Rhodes Forum on Technology & Society 2026

The Honourable Randy Boissonnault, P.C., is a former Canadian federal Cabinet Minister whose portfolios delivered lasting policy change at the intersection of work, capital, and migration. As Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Official Languages, he led the federal policy and funding that reshaped how Canada recognizes foreign credentials, opening faster pathways for skilled newcomers as automation and demographic change redraw career paths. Earlier, as Minister of Tourism and Associate Minister of Finance, he led development of Canada's Open Banking framework, now being implemented nationally. He is the first openly gay Rhodes Scholar to serve in Canadian Cabinet, and Co-Founder of the Global Equality Caucus, an international network of LGBTI+ legislators and allies. Before politics, Randy spent over a decade as an entrepreneur and management consultant, advising small and mid-sized businesses on strategy and growth. Today, through his firm Superbia Group, he advises organizations on trade, workforce, and market-entry strategy across international corridors — a vantage point spanning government, enterprise, and policy.

Dr Jennifer Cearns is a Lecturer in AI at the University of Manchester's Department of Social Anthropology. Her research sits at the intersection of digital anthropology and artificial intelligence, and explores how generative AI is reshaping ideas of the self, empathy, and connection in increasingly mediated worlds. She is currently Editor of the Anthropology and AI series at the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Anthropology, and brings over a decade of industry consultancy experience applying ethnographic methods to UX, healthtech, and commercial strategy. In 2026 she gave the main-stage TED Talk "How AI Makes Us More Human", and she is regularly invited as a keynote speaker and to appear on television and radio to talk about her work.

Simon is the CEO of LIONS, the global organisation behind WARC, Effie, Contagious, and the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. Following a career in advertising, he has spent the best part of two decades at LIONS, leading its transformation from an advertising festival into a year-round institution at the centre of the global creative economy. Under his leadership, LIONS has expanded its role and reach in setting global standards and convening the leaders and organisations shaping creativity, culture, and commerce. His work is often driven by a belief in creativity as an economic force, and in creating the conditions that allow people, organisations and industries to do extraordinary things.

Daniele De Martini is an Associate Professor in Mobile Robotics at the Oxford Robotics Institute and the Oxford e-Research Centre, University of Oxford, and a Tutorial Fellow in Engineering Science at Keble College. His research combines robotics and artificial intelligence to design autonomous systems capable of perception, mapping, localisation, and adaptive decision-making. His research centres on Site-Driven Robotics, where robots and their surrounding infrastructure work together to achieve safe, scalable autonomy. This shifts the focus from robots acting alone to systems in which robots and infrastructure share sensing, decision-making and control as conditions change. He aims to turn whole spaces into active partners that help fleets navigate, coordinate, and work safely alongside people.

Sarah is the co-founder of Squiggly Careers a company with a mission to make careers better for everyone. Together with her co-founder Helen, she’s the author of 3 Sunday Times bestselling books, The Squiggly Career, You Coach You and Learn Like a Lobster. Their podcast Squiggly Careers has had more than 6 million downloads and their TEDx talk The best career path isn't always a straight line has been watched by over 2 million people. In 2026 Sarah and Helen were named in the top 10 most influential thinkers in HR. Sarah is an alumnus of Harvard, London, and Warwick Business Schools and is currently working on an Executive PHD. She also holds a number of non-executive positions supporting organisations who have a focus on making work better. Sarah lives in the UK with her partner and bug loving 9-year old.

Anna Ganley is Chief Executive of the Society of Authors – the UK’s largest trade union for writers, illustrators and literary translators at all stages of their careers. They have been advising individuals and speaking out for the profession for more than a century. Anna is also Chair of the Creators' Rights Alliance – a coalition that exists to promote, protect and further the interests of creators through policy, advocacy and campaigning work. Anna sits on the board of the International Authors Forum and the London Book Fair Advisory Board. Anna grew up on the north-east coast. She received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Durham and her MA in Management from Durham Business School.

Professor Michael Kidd AO FAHMS is the Chief Medical Officer for Australia; in this role he is the key medical adviser to the Australian Government and the Australian Department of Health, Disability and Ageing. He also holds a joint academic appointment as the foundation Director of the International Centre for Future Health Systems at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, and as Professor of Global Primary Care and Future Health Systems at the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences at the University of Oxford, where he is also a Senior Research Fellow of Green Templeton College, a Fellow of Kellogg College, and co-director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Centre on Primary Health Care. He is a past President of both the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners and the World Organization of Family Doctors.

Dr Rebecca Lewis is a women's hormone specialist and co-founder and director of Newson Clinic, Balance App, Newson Health Research & Newson Education which she helped establish with Dr Louise Newson in 2018. She is passionate about transforming women’s lives through evidence-based care, education and advocacy.

