head of policy development, ACCA
Narayanan develops, presents and oversees policy, research, and insights content. He is an experienced commentator on matters pertaining to responsible and trustworthy AI, for eg AI assessments and assurance, risks, governance, standards, policy and regulation. He also leads a globally distributed cross-cultural team of policy professionals who comment on a variety of areas from sustainability and audit to tax and financial reporting. He has an extensive understanding of working with finance professionals and policymakers, also working closely with Public Affairs colleagues globally. Narayanan was at the heart of developing the refreshed Global Policy Priorities of ACCA launched in 2025, that encompass bridging the accountancy skills gap, driving sustainable business and championing the professional accountant.
