Chief AI Strategist, speaker and writer on the human side of AI

Dean's career spans twenty five years across media, strategy and leadership. For the past nine years he has studied the human consequences of emerging technology, beginning with social media and extending to the intelligent agents now entering working life. That thread runs through everything he does: technology succeeds or fails on human behaviour, not on capability alone.

At World Summit AI 2026 in Amsterdam on 7 and 8 October, he appeared as a speaker and moderated mainstage conversations with leaders from Expedia Group and Telnyx. He writes insight pieces and analysis for publications and media, including his columns for Daily Maverick, and his whitepaper The Enterprise After the Chatbot is an independent field guide to what the summit revealed about agents, enterprise intelligence and transformation.

Alongside his enterprise work, Dean founded MySociaLife, a digital life skills programme for young people, parents and educators, which he describes as having received sixteen global award nominations and recognitions. The educational work and the consulting are distinct, but they share a conviction: people deserve honest, clear-eyed guidance on the technology reshaping their lives.