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What if the most undervalued leadership skill in the AI era isn’t technical fluency—but emotional presence?

This episode of FUTUREPROOF. features Claude Silver, the world’s first Chief Heart Officer and the No. 2 executive at VaynerX, joining the show to unpack why authenticity, empathy, and belonging are no longer “nice-to-haves,” but strategic advantages.

Claude’s 2025 book, Be Yourself at Work, challenges the long-standing belief that professionalism requires emotional distance. Instead, she argues that in a world defined by AI, automation, and burnout, the leaders who win are the ones who lead with heart—intentionally, skillfully, and without performative fluff.

We explore:

• Why “authenticity” has been misunderstood—and how to practice it without oversharing or losing authority
• What leading with heart actually looks like inside a 2,000-person global organization
• How emotional skills become power skills as AI absorbs more technical work
• The difference between fitting in and true belonging—and why that gap is costing companies talent and trust
• How leaders can balance emotional bravery with emotional efficiency in an always-on, high-pressure world

This is a conversation about leadership after the old playbook breaks—and what replaces it when humanity becomes the edge.

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Healthcare is entering its most consequential design moment in decades.

As AI moves from the background into the core of clinical decision-making, diagnostics, and patient experience, the real question isn’t what AI can do—it’s whether people can trust it.

This week on FUTUREPROOF., I’m joined by Peter Skillman, Global Head of Design at Philips, and one of the few leaders shaping what responsible, human-centered AI looks like in healthcare at scale.

Peter has spent three decades designing products and systems at the intersection of hardware, software, and services—across Palm, Nokia, Microsoft, AWS, and now Philips. Today, he’s helping reimagine healthcare not as a hierarchy of authority, but as an experience built around patients, clinicians, and trust.

We talk about:

• Why AI in healthcare must be designed with people, not just for them
• What happens when teenagers—future patients and clinicians—help design care systems
• How healthcare design is shifting from “what looks impressive” to “what feels humane”
• Why speed, clarity, and emotional context now matter as much as clinical accuracy
• The long timelines of healthcare innovation—and why today’s design choices shape the next decade
• What it really means to make AI visible, explainable, and trustworthy in life-and-death environments

This conversation isn’t about futuristic demos or abstract ethics.
It’s about how design decisions today will determine whether AI improves healthcare—or quietly erodes trust in it.

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Guest: Joe Devon
Title: Chair, GAAD Foundation | Co-founder, Global Accessibility Awareness Day

AI is reshaping how we design software—but accessibility still too often shows up as an afterthought. In this episode of FUTUREPROOF., Joe Devon joins us to unpack what it actually means to build technology that works for everyone, especially as generative AI becomes embedded across products, platforms, and workflows.

Joe explains why accessibility isn’t a niche concern—it affects more than 1.3 billion people globally—and why AI represents both the biggest risk and the biggest opportunity the accessibility movement has ever seen. We dig into the early findings from the AI Model Accessibility Checker (AIMAC), what most AI models still get wrong about accessible code, and why “AI will fix it later” is a dangerous assumption.

We also explore how front-end tools like AI-generated captions, voice interfaces, and image descriptions are changing daily life for users with disabilities—and where back-end AI systems can finally close the gap between automated testing and real-world usability. Throughout the conversation, Joe makes a compelling case that accessibility is not just a moral imperative, but a design discipline that will separate future-proof products from legacy ones.

Topics covered:

• Why most digital products still fail basic accessibility standards
• How AI can dramatically expand—or quietly restrict—access
• What AIMAC reveals about how accessible today’s AI models really are
• Front-end vs. back-end accessibility breakthroughs
• The ethical stakes of deploying inaccessible AI at scale
• Why inclusive design must be a core requirement, not a patch