The #1 AI Reinvention Speaker. Trusted by Davos, Milken & PwCThe #1 AI Reinvention Speaker
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Keynote speaker on reinvention in the age of AI

The Art of Reinvention: The Vision Muscle™

In the age of AI, reinvention is no longer a choice.

True AI transformation needs both a creative spark and a practical path. Drue Kataoka bridges the two: a leading authority on visual AI whose studio does business in over 30 countries, a World Economic Forum keynote speaker and Young Global Leader, and a CEO who successfully built a global business.

Innovator Award, National Council of Women in GenAI. Member of the World Economic Forum Frontier AI Systems and Capabilities Working Group. Represented by Washington Speakers Bureau.

▶ Watch the speaker reel Check Availability
  • Fast response: We respond within 1 business day with availability and a fee quote.
  • Complimentary consultation: a 15-minute complimentary consultative call with Drue is available upon request.

Inquire about keynotes for industry conferences, executive retreats, partner and leadership summits, global leadership programs, board and C-suite offsites, sales kickoffs, and client and customer events.

Organizers, in their own words.

"Drue was captivating! Her presentation blended warmth, creativity, and cutting-edge insight in a way that left the audience buzzing. She brought clarity and inspiration to a complex topic, making us feel both empowered and hopeful about the future of AI."
Shamina Singh
Shamina Singh
Founder & President, Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth · EVP Sustainability, Mastercard

"If you want someone who will get your audience really thinking — and coming to you saying 'that really changed how I think' — then call Drue Kataoka. You won't be disappointed."

Jim McCann
Jim McCann
Founder & Chairman, 1-800-Flowers · Chairman, WORTH Media Group

"After Drue's keynote in Davos, you come out 'future ready.' She is unique in her ability to connect the inspirational and aspirational dimensions of leadership in the age of AI."

Murat Sönmez
Murat Sönmez
Former Managing Director, World Economic Forum

"What sets Drue's talks apart is their immersive, visually stunning nature — powered by cutting-edge visuals she personally creates with the latest AI tools."

Tan Le
Tan Le
Founder & CEO, Emotiv

"In our survey, attendees gave her session one of the best ratings we've ever seen — saying they were 'moved to tears' and 'blown away' by her talk."

Jason Preston
Jason Preston
Co-Founder, Dent The Future

"10 out of 10. Drue is magnetic on stage. She possesses that rare talent of grabbing a large, sophisticated audience's attention, keeping it, and leaving them wanting more."

Conrad Nowak
Conrad Nowak
Partner, Corboy & Demetrio · Chicago Sister Cities International

"Drue Kataoka is an artistic force of nature."

Wynton Marsalis
Wynton Marsalis
9-time Grammy winner · Artistic Director, Jazz at Lincoln Center
Inquire about Booking Drue

We respond within 1 business day with availability and a quote.

Watch Drue in action

90 seconds is all it takes to see why rooms remember her.

Why an artist

How an Artist Leads AI Transformation

When the old approaches stop working, most companies reach for a framework. Artists reach for vision.

In the age of AI, everybody has to become an artist of reinvention: to win in business, and frankly, to keep a job. Drue Kataoka has spent twenty years turning vision into finished work with frontier technology:

  • Paintingslaunched to Space and the International Space Station
  • Mirror sculpturesin collections across 30 countries
  • AI instrumentsbuilt in her own studio

As founder and CEO of Drue Kataoka Studios, she has spoken at the World Economic Forum, the Milken Institute, and events for Fortune 100 companies. As the only artist on the World Economic Forum Frontier AI Systems and Capabilities Working Group, and a leading practitioner of AI applications, Drue brings a hands-on perspective and first principle insights to her keynotes. She shows executives how to think like artists when the familiar answers stop working, and how to make what they see real.

Drue Kataoka delivering The Art of Reinvention, the capstone keynote of PwC's Network Leadership Development Program in Madrid
PwC Global Capstone for the Network Leadership Development Program
The keynote

A keynote crafted for your room.

A keynote customized to fit your needs, your industry and audience. Featuring the Vision Muscle™ framework.

