Rachel Botsman

Author & Trust Expert

BOOK NOW

Rachel Botsman's Biography

Rachel Botsman is a leading authority on trust in the modern world, known for connecting history, technology, and human behaviour in fresh and engaging ways. She is the author of three influential books What’s Mine is Yours, Who Can You Trust?, and How To Trust & Be Trusted. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Wired, Financial Times, Time Magazine, and Fast Company. She also writes Rethink, a newsletter with more than 90,000 subscribers worldwide. Rachel is a world-renowned speaker, celebrated for her clear insights and warm, engaging storytelling. She has spoken on global stages from TED to the World Economic Forum and delivered keynotes for organizations including Salesforce, Goldman Sachs, Adobe, Gartner, and EY. Her TED talks have been viewed more than five million times, and she is consistently rated a favourite speaker at major events. Alongside her writing and teaching, Rachel explores how art and design can spark new ways of thinking. Her installation Roots of Trust was featured at the London Design Biennale, where audiences were invited to experience trust not as an abstract concept but as a living system. Rachel was the first Trust Fellow at Oxford University’s Saïd Business School, where she teaches leaders and entrepreneurs how to lead with trust in a changing world. Recognized as one of the world’s top 30 management thinkers and honoured as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, she has worked on every continent, except, so far, Antarctica. Audiences For over 15 years, Rachel Botsman has been recognised as a world-class keynote speaker on trust and transformation. She has spoken on the most prestigious stages — from TED to the Lincoln Centre to the World Economic Forum — and for leading global brands across industries. Audiences consistently vote her as a favourite for her unique ability to combine warm storytelling, visual language, and clear, actionable insights. What sets Rachel’s talks apart is not just her expertise, but how she makes people feel: inspired, curious, and empowered to rethink how they lead and work. Formats: Rachel delivers her ideas in engaging formats tailored to each audience, from high-impact keynotes and interactive Q&As to candid fireside chats with leaders and carefully curated client dinners.

SPEAKING VIDEOS
PHOTOS

Why Transparency Does Not Equal More Trust, Rachel Botsman DLD

Rachel Botsman: In Technology We Trust? | World Economic Forum

Rachel Botsman: D Congress 2021

Rachel Botsman: The Currency of the New Economy is Trust | TED

SPEAKER TOPICS

Business Speakers

Leadership Speakers

Disruptive Innovation Speakers

Artificial Intelligence Speakers

Design Thinking Speakers

Future of Work Speakers

Storytelling Speakers

Women's Day Speakers

Inspiring Speakers

Conference Speakers

New Speakers

After Dinner Speakers

Rachel Botsman Keynote Topics

Leading with Trust in Uncertain Times

When the world feels complex and fast-moving, trust becomes a powerful source of clarity and confidence. It gives people the courage to take smart risks, collaborate across teams, and lean into change instead of resisting it. Yet despite how often we use the word, trust is still clouded by myths. In this keynote, Rachel deconstructs those misconceptions and invites audiences to rethink trust as something they can actively shape. With her ‘Risk–Trust Lens’ framework, she shows why the balance between risk and trust is the hallmark of adaptive leadership and shares practical tools leaders can use to build cultures where people feel safe, supported, and ready to step into the unknown.

Participants will learn:

• Why trust is the foundation of resilience in uncertain times.

• How to use the ‘Risk–Trust Lens’ to make smarter decisions under

pressure.

• The four traits every leader must consistently demonstrate to earn trust.

• Why cultures built on trust consistently outperform those built on control.

Trust by Design: What Makes Innovation Stick

Why do some innovations fail while others succeed? The difference is rarely the technology; it’s whether people trust it enough to make the leap. Every breakthrough depends on what Rachel calls a Trust Leap: the decision to embrace a new way of working, creating, or connecting. Yet too often, innovators obsess over features and functions and overlook the trust conditions that truly determine adoption. Drawing on 15 years of work with Fortune 500 companies and start-ups, Rachel shares her ‘TrustLeap’ framework, showing why designing for trust is as essential as designing for usability or beauty. Through stories that span from historical inventions to today’s disruptive start-ups, she reveals how trust is the hidden design layer that allows ideas to take root and grow.

Participants will learn:

• Why trust is the bridge that makes people willing to take risks on new

ideas.

• The design principles that encourage people to make a ‘Trust Leap.’

• How to identify and close the trust gaps that quietly block adoption.

Rethinking the New Rules of Trust & AI

AI is rapidly reshaping how we make decisions, create, work, and even trust one another. But here’s the challenge: most of the questions about trust and AI are framed incorrectly. The real issue is not whether people should trust AI, but how we design AI systems to be genuinely trustworthy. Rachel uses her ‘Trust Shift’ framework to show how every major leap in history has required new forms of trust, and why AI marks a fundamentally different moment that forces us to rethink the rules altogether.

Participants will learn:

• Why the real question is not “should we trust AI?” but “when is it trustworthy?”

• The challenges and possibilities of shifting trust from people to intelligent systems

• How the AI Trust Matrix reveals where different systems stand on trustworthiness

• The four dimensions that determine whether an AI system earns or loses confidence.

Rachel Botsman's Biography

Rachel Botsman is a leading authority on trust in the modern world, known for connecting history, technology, and human behaviour in fresh and engaging ways. She is the author of three influential books What’s Mine is Yours, Who Can You Trust?, and How To Trust & Be Trusted. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Wired, Financial Times, Time Magazine, and Fast Company. She also writes Rethink, a newsletter with more than 90,000 subscribers worldwide. Rachel is a world-renowned speaker, celebrated for her clear insights and warm, engaging storytelling.

She has spoken on global stages from TED to the World Economic Forum and delivered keynotes for organizations including Salesforce, Goldman Sachs, Adobe, Gartner, and EY. Her TED talks have been viewed more than five million times, and she is consistently rated a favourite speaker at major events. Alongside her writing and teaching, Rachel explores how art and design can spark new ways of thinking. Her installation Roots of Trust was featured at the London Design Biennale, where audiences were invited to experience trust not as an abstract concept but as a living system.

Rachel was the first Trust Fellow at Oxford University’s Saïd Business School, where she teaches leaders and entrepreneurs how to lead with trust in a changing world. Recognized as one of the world’s top 30 management thinkers and honoured as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, she has worked on every continent, except, so far, Antarctica.

Audiences

For over 15 years, Rachel Botsman has been recognised as a world-class keynote speaker on trust and transformation. She has spoken on the most prestigious stages — from TED to the Lincoln Centre to the World Economic Forum — and for leading global brands across industries.

Audiences consistently vote her as a favourite for her unique ability to combine warm storytelling, visual language, and clear, actionable insights. What sets Rachel’s talks apart is not just her expertise, but how she makes people feel: inspired, curious, and empowered to rethink how they lead and work.

Formats:

Rachel delivers her ideas in engaging formats tailored to each audience, from high-impact keynotes and interactive Q&As to candid fireside chats with leaders and carefully curated client dinners.