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May 6th, 2026 // London // 18:30 GMT

Off the Record:
How Leaders Are Using AI at Work

The Ministry Members Club, London. May 6th. Closed door. Strictly 100 founders and senior operators. No slides. No pitching.

The PM of Superintelligence at Microsoft AI. The marketing brain behind Eventbrite’s IPO. A technical founder who built and exited to Fiverr. And an MIT-backed operator who just finished training 50,000+ global managers on AI adoption.

We aren't discussing theory. We’re dissecting the exact mechanics driving ROI right now. To do that, we brought in the people actually doing it at scale.

Erika Hakala
Lead Interrogator (Moderator)

Erika Hakala

With over a decade scaling demand generation at AI and tech companies including Onfido, Speechmatics, Productboard, and Tinybird, she now leads Oinas Marketing. Erika works with founders and leadership teams to build AI-powered marketing systems that drive growth. On stage, her mandate is simple: cut theory, pressure-test operators, and push for tactical specifics.

The Insiders

Katie McPhee
Panelist: AI Adoption

Katie McPhee

With 16+ years in marketing leadership at companies including Eventbrite (from launch to IPO), BBC, VEED, and Gett, Katie now leads Expanded Future, helping commercial teams build human-in-the-loop AI adoption that delivers measurable ROI. She holds an MSc in Behaviour Change from UCL and is co-founder of Earth.AI. On stage, her conviction is clear: AI adoption is a human problem first — and behaviour change, not procurement, is where it starts.

Elijah Podavalkin
Panelist: AI Infrastructure

Elijah Podavalkin

Founder of Bearskin Group, Elijah advises private equity and family offices on technical due diligence, infrastructure, and AI integration across capital-backed companies. He previously built and exited Scalamandra, later acquired by Fiverr. On stage, his lens is unambiguously practical: shaped by execution inside live deals, where AI outcomes tend to differ sharply from expectations.

Trevor Back
Panelist: Applied AI & Product

Trevor Back

Currently a Product Manager at Microsoft AI focused on superintelligence and multimodal research, Trevor has spent over a decade turning cutting-edge AI into commercial products. He was previously CPO at Speechmatics, launched DeepMind's clinical application Streams, and founded Shift Lab. On stage, his focus is on the hard middle ground: where AI leaves the research lab and meets the realities of market demand and business impact.

Andra Vaduva
Panelist: AI Execution & Tactical Systems

Andra Vaduva

Founder & CEO of SafeSpace, a global AI Adoption Lab working with mid-market and enterprise companies across the US, Mexico, and Europe, Andra embeds AI into real workflows through the Mental Gym — an MIT-built framework that has trained over 50,000 managers globally. Her methodologies have been shaped through work with organisations including Microsoft and LinkedIn. On stage, her lens is unapologetically practical: how AI systems are built, where they fail, and what it actually takes to make them work in production.

AtherQ Founders

Ivan
Nick
The Hosts

Ivan & Nick

Founders of AtherQ. We created this event because we were tired of generic AI panels. We wanted a closed room where real operators share the exact mechanics and architectures driving ROI today. No high-level theory, just deployment logic.

Event Concluded