Sam Rad

Sam Rad is a lifelong student of humanity – futurist, anthropologist, and entrepreneur. She is the founder of Radical Next, a meta-media studio creating transformative stories, experiences, and media productions that shape a positive future. Her book by the same name, "Radical Next: Reclaiming your Humanity in a Post-Human World" explores how “radical next ideas” and technologies will transform societies in the decades to come.

A charismatic speaker and performer, Rad has shared stories of radical change with global audiences on stages across 5 continents – empowering individuals, leaders, and organizations not only to survive, but to thrive through radical and accelerating change. She’s advised the United Nations, WEF, Federal Reserve Bank, to name a few.

Rad was trained in anthropology, engineering, and symbolic systems, studying simulated and immersive realities – pushing the bounds of human consciousness and connection through her work. She was among the first anthropologists to conduct ethnographic research living in the virtual world “Second Life” in 2009 and later amongst the earliest AI researchers to virtually clone herself.

Her work as a futurist has led Rad on a journey of working with a range of frontier technologies, emerging social structures, people, places, and practices. She refers to herself as an archaeologist of the future, as Fredric Jameson coined — applying a traditional anthropological ethnographic approach to envisioning and illustrating future possibilities.

A four-time entrepreneur, Rad has served across multiple founding executive roles across the C-Suite. She was previously co-founder of NYOUM, a London-based Generative AI communication platform, and Chronicled, a San Francisco-based blockchain company bringing trust to global commerce and supply chains. Prior to Chronicled, she founded two companies leveraging AI to map personal taste. Rad holds several patents linking the physical and digital worlds and is considered a pioneer in Applied Cryptography, Blockchain systems, Artificial Intelligence, Natural Language Processing, Immersive Realities, and Simulations. She is noted as inventing the protocols which would lead to ERC-721 or Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs).

Rad is the author of two #1 bestselling books, "Radical Next" and "Bitcoin Pizza," previously wrote as a contributor to Forbes, and was named to the 2017 Forbes 30 Under 30 list.

Rad is passionate about empowering humanity to thrive in times of radical change. It is her mission to restore trust and connections between people and themselves, each other, all beings, and our planet.

True to her “Rad” name, Rad is no stranger to risk and has accumulated hundreds of jumps as an ex-competitive skydiver.