Contributors

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Host

Benedikt Lehnert

Ben is a design executive with 20+ years of expertise creating products people love and leading the teams behind them. His work has shaped how billions interact with technology.

As founder of 74West, he provides sleeves-up advisory services to CEOs, executives, and boards navigating pivotal organizational moments. Ben works directly with clients—from startups to Fortune 10 companies—at the intersection of customer experience, design integration, and strategy execution.

Ben teaches entrepreneurship and design at Princeton University during the academic year and the eLab summer program. His work explores the convergence of entrepreneurship, humanistic design, and business leadership, focusing on AI and co-creativity, neuroaesthetics, and design's socio-economic responsibility.

As a board member of the Design Executive Council (DXC), Ben helps shape humanistic design standards and strategic leadership as AI transforms experience design and business strategy.

http://www.benediktlehnert.com

Guests

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Guest

Avram Alpert

Avram Alpert is a writer of both fiction and nonfiction. His most recent book, The Good-Enough Life (Princeton University Press, 2022), was a Financial Times book of the year and will be translated into six languages. His writing has appeared in publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Lit Hub. From 2014-2021, he was co-editor of the art, fiction, and philosophy magazine Shifter. He teaches in the Writing Program at Princeton University and is the Co-Director of the Interdisciplinary Art and Theory Program in New York.

https://www.avramalpert.com

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Guest

Manail Anis Ahmed

Manail Anis Ahmed is an educator, thought leader and convener on technology and society. She has built educational institutions and human capital development strategy in the Middle East and South Asia for two decades. She now advises global governments on digital public infrastructure and is a member of the World Economic Forum’s AI Governance Alliance. She has been a visiting lecturer at Princeton University, serving as project mentor for Responsible AI for Princeton graduate students. She is now adjunct faculty in Biotechnology Entrepreneurship at Johns Hopkins University. Manail has led a global research group at the Center for AI & Digital Policy in Washington DC and been a Public Voices Fellow for Equality Now, advocating for the economic participation of women and girls globally. 


She now brings this whole-systems approach to examining the impact of emerging technologies, especially AI and biotechnology, on global business and society. 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/manailahmed/

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