For executive retreats, partner summits and leadership programs

The Art of Reinvention: The Vision Muscle™

Best for: Industry conferences, executive retreats, partner and leadership summits, global leadership programs, board and C-suite offsites, sales kickoffs, and client and customer events. Rooms from 15 to 2,000.

Every era of dramatic change produces a crucible, and AI is this generation's. Drawing on twenty years of reinventing her own practice, from sumi-e ink to sculpture in orbit to AI instruments, and on the reinventions of Steve Jobs, George Lucas, Oprah Winfrey and Leonardo da Vinci, Drue Kataoka shows why vision has become the scarce skill in the age of AI and how it is trained. The keynote is built around the Vision Muscle™, her method for seeing the future before it arrives, showing it to others and making it real.

Questions the keynote answers

  • Why is the dawn of AI a crucible moment? And what does this mean for your career?
  • How do you differentiate your skills in an era when everybody can do everything with AI?
  • What is the Zen paradox of reinvention, and how do you embrace it to your advantage?
  • How do you decide what part needs reinvention?

Attendees will leave with

  • Understanding of the crucible, and setting realistic expectations about reinvention
  • Practical insights to apply to reinventing your work and career
  • 4 ways to train your Vision Muscle™
  • Stories of inspiration from the great innovators of history
  • Top AI tools to start using today
  • The lesson of the blind master

Format45 to 60 minutes. Customized to your industry and audience.

Recently featured as the capstone keynote of PwC's global Network Leadership Development Program (Madrid, October 2026) and at Mastercard's Global Inclusive Growth Summit (2025).

The Art of Reinvention title slide on the stage screen at the PwC capstone in Madrid
For marketing leaders and teams

Reinventing the Art of Marketing in the Age of AI

Best for: CMOs and marketing leadership, growth, brand, insights and analytics teams, agencies, marketing conferences.

The flagship keynote, reframed for marketing. AI has made competent output abundant across the marketing process, from creative and content to web presence, customer journey mapping, product marketing and product-led growth. Drue applies the Vision Muscle™ to the decisions marketing organizations face now.

Questions the keynote answers

  • How do you apply the Vision Muscle™ to a launch, a rebrand, a package, a campaign?
  • How do you build a visual edge for your brand?
  • How do you stay distinctive when any competitor can use AI to clone your best work in an afternoon?
  • When an AI agent is doing the shopping, how does your brand get chosen?

Attendees will leave with

  • The 3 Second Rule and the 150 ms Rule: the two attention windows every brand now has to win, one human, one machine.
  • A Clarity and Distinctiveness lens for the age of AI, with tests you can run on your own brand the next morning.
  • First-hand stories from Drue's own practice, from an artwork that flew aboard the International Space Station to her collaboration with Disney's ILM, alongside lessons in vision and ambition from Jobs, Leonardo and Picasso.
  • A daily practice for building your own visual AI fluency.

Format45 to 60 minutes.

Recently featured at The Emerson Group's executive retreat on reinvention in the age of AI.

Drue Kataoka on stage at a keynote in Abu Dhabi, her artwork on the screen
For sales kickoffs and revenue teams

Reinventing the Art of Selling: How to Sell When the Prospect Already Knows Everything

Best for: Sales kickoffs, revenue and customer-facing teams, sales leadership summits.

When AI gives every buyer every answer, information stops being the product. The flagship keynote reframed for sellers: how to help a prospect see a future they cannot yet picture, and how to make that picture real with them. The Vision Muscle™ as a selling skill.

Questions the keynote answers

  • What is left to sell when the prospect already knows everything?
  • How do you help a customer see a future they cannot yet picture?
  • How does a sales team keep its edge when every competitor has the same tools?

Attendees will leave with

  • Understanding of the crucible moment for selling today
  • Practical insights to apply to selling visually
  • Stories of inspiration from the great salespeople and marketers of history
  • Top AI tools to start using today in your pitches
  • The lesson of the blind master

Format45 to 60 minutes.