Oleksandra Matviichuk is a human rights lawyer, head of the Center for Civil Liberties that works to defend freedom and human dignity in Ukraine and the OSCE region. She has experience in creating horizontal structures for massive involvement of people in human rights activities against attacks on rights and freedoms, as well as a multi-year practice of documenting violations during armed conflict. She is the author of a number of reports to various UN bodies, the Council of Europe, the European Union, the OSCE and the International Criminal Court. After the beginning of Russian full-scale invasion, Matviichuk together with other partners created the ‘Tribunal for Putin’ initiative in order to document international crimes under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court in all regions of Ukraine, including the occupied territories.   In 2016 she received the Democracy Defender Award for "Exclusive Contribution to Promoting Democracy and Human Rights" from OSCE. In 2017 she became the first woman to participate in the Ukrainian Emerging Leaders Program of Stanford University. In 2022 Oleksandra Matviichuk was awarded with the Right Livelihood Award, the Sakharov Prize from the European Parliament and recognized as one of the 25th influential women in the world by Financial Times. In 2022 she received the Nobel Peace Prize for the work of her organization the Center for Civil Liberties. In 2025 she received the Dutch Auschwitz Award. In 2026, she was named a Honourable Member of European Order of Merit by European Parliament, an honor recognizing her significant contribution to European integration and the protection of European values.

Judith Merkies has a habit of being right too early. She raised loneliness as a European policy issue in 2010, when it was dismissed as outside EU competence, and has spent the years since moving it from the margins to the centre of the policy conversation. She is completing a PhD on why organisations exclude beauty from their decision-making. The underlying question is the same: what do institutions fail to see until it becomes impossible to ignore? Today she leads the policy work of LONELY-EU, a Horizon Europe consortium addressing loneliness and social isolation across EU Member States, based at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. A former Member of the European Parliament and international lawyer, she holds Dutch, Hungarian and Canadian nationality and works in five languages.

Parker Mitchell is the founder and CEO of Valence, the AI company building a modern talent system for the enterprise and helping companies reinvent work and HR for the age of AI. Valence’s AI coach, Nadia, is the most widely used AI coach in the Fortune 500, with global deployments at Coca-Cola, Delta, CVS, The Home Depot, Kraft Heinz, Merck, and more. Parker has a lifelong fascination with how technology can make work more purposeful and productive. An early researcher in language models, he founded Canada’s Engineers Without Borders and served as deputy to the co-CEO at Bridgewater, where he led systematic, people-first transformation. Over the past decade, Parker has been named Entrepreneur of the Year by Ernst & Young, selected as one of Canada’s Top 40 Under 40, awarded two honorary doctorates in engineering, and honored with the Government of Canada’s Meritorious Service Cross.

Tom Monahan is Vice Chairman of the Board and CEO of Heidrick & Struggles, the global leadership advisory firm that has been at the center of the most consequential leadership decisions companies make for more than seven decades. Before joining Heidrick, Tom was President and CEO of DeVry University, where he still serves as Board Vice Chair and Compensation Committee Chair, and Executive Chair of ProKarma, a digital platform and service pioneer in the Carlyle portfolio. Prior to this, Tom spent more than two decades at CEB, the research and advisory firm, where he served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer and built the business into a partner to more than 10,000 organizations worldwide, before its merger with Gartner. Tom is also a board member of TransUnion (NYSE: TRU) and chair of its Compensation Committee, and a trustee of the Johns Hopkins Health System and the Meridian International Center. He earned an MBA from NYU’s Stern School of Business and an undergraduate degree from Harvard University.

Dr Helen O’Neill is Associate Professor of Reproductive and Molecular Genetics in the Department of Maternal and Fetal Medicine at the UCL Institute for Women’s Health, where she researches early human development and teaches medical and postgraduate students. She holds a PhD in Stem Cell Biology and Developmental Genetics, an MSc in Prenatal Genetics and Fetal Medicine. She is also Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Hertility Health, a women’s health diagnostics company combining clinical care, artificial intelligence and large-scale data to improve reproductive and hormonal healthcare. Through Hertility, she has built one of the world’s largest multimodal women’s health datasets and leads the development of GYN-AI™, a clinical decision-support platform enabling earlier, more accurate diagnosis for over 18 conditions. A founding member of the RCOG Genomics Taskforce, Helen is a TEDx speaker and media commentator. Hertility was given the 2026 World Economic Forum Technology Pioneers Prize.

