Member since September 2026
Wall Street machine learning → 1 exit to $9B company → led US go-to-market for an AI unicorn → now interviewing the operators deploying AI every day
Galina Fendikevich is an AI adoption and change management speaker bringing an operator's view to one of the biggest questions facing leaders today: how do you keep up when technology rewrites the rules?
Her work is the antidote to AI hype. Rather than predicting that AI will replace everyone or transform everything overnight, Galina shows audiences what adoption actually looks like inside real businesses: what is working, what is breaking, and where human judgment still matters.
As the founder and host of Artificial Reality, Galina interviews executives, operators, and experts across industries about how AI is actually being used. Those conversations give her an unusually grounded view of the gap between what technology promises and what organizations can realistically adopt.
Galina's perspective comes from working on both sides of technological change. She began in machine learning on Wall Street, co-founded a blockchain and augmented-reality company later acquired by Niantic (creators of Pokémon Go), and went on to lead U.S. go-to-market for a generative AI unicorn. Across those roles, she has spent her career translating emerging technology into real-world adoption.
Her keynote, How to Keep Up When Technology Rewrites the Rules, gives leaders a practical framework for navigating technological change without chasing every trend or freezing in fear. Audiences learn how to identify what is actually changing in their work, where AI can create value, what should remain human, and how to make better decisions while the technology itself continues to evolve.
Audiences leave with five principles they can apply immediately: learn enough to stop being afraid, map the work, start with one real problem, protect the human core, and become translators between technology and reality.
Curious by nature, Galina speed runs life and keeps her passport ready for the next conversation.
Galina Fendikevich is the founder of Artificial Reality, a media and market intelligence platform built on interviews with business leaders, operators, and executives deploying AI in the real world. Her research spans manufacturing and supply chain, hospitality, healthcare, finance, professional services, creative, and more.
Her research is built from on-the-record interviews, not vendor case studies or abstract predictions: named tools, real
workflows, actual numbers, what worked, what broke, what teams resisted, and what never survived onboarding. She turns
those cross-industry lessons into practical talks that help leaders understand what AI means for their own teams before they waste budget, lose trust, or automate the wrong work.
When my team was acquired by Niantic, the creators of Pokemon Go, I got to work closely with Niantic’s founders. They were also the founders of Keyhole. And they told me the real story of how they struggled to get their technology into people’s hands.
Keyhole was this fledgling startup in the early 2000s. It was pioneering “geospatial data visualization” software, also known as mapping. Today that sounds obviously valuable. But at the time, almost nobody understood what it was good for.
They were pitching this technology everywhere, and doors were closing in their face. Their first real customer was in real estate, because brokers could use it to see and sell property overseas. That was the ONLY industry willing to pay. That was the ONLY application.
And Keyhole was close to going bankrupt.
Then one of Google’s founders saw the technology being used on CNN to track Operation Red Dawn to capture Saddam Hussein. Google acquired Keyhole in 2004, and that technology evolved into Google Earth.
They gave us the map-based life we now take for granted: Google Earth, Google Maps, the blue dot that tells you where you are anywhere in the world, and the foundation for things like rideshare, food delivery, social media, and other location-based apps.
Can you imagine modern life without the blue dot?
But here is the point: they could not predict all of that from the beginning.
At the time, they were not saying, “This will change transportation, logistics, food delivery, and how humans navigate the planet or connect with each other.”
They were saying, “This technology is powerful. We just have to find the real use.”
That is where we are now with AI.
Instead of “geospatial data visualization,” we are saying “large language models” and “tokens.”
We cannot predict all the future applications. But we can feel that this technology is powerful. So the work now is to figure it out together.
When I was leading US go to market for the AI unicorn company, I was coming across people from all walks of life and they opened up to me about the struggles in their AI adoption journey. I decided to platform their story to combat the fumbled messaging coming out of Silicon Valley that "AI will replace everyone" and "agentic everything" and "you're behind." And to hear the ACTUAL TRUTH about how AI is getting adopted across the US economy.
Drawing from Artificial Reality’s cross-industry interview research, this talk shows audiences what business leaders are learning the hard way about AI adoption. Galina brings real stories from operators deploying AI across industries and translates them into a practical playbook for any team trying to understand what to automate, what to protect, and how to help people keep up when technology rewrites the rules.
WHAT AUDIENCES WILL LEARN
— Why fear asks the wrong AI questions, and what to ask instead.
— How to spot where AI breaks inside real workflows.
— Why the people closest to the work should be treated as design partners, not end users.
— How to protect judgment, trust, care, creativity, and responsibility.
— How to measure AI pilots by behavior change, not just technical performance.
— A practical 5-step playbook for AI enablement.
Key takeaway: AI is not a replacement strategy. It is an enablement strategy.
Artificial Reality is documenting where AI is creating value, where adoption is breaking down, and what still needs to be built through conversations with non-tech industry operators, executives, and experts.
Listen NowWhen my team was acquired by Niantic, the creators of Pokemon Go, I got to work closely with Niantic’s founders. They were also the founders of Keyhole. And they told me the real story of how they struggled to get their technology into people’s hands.
Keyhole was this fledgling startup in the early 2000s. It was pioneering “geospatial data visualization” software, also known as mapping. Today that sounds obviously valuable. But at the time, almost nobody understood what it was good for.
They were pitching this technology everywhere, and doors were closing in their face. Their first real customer was in real estate, because brokers could use it to see and sell property overseas. That was the ONLY industry willing to pay. That was the ONLY application.
And Keyhole was close to going bankrupt.
Then one of Google’s founders saw the technology being used on CNN to track Operation Red Dawn to capture Saddam Hussein. Google acquired Keyhole in 2004, and that technology evolved into Google Earth.
They gave us the map-based life we now take for granted: Google Earth, Google Maps, the blue dot that tells you where you are anywhere in the world, and the foundation for things like rideshare, food delivery, social media, and other location-based apps.
Can you imagine modern life without the blue dot?
But here is the point: they could not predict all of that from the beginning.
At the time, they were not saying, “This will change transportation, logistics, food delivery, and how humans navigate the planet or connect with each other.”
They were saying, “This technology is powerful. We just have to find the real use.”
That is where we are now with AI.
Instead of “geospatial data visualization,” we are saying “large language models” and “tokens.”
We cannot predict all the future applications. But we can feel that this technology is powerful. So the work now is to figure it out together.
When I was leading US go to market for the AI unicorn company, I was coming across people from all walks of life and they opened up to me about the struggles in their AI adoption journey. I decided to platform their story to combat the fumbled messaging coming out of Silicon Valley that "AI will replace everyone" and "agentic everything" and "you're behind." And to hear the ACTUAL TRUTH about how AI is getting adopted across the US economy.
Drawing from Artificial Reality’s cross-industry interview research, this talk shows audiences what business leaders are learning the hard way about AI adoption. Galina brings real stories from operators deploying AI across industries and translates them into a practical playbook for any team trying to understand what to automate, what to protect, and how to help people keep up when technology rewrites the rules.
WHAT AUDIENCES WILL LEARN
— Why fear asks the wrong AI questions, and what to ask instead.
— How to spot where AI breaks inside real workflows.
— Why the people closest to the work should be treated as design partners, not end users.
— How to protect judgment, trust, care, creativity, and responsibility.
— How to measure AI pilots by behavior change, not just technical performance.
— A practical 5-step playbook for AI enablement.
Key takeaway: AI is not a replacement strategy. It is an enablement strategy.
