Gerard Kunkel

Gerard Kunkel is a cross-disciplinary executive and visionary thinker whose career spans design, media, technology and entrepreneurship. He has led innovation from both sides of the table as a senior leader inside global enterprises and as a founder building new ventures from zero.

Kunkel began his career as a designer, bringing creative discipline and human-centered thinking into industries hungry for new ideas. That design foundation evolved into an executive superpower as he transitioned into large-scale product leadership and strategic innovation.

As a senior executive at Comcast Cable Communications, Kunkel led key initiatives behind the award-winning Xfinity X1 entertainment platform. At Microsoft, he worked on next-generation consumer entertainment and device experiences that helped shape the company’s platform strategy. He has served as CEO and board member for multiple startups, pioneering advances in streaming media, interactive platforms and AI-driven consumer experiences. Kunkel’s products and designs have reached hundreds of millions of users globally.

Kunkel is the founder and CEO of Next Media Partners, a boutique advisory and product innovation firm trusted by major media companies, private equity firms and Fortune 500 brands. He and his team created Brand Genius, an agentic conversational AI platform that transforms advertising from passive impressions to two-way interactive experiences, enabling brands to have real conversations with real customers at scale.

Kunkel is also recognized as the first keynote speaker to integrate live conversational AI characters into major conference presentations, blending storytelling and real-time interactivity in a way audiences had not seen before and turning passive keynotes into participatory experiences.

He speaks frequently on the future of media consumption and the currency of consumer attention; how AI is reshaping marketing, advertising and customer engagement; leading innovation inside large organizations; and converting complex technology into human-centered experience.

Kunkel is known for blending design intuition, technical credibility and business execution into a compelling narrative of what’s coming next and how leaders can seize the opportunity.