Natascha McIntyre Hall

Head of Automation & AI, Energy & Natural Resources, Turner &Townsend & CBRE

Mathematician by training, project manager by habit and recovering city designer, I've spent my career getting rooms full of clever, busy people to agree where they're going and then actually get there. Regeneration, digital transformation, complex automation programmes: different organisations, same job.

I came to AI sideways, through a stubborn interest in making places and systems work for more of the people who use them. FOMO did the rest. I started out as an enthusiast and have since learned to ask the awkward questions: who built this, what did it learn from, and who's missing? When a model has read most of recorded history, and most of that history was written by men, somebody needs to keep checking to make sure the future is fairer.

These days my attention is on automation and AI in energy and natural resources, where "move fast and break things" isn't something anyone wants on the risk register. Governance is where I'm most useful. I turn good intentions into rules people actually follow, and I make sure humans still own the decisions that matter.

On the side, I'm setting up a small venture helping female-owned micro-businesses hand their admin to AI, so they can spend their time on the work they started the business for. Admin costs a sole trader far more, proportionally, than it costs a corporate, and that seems fixable.

I rely on Claude more than is strictly dignified. I'm joining AI SAT as an admin, I'll be getting stuck into Women in AI, and anywhere else that will have me. Oh, and out of work I am keen on horses (dressage) and France / French, so look out for obscure AI solutions along these lines...