Amy Webb
Futurist, Business Strategist, NYU Professor
Forbes called Amy Webb “one of the five women changing the world.” She was honored as one of the BBC’s 100 Women of 2020 and was named to the prestigious Thinkers50 Radar list of the 30 management thinkers most likely to shape the future of how organizations are managed and led.
Webb is a professor of strategic foresight at the NYU Stern School of Business where she developed and teaches the MBA-level strategic foresight course with live case studies. She is a Visiting Fellow at Oxford University’s Säid School of Business, a Nonresident Senior Fellow in the Atlantic Council’s GeoTech Center, a Fellow in the United States-Japan Leadership Program, and a Foresight Fellow in the U.S. Government Accountability Office Center for Strategic Foresight. She was elected a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
She was a Visiting Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, where her research received a national Sigma Delta Chi award. She was also a Delegate on the former U.S.-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission, where she worked on the future of technology, media, and international diplomacy.
Webb is the author of several popular books, including The Big Nine: How the Tech Titans and Their Thinking Machines Could Warp Humanity, which was longlisted for the Financial Times & McKinsey Business Book of the Year award, shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Digital Thinking Award, won the Gold Axiom Medal and was named Amazon’s best book about technology for 2019. The Big Nine is a sobering analysis of the present state of artificial intelligence, the conflict between the US and China, and what will happen to business and society during the next 50 years as AI evolves.
A Washington Post bestseller, The Signals Are Talking: Why Today’s Fringe Is Tomorrow’s Mainstream, explains Webb’s process for tracking signals and trends and how any organization can identify risk and opportunity before disruption hits. Signals won the Thinkers50 Radar Award, was selected as one of Fast Company’s Best Books of 2016, Amazon’s best books 2016, and was the recipient of the Gold Axiom Medal for the best book about business and technology.
Her bestselling memoir Data, A Love Story is about finding love via algorithms. Her TED talk about Data has been viewed more than 9 million times and has been translated into 32 languages. Data is being adapted as a feature film, which is currently in production.
Webb writes extensively about biotechnology, artificial intelligence, technology policy, and business strategy. She regularly contributes to a number of publications, including the MIT Sloan Management Review, Harvard Business Review, New York Times, Wired, Fortune, Mother Jones and others. Amy’s future forecasting work has been featured in the New York Times, Harvard Business Review, Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, CNN, NPR, and more.
A lifelong science fiction fan, Webb collaborates closely with Hollywood writers and producers on films, TV shows and commercials about science, technology, and the future. Recent projects include The First, a sci-fi drama about the first humans to travel to Mars, and an AT&T commercial featuring a fully-autonomous car. She is a member of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences and has served as a Blue Ribbon Emmy award judge. “Amy Webb showed Comic-Con how it’s done,” declared the Los Angeles Times, describing the 2019 main stage Westworld session she moderated with the show’s actors and showrunners.
Webb originally attended the Jacobs School of Music to study classical clarinet and served on the Board of Directors for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. She holds a B.A. in political science, game theory, and economics from Indiana University and an M.S. from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She also earned Nikyu Certification in the Japanese government-administered Language Proficiency Test. In addition, she earned the rank of Shodan (first-degree black belt) in Aikido, but a serious accident during training a few years ago forced her to retire. She lives in New York City.
Webb is a professor of strategic foresight at the NYU Stern School of Business where she developed and teaches the MBA-level strategic foresight course with live case studies. She is a Visiting Fellow at Oxford University’s Säid School of Business, a Nonresident Senior Fellow in the Atlantic Council’s GeoTech Center, a Fellow in the United States-Japan Leadership Program, and a Foresight Fellow in the U.S. Government Accountability Office Center for Strategic Foresight. She was elected a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
She was a Visiting Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, where her research received a national Sigma Delta Chi award. She was also a Delegate on the former U.S.-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission, where she worked on the future of technology, media, and international diplomacy.
Webb is the author of several popular books, including The Big Nine: How the Tech Titans and Their Thinking Machines Could Warp Humanity, which was longlisted for the Financial Times & McKinsey Business Book of the Year award, shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Digital Thinking Award, won the Gold Axiom Medal and was named Amazon’s best book about technology for 2019. The Big Nine is a sobering analysis of the present state of artificial intelligence, the conflict between the US and China, and what will happen to business and society during the next 50 years as AI evolves.
A Washington Post bestseller, The Signals Are Talking: Why Today’s Fringe Is Tomorrow’s Mainstream, explains Webb’s process for tracking signals and trends and how any organization can identify risk and opportunity before disruption hits. Signals won the Thinkers50 Radar Award, was selected as one of Fast Company’s Best Books of 2016, Amazon’s best books 2016, and was the recipient of the Gold Axiom Medal for the best book about business and technology.
Her bestselling memoir Data, A Love Story is about finding love via algorithms. Her TED talk about Data has been viewed more than 9 million times and has been translated into 32 languages. Data is being adapted as a feature film, which is currently in production.
Webb writes extensively about biotechnology, artificial intelligence, technology policy, and business strategy. She regularly contributes to a number of publications, including the MIT Sloan Management Review, Harvard Business Review, New York Times, Wired, Fortune, Mother Jones and others. Amy’s future forecasting work has been featured in the New York Times, Harvard Business Review, Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, CNN, NPR, and more.
A lifelong science fiction fan, Webb collaborates closely with Hollywood writers and producers on films, TV shows and commercials about science, technology, and the future. Recent projects include The First, a sci-fi drama about the first humans to travel to Mars, and an AT&T commercial featuring a fully-autonomous car. She is a member of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences and has served as a Blue Ribbon Emmy award judge. “Amy Webb showed Comic-Con how it’s done,” declared the Los Angeles Times, describing the 2019 main stage Westworld session she moderated with the show’s actors and showrunners.
Webb originally attended the Jacobs School of Music to study classical clarinet and served on the Board of Directors for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. She holds a B.A. in political science, game theory, and economics from Indiana University and an M.S. from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She also earned Nikyu Certification in the Japanese government-administered Language Proficiency Test. In addition, she earned the rank of Shodan (first-degree black belt) in Aikido, but a serious accident during training a few years ago forced her to retire. She lives in New York City.
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