Drue Kataoka speaking at an executive retreat
For industry conferences and associations

Reinventing Your Industry in the Age of AI

Customized per booking, for example Reinventing Banking in the Age of AI.

Best for: Industry associations, sector conferences, client and customer summits hosted by banks, consultancies and technology companies.

The flagship keynote built around your industry's own reinvention: the crucible your members or clients face, examples from their world, and the Vision Muscle™ applied to the decisions ahead. Drue has delivered customized versions for financial services, professional services, technology, healthcare, consumer companies and associations.

Format45 to 60 minutes.

Drue Kataoka on set, seated under a studio light while a crew films
For consulting, legal, accounting and advisory firms

Everybody Is Everything: Reinventing Professional Services in the Age of AI

Best for: Partner meetings and firm-wide events at consulting, law, accounting, advisory and agency firms; professional associations; any audience whose services AI now produces a competent version of.

With AI, everybody is a consultant, an analyst, a lawyer, a designer. The work that built these firms now has a competent machine-made version, and clients know it. The flagship keynote reframed for professionals: which part of expertise AI cannot copy, how to build on it, and how to move a practice from execution to vision.

Questions the keynote answers

  • How do you reinvent a service when the client can produce the first draft themselves?
  • Which part of your expertise cannot be copied, and how do you build your practice on it?
  • How do you move from being paid for execution to being paid for vision?

Attendees will leave with

  • Understanding of the crucible moment for your industry and career
  • Practical insights how to apply visual AI to differentiate yourself in the labor marketplace
  • Stories of inspiration from history and today
  • Top visual AI tools to start using today in your practice
  • The lesson of the blind master

Format45 to 60 minutes.

Drue Kataoka on stage at the Livelong Summit
For women's leadership events

My Journey of Reinvention as a Woman Leader

Best for: Women's leadership summits, women-in-business conferences, ERGs, resilience programs. Keynote or fireside.

Drue's own reinventions: building a global studio from a sumi-e brush; an artwork launched to the International Space Station; a collaboration with Industrial Light & Magic culminating in a sale at Phillips Auction House; a brush with mortality during childbirth; and the practice that carries you through the crucible. The Vision Muscle™ for women reinventing their careers and their companies.

Questions the keynote answers

  • Why is AI the greatest opportunity in decades to advance women's equality?
  • Why visual AI is so important for the next generation of women in AI?
  • Why the mother's instinct is essential for humanity's survival in the age of AI?

Attendees will leave with

  • 4 practical insights about leading in a male-dominated industry
  • Recipes to build resilience for an AI-centric workplace
  • The 3 big advantages and the 3 chief challenges that women will face in an AI workforce

Format45 to 60 minutes.

Drue Kataoka, portrait

Interactive sessions and workshops are available on request.

Explore the full library of talks
Inquire about Booking Drue

Download Drue's Speaker BioAV Rider

We respond within 1 business day with availability and a quote.

Drue Kataoka delivering The Art of Reinvention on the capstone stage of PwC's Network Leadership Development Program in Madrid
The Art of Reinvention · PwC Capstone, Madrid
The method

The Vision Muscle™

A vision must become real three times.

  • See it. First in your own mind.
  • Show it. Then in the minds of others.
  • Make it real. Then in the world.

As AI takes over execution, vision becomes the scarce skill. What the Vision Muscle™ is, why it decides who wins in the age of AI, and how to train it is the heart of the keynote.

The Vision Muscle loop: See it, Show it, Make it real, and back to See it See it Show it Make it real In your own mind In the minds of others In the world Again, with trained vision The Vision Muscle loop: See it, Show it, Make it real, and back to See it See it Show it Make it real In your own mind In the minds of others In the world
Case studies

