Opening Keynote
Shifting Quicksands:
The Impact of the U.S. Election on Geopolitical Stability
Cathryn Clüver Ashbrook
Executive Vice President | Senior Advisor to the Bertelsmann Stiftung
Cathryn Clüver Ashbrook is a renowned expert on transatlantic foreign and trade policy. For ten years, as part of the Future of Diplomacy Project, she worked on transnational challenges to international diplomacy in the 21st century, with a focus on digitalisation and urbanisation.
Cathryn Clüver Ashbrook (*1976) grew up in Berlin and Wiesbaden as the child of an American mother and a German-American father. After graduating from Gutenbergschule Wiesbaden, she studied International Relations, European Politics, European Law, History of French Civilisation and Public Administration in Cambridge, MA (Harvard Kennedy School, MPA), Strasbourg (Sciences-Po), London (London School of Economics, MSc) and in Providence, RI (Brown University, BA with Honors).
She began her career as a television journalist for CNN in Atlanta and London. She was member of the management board of the European Policy Centre (EPC) in Brussels and worked for Roland Berger as a journalist and consultant in France and China, among other places, before she engaged in research from 2011 to 2021, as co-founder and executive director of the Future of Diplomacy Project at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS). From 2018 to 2021, she also directed a research programme on Europe and transatlantic relations there. From June 2021 to February 2022, she was Director and CEO of the German Council on Foreign Relations. Ashbrook is a member of the advisory board of Monarch, a company that focuses on issues of securing democracy, information security in complex data situations, and methods for tracking fraud and corruption. From August 2022, she is Senior Advisor to the Bertelsmann Stiftung. Her focus there is on Europe's international relations. Within the foundation, she chairs the German-American Future Forum and a high-level strategy group on Europe.
The German-American political scientist publishes and comments in international media such as the New York Times and the Washington Post as well as in leading German media on transatlantic relations - especially trade and security policy - as well as on German foreign and digital policy and advises foreign ministries in Europe and South America on their digital strategy.
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Closing Keynote
Managing Disruptive Trends: What GPT, Robotics, AI, and Home Office Have in Common – and What They Don't?
Prof. Dominik Bösl
Expert in Robotic Governance and Artificial Intelligence
Dominik Bösl (*1983) graduated with a degree in computer science from the University of Augsburg and an MBA from the University of Pittsburgh. He began his career in 1999 at Siemens before moving to Microsoft Germany in 2005, where he held various management positions with national responsibility in Developer Evangelism. During the following seven years at Kuka, the market leader in industrial robotics, he was responsible for the robot manufacturer's innovation and technology management as Senior Corporate Innovation Manager, among other things, and was one of Kuka's Technology Owners. In January 2019, Bösl moved to Festo, where he served as Vice President and Head of Robotic Futures until his appointment at the university. From 2022 to 2023, he also was Managing Director at the Berlin-based AI and robotics start-up Micropsi Industries.
Professor Dominik Bösl is the author of numerous technical and scientific publications.
He is active in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) as Chair of the IEEE TechEthics Initiative and as Vice President for Industrial Activities of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society. In his volunteer work, Bösl is primarily involved in STEM promotion and the regulation of robotics, automation and artificial intelligence through governance structures. He is co-developer of the educational programming game AntMe! and with the Robotic & AI Governance Foundation, which he founded, he researches the foundations of governance structures for the (self-)regulation of disruptive technologies.
In his lectures, Bösl not only provides in-depth expert knowledge on Industry 4.0 and the developments of the future, but also calls for new, unconventional approaches to solutions. His message: Innovation requires technical expertise, methodological competence and, above all, the will to implement innovation.
