AfterShock: Leadership for the 5th Industrial Revolution with Caroline Stokes

In this special episode timed for the World Economic Forum annual meeting, Caroline Stokes sits down with Gil Forer, a contractor and former senior partner with EY, to explore our new leadership reality and why leaders must act now—deploy, adopt, adapt, and learn publicly—because the gap will widen if they wait. They discuss why the past five years have supercharged change and introduce “NAVI”, ou...

Caroline Stokes speaks with Steven Fitzgerald, an engineer-turned-CEO and culture designer who’s spent 30 years in technology and human-centred design, and now helps organizations move from brittle, mechanistic structures to living, adaptive ecosystems. They get into why “strategy is what gets done, and culture is how it gets done,” why treating your company like a machine no longer works in a com...

What if the most iconic toy on the planet is reinventing how humans and AI create together? In this conversation, Caroline sits down with Rudi Anggono, until very recently the Director of Creative Innovation at LEGO, to discuss leading a cultural, creative, and technological shift inside one of the world’s most beloved brands. If someone in your house unwrapped a LEGO set last week, this episode i...

What happens when humans and AI start to grow together? In this episode of AfterShock, Caroline Stokes speaks with Helen Edwards — co-founder of the Artificiality Institute and one of the world’s most insightful voices on human–AI cognition. Together they explore how AI is reshaping the way we think, feel, make decisions, and lead in a world that is being reconfigured by AI at unprecedented speed....

I wanted to talk about next year right now. In this wide-ranging and unflinchingly honest conversation, Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Darrell M. West returns to the AfterShock podcast with a clear message: the pace of change has now broken the boundaries of what leaders once thought manageable. We talk about: • The macro trends already defining 2026: AI acceleration, climate volatility, geop...

In a time when “impact investing” too often becomes a marketing slogan, I sit down with Tim Gocher OBE—founder of Dolma Impact Fund and Dolma Foundation—to explore what authentic, ethical investment looks like in practice. Together, we explore:  How Nepal is becoming a regenerative and new frontier for the Fifth Industrial Revolution, where clean energy, digital infrastructure, and AI talent deve...

In this episode of “AfterShock to 2030”, Caroline Stokes sits down with Alison Taylor, executive director of Ethical Systems, clinical professor at NYU Stern and author of “Higher Ground”. They examine what’s next for leadership, ethics, and credibility in a world where idealism alone isn’t enough.   Together, they explore: • Why overpromising on ethics and sustainability sets companies up for fai...

We are expected to fit our lives into the 9-to-5 structure. But what if our biology was never designed for industrial time?   I speak with Camilla Kring, PhD—chronobiologist, author of “Chronoleadership”, and founder of Super Navigators—about how leaders, teams, and families can thrive when we work with our circadian rhythms instead of against them.   Camilla explains:    Why “early isn’t discipl...

In what Edelman has called the “Era of Grievance”, I sit down with organizational psychologist, leadership coach and author Dr. Gena Cox to explore why respect—not just diversity and inclusion—is the true foundation of healthy organizations. Together, we explore: Why DEI has been misunderstood and how leaders can reframe it as an obligation of effective leadership. A powerful case study from healt...

Clinical psychologist Laura Devlin joins Caroline Stokes to explore how leaders, parents, and high achievers can navigate today’s overwhelming world. In this episode of the AfterShock podcast, we cover: How macro shocks like AI, climate change, and political instability are now showing up in therapy, counselling and coaching rooms. Coping strategies leaders use under pressure and how they can beco...

Where do you start to create a healthy organization in our era of climate crisis? One way is to see how your organization runs from the inside out. I discuss this in this episode of AfterShock with Erin Gallup, founder of the Hive Initiative, whose design-led “Mini Summits” are transforming how employees and leaders engage with climate, biodiversity, and wellbeing at work. In this episode we cover...

In this episode, I sit down with John Pabon, author of “The Great Greenwashing”, to expose the critical risks CEOs and leaders will find increasingly hard to avoid without facing them full on. We break down why greenwashing and greenhushing are liabilities that invite regulatory scrutiny, erode trust, and cost companies market share. We examine the industries in the danger zone—from oil and gas to...

What does it really take to build organizations that positively impact people, planet, and profit in the Fifth Industrial Revolution? In this opening episode of the Creating Healthy Organizations series, in association with the AfterShock podcast, I’m joined by Dr. Ludmila Praslova, Professor of Organizational Psychology at the Patty Arvielo School of Business & Management at Vanguard Universi...

What does it mean to flourish in an age defined by AI, disruption, and uncertainty? In this AfterShock episode, philosopher and writer Samuel Loncar explores the cultural forces and hidden assumptions that shape not just technology, but the way we lead. As founding editor of the Marginalia Review of Books and a consultant to scientists and institutions worldwide, Loncar reveals how narratives of p...

Yasmine Abdu, CEO and founder of CarbonTrac, is on a mission to cut UK emissions by 5% by 2030. Using machine learning, partnerships with organizations including the United Nations, and a strategy to engage the entire supply chain, she’s driving change through the power of small, measurable shifts in consumer behaviour. We talk about how everyday grocery store choices can ripple throughout supply...

From DEF CON, Black Hat, and Wired’s Google Gemini warning… to an urgent conversation with Peter Warren on the shareholder insurance every 2025-2030 C-Suite must have and how connected risks can put anyone in your organization in the firing line.   Warren, chair of the Cyber Security Research Institute, breaks down the why and the how: from AI’s self-poisoning problem and database poisoning to pro...

Wes Cummins is the visionary CEO of Applied Data, driving technology, hiring and AI data centre solutions forward for communities in an ethical and sustainable way.  In our conversation, Wes shares his leadership insights for CEOs to evolve in the AI age – fast.

One of the reasons I started this podcast season is because about 50 days ago, I walked into a glass wall. Yes… really. I had a brain scan and the headaches and poor concentration persist. And I was advised not to travel by air, because concussion recovery apparently takes time. That’s when I asked myself: How do I do book readings if I can’t fly or drive well? The answer is this series. So imagin...

Picture this: It’s Christmas Day, 2024. I arrive in Bali, and I declare on social media that I’m going to go dark and write. The world's events and the accelerating collision of crises made me realize we are at a leadership tipping point. So, I wrote like my life depended on it. The preface—what you are about to hear—is where AfterShock to 2030 began.

In this episode, Dean Takahashi, Editorial Director at GamesBeat, joins me for a conversation after reading AfterShock to 2030 . Dean’s been reporting on tech and gaming since 1988, and he’s interviewed some of the most influential CEOs in the industry—including Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA. If you know the tech world, you know Dean is one of its most trusted and respected voices. In this conversat...

To launch this series, we’re starting with the foreword to my book AfterShock to 2030: A CEO’s Guide to Reinvention in the Age of AI, Climate, and Societal Collapse . The foreword was written by Darrell West of Brookings, someone who’s been tracking the intersection of policy, leadership and technology for decades. I asked Joe Nickolls, a seasoned CEO in interactive entertainment industry, to read...