Richard Yonck is an international keynote speaker, global futurist, and best-selling author who journeys with audiences into the future to explore the potential impacts of emerging trends and technologies on business, industry, and society. With a background in strategic foresight, computer science, and media, Richard has advised companies and organizations on emerging trends for nearly three decades, helping leaders understand how accelerating technologies reshape markets and culture.

His clients include global Fortune 500 companies such as Amazon, Microsoft, Samsung, and Xerox; major industry associations including TIAA and the American Cancer Society; and government agencies and NGOs such as UNDP, NATO, and state boards of education.

As an international keynote speaker, Richard explores emerging technologies including artificial intelligence, healthcare, biotechnology and genetics, transportation, robotics, and future innovation. He guides audiences in understanding the key considerations, opportunities, and societal ramifications of these advances in order to navigate toward a preferred and more resilient future.

Richard is an avid writer and thought leader. His latest book, Mindstock, is a science-fiction techno-thriller that extrapolates many of today’s technological, social, and political trends into the near future. His nonfiction work includes Future Minds, which examines the origins and future trajectory of human and artificial intelligence, and Heart of the Machine, which studies technologies that will allow computers and robots to read, interpret, and influence human emotions. Now in its second edition and translated into multiple languages, Heart of the Machine is required reading in university courses around the world.

Richard covers AI and emerging technologies for the technology news outlet GeekWire, and has been published by or quoted in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Scientific American, Forbes, Wired, Fast Company, BBC News, and many others. He is a member of the Association of Professional Futurists, the National Association of Science Writers, and is also a TED speaker.

Committed to democratizing futures thinking, Richard believes that strategic foresight and science literacy can empower individuals, organizations, and societies to make better long-term decisions in an increasingly complex world.