Colin Priest

I started my career as an actuary – someone who does the mathematics of insurance. I spent years learning technical methodologies in order to qualify as an actuary. But as I progressed through the actuarial exams, I was also working in non-technical roles, with non-technical colleagues, and non-technical clients.

It’s more than 25 years I started my journey in machine learning and artificial intelligence, and during that time I’ve seen it all. I placed second in my very first Kaggle competition. I was CEO of a tech startup using AI and live security video to identify crimes as they occurred, alerting staff to prevent losses. I did pro-bono work for cancer research identifying gene switching and designing image processing on MRI scans to identify suspicious calcification. I have worked for a large tech firm, and had some of the worlds largest enterprises as clients.

For more than a decade now I’ve been teaching technical people how to communicate, and how to contextualise the people issues and business environment, and teaching business executives how to identify opportunities, then sponsor and manage AI and digital transformation projects.