Every CEO is one of four types under pressure. Most don't know theirs | Caroline Stokes

Caroline Stokes tells CEOs something most of them don't want to hear: the AI

question everyone is asking is the wrong one.

She is the founder of FORWARD, a human capital solutions firm for pioneers, and

the author of AfterShock to 2030: A CEO's Guide to Reinvention in the Age of AI,

Climate, and Societal Collapse. Named to the Thinkers50 Radar Class of 2026, she

was shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Leadership Award for a book she deliberately

published digital-only to keep its carbon footprint near zero.

Her route here was unusual. Raised between the UK and Singapore before the age of

ten, she went from PR at Virgin to the early PlayStation team, then to executive

search, then to coaching, and then back to school three separate times during and

after the pandemic to study ESG at MIT, AI business strategy, and the new space

economy. She is neurodivergent, and she credits that with how she reads systems