John Higgins

John Higgins

John Higgins is co-founder and chair of Global Digital Foundation and founder of its AI Assurance Club. The Club brings an engineering mindset to the challenges of AI governance with a particular focus on the AI value chain. It organises an annual International AI governance round table with unique multi-stakeholder participation.

John speaks at events and participates in fora concerned with effective and responsible use of AI.

He became the public face of the digital sector in Europe in November 2011 speaking regularly on platforms and at conferences throughout Europe and beyond as Director General of DIGITALEUROPE, the association for the digital technology industry in Europe. He led the association until April 2017, following nine years as head of its UK member, Intellect, now TechUK. He is a former President of the BCS, the UK’s Chartered Institute of IT.

In spring of 2017 he became a Senior Advisor to global communications company, Burson, Cohn & Wolfe for digital and AI. He is an advisor to the European Commission’s Intelligent Cities Challenge and chairs the Advisory Board of Eutopia, a consortium of ten European Universities. In 2021 he was appointed Chair of Sardina Systems – a global cloud software company.

The Queen appointed him a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) in 2005 for his services to the UK IT industry.

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  • Organization
    Global Digital Foundation
  • Profession
    Co-lead of the Standards Promotion Program of SC on AI; Co-founder and Chair
Related sessions
In person
9 July 2025
09:00 - 12:15
EST - New York
CST - Beijing
PST - Los Angeles
AWST - Perth, Australia
Amidst accelerating advancements in AI and growing disparities in digital...