90%
of B2B buying interactions are expected to be AI-intermediated by 2028, according to Gartner. That points to a $15 trillion shift in who your sales team is actually selling to.
Keynote Speaker · Board Advisor · Author
The economy is gaining a new kind of intelligence.
A new economy is forming around AI agents that can search, compare, negotiate, buy and work alongside people. Organisations ready to act will open new markets, reshape customer relationships and find new sources of growth and leverage. Those that wait will face margin pressure, weaker loyalty and rules written by someone else. Katja Forbes helps boards, leaders and audiences understand what is changing, where the opportunity sits, and how to move before the market moves around them.
Author of Machine Customers: The Evolution Has Begun
Speaking globally
In person + virtual
In person + virtual
Why now
Organisations that engage now shape how agents find, trust and buy from them. Organisations that wait inherit terms written by their competitors.
120 million
agentic commerce transactions were processed by Alibaba in six days. The largest machine-customer market on earth is already operational.
Zero friction, not price
When an autonomous agent selected suppliers in a live European trial, it chose on identity verification friction, not cost. The selection criteria have already changed.
For organisations
The shift is not abstract. It changes who can find you, how they evaluate you, and who gets to set the terms of the transaction.
Why you need it
AI agents are becoming buyers, filters, negotiators and gatekeepers. Your organisation needs to understand how it will be found, assessed and selected when the first decision-maker is no longer human.
What happens if you wait
The rules get written around you. Platforms, procurement systems and faster competitors decide what agents can see, trust and buy from you before your leadership team has chosen its own position.
What you gain
More control over machine-mediated revenue: clearer board alignment, stronger commercial governance, better agent discoverability, and fewer places for margin, trust and customer relationships to leak.
Not sure whether this belongs on your stage, in your boardroom or inside an executive advisory conversation? Start with a fit-call enquiry.
Request a fit callThe proof that matters
More than 10 organisations have brought Katja back two, three, and up to nine times.
9×DesignUp, 2017-2026See Katja on stage at DesignUp
4 years runningCX Asia Week, Singapore
4 cities, 3 yearsChairing Customer Experience Live across Dubai, Manchester, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur
A completely novel insight into the new world we are just entering … the world where intelligent machines collaborate to build a new kind of economy. Peter Schwartz · Chief Futurist, Salesforce
Katja makes complex topics accessible, showing how businesses can prepare for machines as decision-makers and active participants in the customer journey. Divya Jim · Portfolio Director, Customer Experience Live Global Conference Group
Adobe MAXFigma ConfigDesignUpMercedes-BenzMastercardAlibabaCX AsiaCustomer Experience LiveDigital Marketing Summit, SeoulSingapore Design WeekAdvantage Austria Exporttag, ViennaWeb DirectionsForrester
Adobe MAXFigma ConfigDesignUpMercedes-BenzMastercardAlibabaCX AsiaCustomer Experience LiveDigital Marketing Summit, SeoulSingapore Design WeekAdvantage Austria Exporttag, ViennaWeb DirectionsForrester
As seen on stages and in boardrooms internationally
Advisor to Forrester on agentic commerce, featured in its research on AI agents as customers. Formerly led client experience, design and insights at Standard Chartered Bank; ex-Managing Director, Australia & New Zealand, at Designit, a Wipro company.
Two ways in
For your stage
Keynotes that map the machine economy as it actually exists now: autonomous vessels, agentic payment rails, AI agents negotiating against each other with real money, and what it means for the people in the room. Confronting, specific, and built from first-hand fieldwork, not analyst decks.
For your boardroom
Closed-room sessions for boards and executive teams navigating the agentic commerce shift. Not a technology briefing. A commercial one: which jurisdiction's rules will govern your machine customers, and how would you know if your agents were silently losing every negotiation?
On stage
See Katja on stage.
Keynotes built for the room: specific, straight-talking and grounded in evidence.
Featured keynote
Navigating the new intelligent economy
For hundreds of years we've assumed the actors in an economy are people and the companies people run. That assumption is expiring. This keynote helps audiences understand what changes when AI agents become buyers, negotiators, payers and workers, and what leaders need to ask before the terms are decided for them.
The book
Machine Customers: The Evolution Has Begun
The first comprehensive guide to AI agents, autonomous buyers and logic-driven platforms as actual customers, and the practitioner's manual for what to do about it on Monday morning.
Endorsed by leaders at Salesforce, Gartner and across the customer experience field.
Reader resources · canvases, experiments and prompt tools from the book