Recent engagements

Audience
150 senior partners from across the global network, gathered in Madrid for the capstone of an 18-month program.
Desired outcome
Send partners back to their markets ready to make their leadership visions real, with a shared language for reinvention in the age of AI.
Drue's role
Drue delivered two keynotes. Her first opened the leadership forum. Her second was the culminating experience that closed the 18-month program.
Audience
More than 650 participants from 167 countries at the Global Inclusive Growth Summit in Washington, D.C., including more than 110 CEOs, ministers and global policymakers, and the Center's grantees.
Desired outcome
Open a summit on inclusive growth in the age of AI with a keynote that set its tone and connected AI leadership, trust and creativity for a room of decision-makers.
Drue's role
The only keynote of the summit.
Audience
Fifteen to twenty CEOs, CMOs and founders of consumer-brand companies at a two-day executive retreat.
Desired outcome
Equip executives to lead reinvention in the age of AI across the retreat's four themes: think, create, choose and grow.
Drue's role
This keynote applies the Vision Muscle™ to the decisions marketing leaders actually make: launches, rebrands, packaging and campaigns, and how a brand earns attention and stays distinctive when its competitors can ship work in minutes. It also addresses the new customer marketers have to build for, the AI agent, and gives actionable advice on how to win that customer.

Audience, in their own words.

"Drue's talk today was phenomenal."
Hitesh Wadhwa
Hitesh Wadhwa
Head of AI GTM, Google
"Drue's presentation was super-inspiring, because it allowed me to connect the visual world we live in, with the world of ideas"
Arturo Condo
Arturo Condo
President, Earth University
"So Drue challenged us, she made us laugh, she made us think. And I definitely have my marching orders from today."
Ronit Avni
Ronit Avni
Founder & CEO, Localized
"Being able to see Drue on stage doing her thing, and the information that she provided was totally something that I can't put a value on."
K. Durell Cowan
K. Durell Cowan
Executive Director at Heal 901

Built to anchor your program

Drue's keynote is designed to carry weight in an agenda: the opening provocation of an executive retreat, the creative chapter of a multi-speaker program, or the capstone that sends a cohort back to work with a shared language. She has anchored global leadership programs for professional-services networks, executive retreats for consumer companies, and convenings at the World Economic Forum and the Milken Institute. Every keynote is customized to your industry and audience after a planning call.

Easy to book, easy to work with

A planning call with Drue to understand your audience and your goals. A keynote customized to your industry. A team that has produced keynotes at Davos, Milken and Mastercard and takes the logistics off your plate, so everything is ready, tested and simple on the day.

We respond within 1 business day with availability and a fee quote. A 15-minute complimentary consultative call with Drue is available upon request.

Inquire about Booking Drue

We respond within 1 business day with availability and a quote.

Drue Kataoka laughing with the production team backstage before an interview in West Palm Beach
Where she has spoken

Keynotes on the world's most exclusive stages

  • World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, DavosOn the official program 4x
  • Milken Institute Global Conference, Beverly Hills & SingaporeOn the official program 3x
  • World Economic Forum and Young Global Leaders Annual MeetingsMore than 10, including the Annual Meeting of the New Champions in Dalian, China and the YGL Annual Meetings in Tokyo, Buenos Aires, Puerto Vallarta, Myanmar, Geneva, San Francisco, Beijing, etc.
  • Mastercard Global Inclusive Growth Summit, Washington, D.C.Opening keynote
  • PwC Global Capstone for the Network Leadership Development ProgramTwo keynotes, Madrid
  • The Emerson Group executive retreat on reinvention in the age of AIPhiladelphia
Drue Kataoka speaking on stage at the Milken Institute Global Conference, Beverly Hills
Milken Institute Global Conference, Beverly Hills
Drue Kataoka speaking at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, Davos
World Economic Forum Annual Meeting · Davos
As featured in
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What Drue does differently

She doesn't just explain AI.
She reminds people why humanity matters more than ever.

Drue brings the conversation back to the human center of AI: vision, imagination, taste, courage, and creativity. Through visually powerful storytelling and the perspective of a working artist, technologist, and CEO, she turns an abstract and often intimidating topic into something audiences can see, feel, and act on.

They leave inspired, with a framework they keep: a teachable way to lead with AI while strengthening the human qualities no machine can replace.

Drue Kataoka addressing a packed ballroom from the stage
Why Drue

There are AI commentators.
And then there's an artist who builds with it.

