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Rachel Botsman

Leading Thinker on Trust in the Modern World

Trust, Branding, Consumer Trends, Corporate Culture
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Leading Thinker and Author on Trust in the Modern World

Rachel Botsman is an author, designer, and lecturer renowned for her work on trust and societal change. A leading expert in the field, she has written three influential books – What’s Mine Is Yours, Who Can You Trust?, and How to Trust & Be Trusted – translated into 14 languages. She has been recognized as one of the world’s top 30 most influential management thinkers and honoured as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum.

As a former Trust Fellow at Oxford University, Rachel teaches leaders and entrepreneurs how to navigate trust in technology, work cultures, and society. Her TED Talks have been viewed over five million times, and her insights regularly appear in the media, including The New York Times, WIRED, Harvard Business Review and The Financial Times. She also engages with over 90,000 subscribers through her popular newsletter, Rethink with Rachel.

With a Fine Arts degree from the University of Oxford, Rachel brings her concepts to life into the realm of art and design. Her work reimagines historical artifacts to examine our evolving relationship with work and society. Roots of Trust, a surface reflections installation, will was exhibited at the London Design Biennale 2025.

Rachel delivers her ideas in engaging formats tailored to each audience, from high-impact keynotes and interactive Q&As to candid fireside chats with leaders and carefully curated client dinners

Recognised as a world-class keynote speaker on trust and transformation. She has spoken on the most prestigious stages, from TED to the Lincoln Centre and the World Economic Forum, and for leading global brands across industries. Audiences consistently vote her as a favourite for her unique ability to combine warm storytelling, visual language, and clear, actionable insights.

What sets Rachel’s talks apart is not just her expertise, but how she makes people feel: inspired, curious, and empowered to rethink how they lead and work.

Topics

#1: Leading with Trust in Uncertain Times


When the world feels complex and fast-moving, trust becomes a powerful source of clarity and confidence. It gives people the courage to take smart risks, collaborate across teams, and lean into change instead of resisting it. Yet despite how often we use the word, trust is still clouded by myths. In this keynote, Rachel deconstructs those misconceptions and invites audiences to rethink trust as something they can actively shape. With her ‘Risk–Trust Lens’ framework, she shows why the balance between risk and trust is the hallmark of adaptive leadership and shares practical tools leaders can use to build cultures where people feel safe, supported, and ready to step into the unknown.

Participants will learn:

• Why trust is the foundation of resilience in uncertain times.
• How to use the ‘Risk–Trust Lens’ to make smarter decisions under pressure.
• The four traits every leader must consistently demonstrate to earn trust.
• Why cultures built on trust consistently outperform those built on control.

#2: Trust by Design: What Makes Innovation Stick


Why do some innovations fail while others succeed? The difference is rarely the technology; it is whether people trust it enough to make the leap. Every breakthrough depends on what Rachel calls a Trust Leap: the decision to embrace a new way of working, creating, or connecting. Yet too often, innovators obsess over features and functions and overlook the trust conditions that trulydetermine adoption. Drawing on 15 years of work with Fortune 500 companies and startups, Rachel
shares her ‘Trust Leap’ framework, showing why designing for trust is as essential as designing for usability or beauty. Through stories that span from historical inventions to today’s disruptivestart-ups, she reveals how trust is the hidden design layer that allows ideas to take root and grow.

Participants will learn:

• Why trust is the bridge that makes people willing to take risks on new ideas.
• The design principles that encourage people to make a ‘Trust Leap.’
• How to identify and close the trust gaps that quietly block adoption.

#3: Rethinking the New Rules of Trust & AI


AI is rapidly reshaping how we make decisions, create, work, and even trust one another. But here is
the challenge: most of the questions about trust and AI are framed incorrectly. The real issue is
not whether people should trust AI, but how we design AI systems to be genuinely trustworthy.
Rachel uses her ‘Trust Shift’ framework to show how every major leap in history has required new
forms of trust, and why AI marks a fundamentally different moment that forces us to rethink the
rules altogether.

Participants will learn:
• Why the real question is not “should we trust AI?” but “when is it trustworthy?”
• The challenges and possibilities of shifting trust from people to intelligent systems.
• How the AI Trust Matrix reveals where different systems stand on trustworthiness.
• The four dimensions that determine whether an AI system earns or loses confidence.

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TESTIMONIALS

“Rachel scored 5 out of 5 from all participants that completed the post event survey”
PwC


“A huge thank you for delivering a stellar session yesterday. I personally found it insightful,
practical and incredibly valuable and the feedback we received has been absolutely superb.’
LinkedIn


“Her presentation was super interesting, interactive and we were able to gain a lot that can be
implemented in the working world.” Siemens.


“Not one single day has gone by since the event without external and internal commendations
on her engagement with our audience. Her message really connected and impacted the entire
audience.” Adobe


“She kept our 2000 delegates on the edge of their seats for over an hour, not only with the
quality of her content but also with her humor and engaging style.” CIPD


“Rachel’s talk both provoked and inspired, setting off an active conversation that continues to
this day and worldwide within the company.” Microsoft


“What a session! We got some really positive feedback about the content but also about the
virtual rapport that you managed to create.” Mastercard


“Rachel is a genuine world class speaker who knows how to stir thinking and encourage an
audience to open their minds.” Commonwealth Bank


“Rachel’s insightful session was engaging and authentic. She really made a personalized
connection. The informal, open-ended format and seamless online experience allowed our
audience to ask questions and engage in a lively conversation with her.” KPMG

Awards

Young Global Leader, World Economic Forum

World’s Top 30 Management Thinkers, Thinkers50

Top 100 Most Creative People in Business, Fast Company

Women of the Year, ‘The Progressive Voice’ InStyle

‘10 Ideas That Will Change The World’, Time

Breakthrough Idea Award, Thinkers50

Top 10 Most Influential Voices, LinkedIn

HR Most Influential Thinkers, HR Magazine

Top 20 Speakers in the World, Monocle

Finalist, CEO Book Awards

‘Change’ Book of the Year, Finalist, Business Book Awards

Interview of the Year, Finalist, British Podcast Awards

Business Podcast of the Year, British Podcast Awards

If you can’t trust those in charge, who can you trust? From government to business, banks to media, trust in institutions is at an all-time low. But this isn’t the age of distrust — far from it.

In this revolutionary book, world-renowned trust expert Rachel Botsman reveals that we are at the tipping point of one of the biggest social transformations in human history — with fundamental consequences for everyone. A new world order is emerging: we might have lost faith in institutions and leaders, but millions of people rent their homes to total strangers, exchange digital currencies, or find themselves trusting a bot. This is the age of “distributed trust,” a paradigm shift driven by innovative technologies that are rewriting the rules of an all-too-human relationship.

If we are to benefit from this radical shift, we must understand the mechanics of how trust is built, managed, lost, and repaired in the digital age. In the first book to explain this new world, Botsman provides a detailed map of this uncharted landscape – and explores what’s next for humanity.

 

“Amidst a thousand tirades against the excesses and waste of consumer society, What’s Mine Is Yours offers us something genuinely new and invigorating: a way out.” —Steven Johnson, author of The Invention of Air and The Ghost Map

A groundbreaking and original book, What’s Mine is Yours articulates for the first time the roots of “collaborative consumption,” Rachel Botsman and Roo Roger’s timely new coinage for the technology-based peer communities that are transforming the traditional landscape of business, consumerism, and the way we live. Readers captivated by Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail, Van Jones’ The Green Collar Economy or Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point will be wowed by this landmark contribution to the evolving ecology of commerce and sustainability.

 

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Rachel Botsman