Cathy Hackl

Cathy Hackl is a highly respected global business executive, tech futurist, and media personality. She’s a leading authority in emerging tech and co-founded Journey where she advises companies, brands, cities and governments with gaming, AR, AI, spatial computing, metaverse, web3, virtual world strategies, and strategic foresight. Brands like Nike, Walmart, Louis Vuitton, and Clinique have trusted her to guide them into new virtual spaces on their emerging tech journeys.

She was recently named one of Ad Age’s Leading Women of 2023, Forbes Latam’s 100 Most Powerful Women of 2023, and is on the Vogue Business 100 Innovators list. She’s a member of the prestigious Ad Council Board of Directors, Fast Council’s Impact Council, and is the host of an award-winning Adweek podcast. Popularly known in tech circles as the Godmother of the Metaverse, Hackl has been a fixture in the world of immersive technology for almost a decade with many media appearances in CNBC’s Squawk Box, 60 Minutes+, CNN, Good Morning America, GQ, Time, The Economist, Bloomberg, and more. She’s launched her own luxury tech fashion label called Verseluxe and is a guest editor for Vogue Singapore. She’s a multi-hyphenate, multilingual, multifaceted professional, and in 2022 became the first human to ring NASDAQ’s opening bell and open the financial markets both in physical and avatar form while doing so on live television.

She has taught at IE Business School and SDA Bocconi School of Management, two of the world’s leading business schools, and has spoken at Harvard Business School, MIT, SXSW, Comic-Con, WEF’s Annual Meeting in Davos, CES, MWC, Vogue’s Forces of Fashion, and more. Her personal research interests include Gen Alpha, neural interfaces, space marketing, and the post-smartphone future. With an intense passion for frontier technology and female empowerment, she’s one of the world’s leading female tech trailblazers that is constantly evolving and helping build a more inclusive future.