GiovanniStella

Artificial Intelligence and Leadership
International keynote speaker

“AI democratises access. It does not democratise judgement.”

Spanish · English · ItalianBogotágiostella.co

AI democratises access.
It does not democratise judgement.
And judgement is what you already have.

The thesis

Three things audiences get wrong about artificial intelligence.

The fear is pointed at the wrong thing.

The professional with twenty years of craft fears being replaced by a twenty-five-year-old with a subscription. That is the wrong threat.

AI does not replace leaders. It exposes those who never were.

Once execution becomes cheap, the only scarce thing left is knowing what is worth executing.

Your experience is the brushstroke. AI can be the brush.

This is not about learning to code. It is about applying the judgement you already have to a capability that did not exist before.

Credentials

Before I was a speaker, I was:

Google · 15 years

Country Director

Colombia, Central America and the Caribbean.

5× revenue growth between 2019 and 2024
USD 350M in annual operating revenue
Team grown from 40 to 115 people
Google's #1 sales team worldwide in customer satisfaction

Dublin · Google EMEA and Meta

Executive at two of the world's largest platforms

From Account Coordinator to Team Lead at Google EMEA. Sales Operations at Facebook during my MBA. In 2013 I chose between staying in Dublin with Meta or crossing the Atlantic with Google. I chose the uncomfortable one.

Milan · Founder

Two technology startups

Co-founder and CMO of EzDriver/EzTaxi, Italy's first ride-hailing app. €200,000 in seed capital, incubated at the Politecnico di Milano, launched in more than ten cities.

Education and boards

MBA, London Business School

Economics at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore. Chief AI Officer Executive Program, University of Chicago Booth. Board member of the Colombian Chamber of E-Commerce, IAB and AmCham.

By the numbers

Twenty years in global technology. Five teaching what I learned.

5,000+people trained in artificial intelligence

10,000+members in the IA con Canas community

57,000followers on LinkedIn · Top Voice in AI

300+business owners trained at Universidad del Rosario

1,000+leaders trained through Crehana

5 yearsrunning in Colombia's Top 40 business leaders — Merco

16-20sessions and workshops per month

3working languages: Spanish, English and Italian

The story

Milan
Berkeley
Dublin
London
Buenos Aires
Bogotá

At sixteen I moved to Berkeley on my own to study, without speaking the language properly and without money to spare. That is where I learned that fear shrinks when you break it into pieces.

At thirty-two, fresh out of my MBA at London Business School, I had two offers on the table: stay in Dublin with Meta, or cross the Atlantic with Google without speaking Spanish. I took the uncomfortable one.

Twelve years later I was running Google's operation for Colombia, Central America and the Caribbean. Today I write, teach and build with artificial intelligence from Bogotá, and run marathons at 2,600 metres of altitude.

“The problem was never my age. It was my obsession with the finish line.”

How I work

I never give the same talk twice.

Before the stage

A preparation call with the organising team. I get to know the business, where the company stands right now, and what this particular audience needs to hear. Where it helps, a pre-event survey of attendees.

After the stage

Follow-up material for attendees. When the client asks for it, a closed session with the executive committee to turn the talk into concrete decisions.

The moment nobody else does

I build a working agent live, on stage, in ten minutes. Not a recorded demo: a real agent, built around that audience's own use case, running in front of them. It is the difference between explaining and proving.

Keynotes

Four talks. Four levels of decision.

All delivered as 45 to 60 minute keynotes plus Q&A, available in Spanish, English and Italian, and tailored to each company's sector and moment.

01Your problem isn't AI. It's your culture.Mindset and culture for artificial intelligenceOrganisation 02AI with grey hairWhat you, Batman and Batgirl have in commonIndividual 03Leadership in the age of agentsLeading when your team is no longer only humanOperations 04Ethics, power and decisions in the age of AIThe conversation every board needs to haveGovernance

Keynote 01 Organisation

Your problem isn't AI. It's your culture.Mindset and culture for artificial intelligence

“You can buy every licence on the market. If the culture doesn't change, nothing happens.”

What the talk covers

Most organisations treat AI adoption as a software purchase: licences, training, a usage dashboard. Six months later real usage sits at fifteen per cent and nobody knows why. The bottleneck was never technological. It is the fear of being caught out, incentives that punish experimenting, middle managers protecting their territory, and the absence of explicit permission to get things wrong.

What the audience takes away

The four cultural blockers that show up in every organisation, and how they look inside yours
A maturity diagnostic they can run the following week
A 90-day roadmap with owners attached, not good intentions

Who it is for

Executive committees, HR and transformation leaders, and organisations with an AI rollout under way or about to start.

Why me for this topic

I grew Google Colombia's team from 40 to 115 people and turned it into the company's #1 team worldwide for customer satisfaction: I know what it costs to move a culture from the inside. Today it is exactly what AB InBev, Dompé Farmaceutici and Fyffes hire me to do.

Format

Keynote45–60 min + Q&A
Workshop3 hours
LanguagesES · EN · IT
Ideal audience50 to 500 people

Keynote 02 Individual

AI with grey hairWhat you, Batman and Batgirl have in common

“None of the three has superpowers. They have judgement, preparation and better tools.”

What the talk covers

In the whole Justice League there are two characters without a single superpower. They win on something else: they read the situation before acting, they prepare, and they use better tools than anyone. That is exactly where the professional with twenty years of craft stands next to a twenty-five-year-old with a subscription. Artificial intelligence hands out capability; it does not hand out judgement. And judgement cannot be downloaded — it accumulates.

