Amy Webb knows what’s coming. The futurist, author and founder of the Future Today Institute, she identifies emerging trends, maps how they’ll transform the future of business, international relations, culture and the world. A recent Wall Street Journal profile described her methodology, which combines data-driven research with “aggressive computation.” Webb’s forecasting tools are taught in universities, and her Future Today Institute team advises Fortune 500 and Global 1000 companies, government agencies, large nonprofits, universities and startups worldwide. Her futures forecasting work has been featured in The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Inc. Magazine, Fast Company, CNN, NPR, and more. She was recently named to the 2017 Thinkers50 Radar list of management thinkers most likely to shape the future.
The authority on forecasting and strategy, Webb collaborates with a number of institutions. She was a Delegate on the former U.S.-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission, where she worked on the future of technology, media and international diplomacy. She is a member of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, where she has served as a Blue Ribbon Panel Emmy Judge for emerging technology categories. She sits on several advisory boards, including the SXSW Accelerator.
An engaging and energetic speaker, Webb customizes every presentation for each audience using original research and insights specific for the organization, industry or conference. Attendees typically receive a digital folder full of resources, tools and actionable ideas following the presentation. Webb’s popular TED talk, based on her bestselling memoir “Data, A Love Story,” has been viewed more than 5 million times and translated into 32 languages. It has been the featured in-flight entertainment on Delta flights and in Marriott hotel rooms.
She is the author of three books, including “The Signals Are Talking: Why Today’s Fringe Is Tomorrow’s Mainstream” (PublicAffairs, December 2016) which explains how leaders and organizations can predict and manage technological change. It was selected as one of Fast Company’s Best Books of 2016, was an Amazon’s best book of December 2016 and was a #1 Bestseller. Signals has been translated into a number of languages.
Webb designed and teaches the futures forecasting MBA course at the New York University School of Business. She was a 2014-15 Visiting Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, where her research on the future of education reform received a national Sigma Delta Chi award. Every year, she lectures about the future of media and technology at a number of universities, which have included Institut d’études politiques de Paris, Temple University, Tokyo University and National University of Kyiv.
The first half of Webb’s career was spent in journalism: she was a reporter with Newsweek (Tokyo) and the Wall Street Journal (Hong Kong) where she covered emerging technology, media and economic trends.