Prof Michael Sandel teaches political philosophy at Harvard University. His books - on justice, democracy, ethics, markets, and the common good -have been translated into more than thirty languages. He has been described as a 'rock star moralist' and 'the world’s most influential living philosopher'. He was recently awarded the Berggruen Prize, the world's most prestigious prize for philosophy. Sandel’s books address the hardest moral and civic questions of our time. The Tyranny of Merit: Can We Find the Common Good? seeks a way beyond our polarized politics. A new edition of his classic, Democracy’s Discontent has been described as 'essential - and ultimately hopeful - reading for all those who wonder if our democratic experiment will survive in the twenty-first century'. His previous books include Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?; What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets; and The Case Against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering. Sandel’s free online course 'Justice' has been viewed by tens of millions of people. His BBC Radio 4 series 'The Global Philosopher' explores the ethical issues lying behind the headlines with participants from around the world. Sandel has been a visiting professor at the Sorbonne, delivered the Tanner Lectures on Human Values at Oxford and the BBC’s Reith Lectures, served on the U.S. President’s Council on Bioethics, and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Philip Sheppard is a composer, producer, and cellist. He has soundtracked more than 80 films, stage works, and video games, and served as musical director for the closing ceremony of the Beijing Olympics. His work in movies and interactive media has earned him numerous accolades, including the Game Audio Guild Award, a Sundance Audience Award, and a Webby Award. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music for lifetime achievement and is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (the Oscars). He has written and performed with an extraordinary range of artists, from David Bowie and Scott Walker to Queens of the Stone Age, Sia, Pretty Lights, GRiZ, Jarvis Cocker, Suzanne Vega, UNKLE, and Odesza. He is best known for his pioneering live-looping technique, multitracking cello lines in real time to build entire orchestral textures from a single instrument. Philip currently serves as Artist in Residence for XPRIZE.

Ida Tin leads a €40m pan European initiative by SPRIND (the German federal agency of breakthrough innovation), on biosensors for continuous hormone monitoring in women. She co-founded, and served a decade as CEO and later as chairwoman of Clue, the most trusted female health app with over ten million users in 190+ countries, coined the term ‘Femtech’ in 2016, defining a sector projected to exceed a trillion dollars by 2040. Ida is currently working on a book about the rise of Femtech, and the story of building Clue. Ida, born in a Denmark grew up travelling the world on motorcycles as a child and later on her own and has published the book “Directress” about her two year motorcycle journey in the US deserts. She lives in Berlin with her two teenagers and American husband.

Samuel Crowe is an astrophysicist, historian, and Rhodes Scholar working at the intersection of science and society. He was the first undergraduate to lead an observing program with the James Webb Space Telescope, the most powerful telescope ever built, and his work on star formation in the chaotic center of the Milky Way has been recognized by NASA, National Geographic, CNN, CBS, the National Science Foundation, and the American Physical Society. Samuel also has a deep interest in ancient history, particularly the dramatic collapse of the Roman Republic and rise of the Roman Empire. He is currently reading for an MPhil in History of Science, Medicine, and Technology, focusing on philanthropic patronage of science during the interwar period in the United States, and he will begin his PhD in astrophysics at Caltech in 2027. Samuel is also an avid traveler, having backpacked across 41 countries spanning 6 continents.

Ragavi is a junior doctor currently undertaking a DPhil in Women’s and Reproductive Health under the supervision of Professor Marian Knight, Professor Claire Carson, and Dr Kate Duhig. Her research interests lie in the design of accessible and culturally-safe healthcare systems for women and birthing people, with a particular focus on women from racialised communities and with experiences of forced migration. Prior to commencing her DPhil, Ragavi completed her medical studies at the University of New South Wales, Australia. Her Honours research in conjunction with The George Institute explored the use of community health workers to improve primary care access for First Nations communities. She worked as a junior doctor in Sydney, Australia before being awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to undertake postgraduate study at Oxford University.

Suhas Mahesh currently leads work on AI for Science at Eric Schmidt's Schmidt Sciences. A physicist by training, Suhas has extensive experience in accelerated materials discovery for catalysts, solar cells, and LEDs. He holds a doctorate in physics from the University of Oxford, where his research on semiconductor phase instabilities received a thesis award. Prior to joining Schmidt Sciences, Suhas worked at the University of Toronto and the Acceleration Consortium, leading the development of self-driving laboratories that integrate machine learning and hardware automation. He has also worked with industry leaders such as Meta, Google, LG and Sony. Outside of his scientific work, Suhas moonlights as an expert on Sanskrit, and his recent book was shortlisted for the American Literary Translators Association’s National Translation Award. For more, please see suhasmahesh.com

Miruna-Ioana Girtu is an investor, strategist and operator who brings together capital, ideas and influential networks to help innovation scale and create enduring value. She is part of Heritage Holdings, a modern investment office and global community bringing together some of Europe’s most prominent entrepreneurial families, where she leads the development of the network, brand and strategic partnerships that support the platform’s long-term growth. Previously, Miruna was a Partner at SyndicateRoom, investing in more than 50 startups each year through its data-driven super angel fund and working closely with leading angel investors and ambitious founders. Miruna is also an entrepreneurship expert at the University of Oxford, where she tutors MBA and Executive MBA students at Saïd Business School. A former Forbes.com contributor covering venture capital and the startup ecosystem, she studied Economics at UCL, International Business in Rome and Management at Cambridge Judge Business School.