Plenty of AI speakers focus on the tech. Drue brings the human story to the center, showing why creativity, vision, and judgment become even more essential in the age of AI. Audiences leave inspired, energized, and equipped with a practical framework for leading with confidence. She builds the future she describes, and shows your audience how to do the same.

I.

She brings the human dimension of AI to life

Drue uses visually powerful storytelling to make AI feel tangible, human, and actionable. The keynote is a vivid experience that helps audiences understand what becomes possible when human vision and creativity guide new tools.

Drue Kataoka in profile before a rendered skyline, a self-portrait made with her own AI instruments
II.

She builds what she talks about

As founder and CEO of a global art studio serving clients in more than 30 countries, she speaks from building real things at scale, with the visuals she creates herself.

Drue Kataoka with her Sail Celestial Force sculpture
III.

Calibrated to your most senior room

Keynotes at Davos, the Milken Institute, Mastercard's Global Inclusive Growth Summit, and a private summit on Necker Island. At home in front of heads of state and Fortune 100 CEOs.

Drue Kataoka on a panel at the Milken Institute Global Conference 2025
IV.

A framework they keep

Her method, the Vision Muscle™, is the heart of every keynote. See how it works.

Drue Kataoka on a World Economic Forum panel at the Annual Meeting of the New Champions, Dalian
Drue Kataoka speaking at the World Economic Forum in Geneva, audience hands raised
World Economic Forum · Geneva
Drue Kataoka, keynote speaker on reinvention in the age of AI

An artist who builds the future, then teaches your audience to do the same.

Drue Kataoka is a globally renowned artist, technologist, and CEO of her eponymous Silicon Valley studio, serving clients in over 30 countries on five continents, and has launched two artworks into space.

A pioneer in technology art, she has worked with AI, VR, EEG, and NFTs, and collaborated with Disney LucasFilm's Industrial Light & Magic, Nobel laureates, astronauts, and global CEOs. Her work has been auctioned by Phillips and exhibited at the International Space Station.

She is a Stanford graduate, a WEF Young Global Leader, and a 2025 Innovator Award recipient from the National Council of Women in GenAI. A frequent voice at women's leadership summits.

Stanford University alum WEF Young Global Leader WEF Cultural Leader 2025 Women in GenAI Innovator Award Martin Luther King, Jr. Award · Stanford University
Frequently asked questions

The questions every organizer asks.

Fees vary by event format, location, date, and scope. Submit the form with your event details. We respond within 1 business day with availability and a fee quote.
Yes. Every keynote is customized after a planning call with Drue covering your sector, your audience's AI fluency, and your goals for the event. Drue creates the visuals for your room herself.
It's built for senior audiences and mixed rooms: visually driven, strategically framed, and free of jargon. Attendees leave understanding what reinvention in the age of AI means for their work and what to do next, whatever their starting point.
Yes. Drue speaks worldwide and has keynoted across five continents, plus virtual formats. Travel and timing are confirmed during booking.
Premium dates fill early, especially Q1 and Q4. If you have a date in mind, inquire now to confirm availability before it's taken, even if your plans aren't fully locked.
Most AI speakers describe the technology. Drue brings it to life as a working artist and CEO who uses these tools in her own creative practice. Her keynote combines visual power, strategic clarity, and deeply human storytelling, and gives attendees a method they keep: the Vision Muscle™.
Great events can come together on a compressed timeline, and Drue is committed to making it work when she can. Submit the inquiry form with your date and we will check availability immediately. If the timing truly isn't possible, she'll help point you toward a speaker who's the right fit.
A planning call with Drue to understand your audience and your goals, a keynote customized to your industry, and a team that has produced keynotes at Davos, Milken and Mastercard and takes the logistics off your plate, so everything is ready, tested and simple on the day. Technical requirements are in the AV rider.
Dates fill quickly. Check availability early.

Bring a keynote your audience will still be talking about.

Tell us about your event. We respond within 1 business day with availability and a quote. No obligation.

Inquire about booking a keynote

A few details, and we will be in touch right away.

We reply within 1 business day. Your details go only to Drue's booking team and are never shared.

Download Drue's Speaker BioAV Rider