What the audience takes away

Why experience gets more valuable, not less, as execution gets cheaper
Three concrete moves to start on Monday, without learning to code
Permission to be a beginner again without feeling it is a step backwards

Who it is for

Large, mixed audiences: annual conventions, sales kickoffs, industry congresses and member gatherings. It works with a room spanning ages 25 to 65.

Why me for this topic

I wrote the book: Inteligencia Artificial con canas (Intermedio Editores). I have trained more than 5,000 people and run a community of more than 10,000. And I lived it: at forty-four I started over, in another country and another language.

Format

Keynote45–60 min + Q&A
LanguagesES · EN · IT
Ideal audienceNo ceiling — this is the big-auditorium talk

Keynote 03 Operations

Leadership in the age of agentsLeading when your team is no longer only human

“You went from doing work to directing work. From playing the violin to conducting the orchestra.”

What the talk covers

Agents stopped answering questions and started executing tasks. That breaks things we took for granted: how work gets divided, what a junior is for, how you assess someone whose team includes software that acts on its own, and what delegation means when the delegate never tires but never takes responsibility either. Leading is no longer giving orders: it is designing systems.

What the audience takes away

A clear rule for splitting work between people and agents
What changes in the junior and senior roles, and how to avoid breaking your talent pipeline
A working agent built live, in ten minutes, around the audience's own use case

Who it is for

C-level, middle management and team leads. Especially organisations that are past the «we tried ChatGPT» phase and now need to redesign how they work.

Why me for this topic

I led teams of more than 115 people at Google, with my own P&L and responsibility for USD 350M a year. Today I run my own work with agents every day. I talk about conducting mixed orchestras because I conduct one.

Format

Keynote45–60 min + Q&A
Workshop3 hours with guided building
LanguagesES · EN · IT
RequiresProjection and internet access for the live demo

Keynote 04 Governance

Ethics, power and decisions in the age of AIThe conversation every board needs to have

“The question is no longer what AI can do. It is who answers when it gets it wrong.”

What the talk covers

Adopting artificial intelligence means acquiring power, and power arrives with questions most boards have not yet asked themselves. Who is accountable for an automated decision. What data fed that judgement, and with whose permission. How you audit a recommendation nobody can explain. What the infrastructure we are buying costs — in energy, in reputation and in legal exposure. This is not a fear talk: it is the adult conversation to have beforehand, not after.

What the audience takes away

An AI governance framework that fits their current structure
The exact questions a board should put to its executive team, and the answers it should not accept
Where legal responsibility sits today and where it is heading

Who it is for

Boards of directors, supervisory boards, risk and compliance committees, the public sector and regulators.

Why me for this topic

I am Academic Director of the Chief AI Officer programme at PRIME Business School (Universidad Sergio Arboleda) and completed the Chief AI Officer Executive Program at University of Chicago Booth. I have served on the boards of the Colombian Chamber of E-Commerce, IAB and AmCham. And I represented Google before four presidents in the region: I know the conversation between technology, power and regulation from the inside.

Format

Keynote45–60 min + Q&A
Board session90 min, closed door
LanguagesES · EN · IT

Working together

Not everything gets solved from a stage.

A keynote moves the conversation. What comes next needs a different format.

Workshops and programmes

Training for teams

In-person workshops and multi-session programmes that take an organisation from knowing what AI is to using it in real work. Cohorts of 10 to 100 people, always built on the company's own cases.

Board and C-level

Advisory for executive committees

Closed sessions to decide where to invest, what to measure and how to govern AI adoption. No generic decks: we work on the business actually on the table.

Community and courses

IA con Canas

My community and school for experienced professionals who want to use artificial intelligence without becoming programmers. Courses, mentoring and a weekly publication.

iaconcanas.com →

Trusted by

Brands that have brought me to their stage.

AB InBev

Novo Nordisk

Toyota

Delta Airlines

KPMG

Fyffes

Dompé Farmaceutici

Skandia

Claro

Veolia

Quala

Postobón

The book

Grey hair isn't the past: it's context.

And artificial intelligence works better with context. Fifteen chapters on how a professional with real craft turns experience into an advantage over AI, instead of feeling it as a threat. Published in Spanish.

Intermedio Editores
ISBN 978-958-08-0741-4
Print and eBook
Bookshops across Colombia

Classroom and community

I teach this every week, not only from a stage.

Universidad del Rosario · GSB

Professor of Strategy and Board Counsellor

More than 300 business owners trained.

PRIME Business School · U. Sergio Arboleda

Academic Director, Chief AI Officer programme

100 academic hours across 6 modules.

Universidad de La Sabana + IAB Colombia

AI for Leaders programme

24 hours across 8 live sessions.

Crehana

Digital Transformation for Leaders

More than 1,000 leaders trained across Latin America.

Endeavor · 30X

Founder mentor

Technology and artificial intelligence.

IA con Canas

Community and newsletter

More than 10,000 members. Weekly publication.

Secure your date in the 2026 calendar.

Keynotes, workshops and closed board sessions. Tell me about the event, the audience and where your company stands, and I will come back with a proposal built for it.

Email Giovanni LinkedIn IA con Canas

Languages: Spanish, English and Italian.
Based in: Bogotá, Colombia. Available to travel across the Americas, Europe and the Caribbean.
Formats: 45–60 min keynote + Q&A · 3 h workshop · 90 min board session.