22 Oct December 11, 2026 – Togo to World Stage Steven Dossou and Seth Cushing
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Steven Dossou
Steven Dossou is the Founder and CEO of IRIS Vision Capital and Sail Force Marketing, Co-Founder of Leadership University, an author, keynote speaker, and two-time TEDx speaker. With more than 15 years of experience building and scaling ventures across Europe, Africa, Asia, and North America, Steven has developed a career around creating commercial systems that generate revenue, attract investment, and build long term enterprise value in complex B2B environments. His work spans enterprise sales, revenue operations, investor relations, capital strategy, financial planning, strategic partnerships, market expansion, and executive relationship management. Across the businesses and initiatives he has led, Steven has grown revenues from under $5 million to more than $20 million, helped raise more than $25 million in investor capital, and closed commercial deals across four continents. Today, through IRIS Vision Capital, he focuses on cross border venture strategy and investor relations, helping businesses strengthen their commercial positioning, capital strategy, and investor engagement. Through Sail Force Marketing, he applies artificial intelligence and modern revenue strategies to B2B sales and marketing, helping companies build stronger pipelines and more effective commercial engines. Steven’s approach combines entrepreneurial execution with financial discipline, and in May 2026 he completed the Financial Planning & Analysis Professional, or FPAP, certification through the Corporate Finance Institute, formalizing his experience in forecasting, financial planning, commercial analytics, and business performance management. He is also a two-time TEDx speaker, having delivered “Success and the Three Battles” at TEDxAshesiUniversity in 2021 and “The Upside of Losing Momentum” at TEDxLeiden University in 2022. In addition, Steven co-founded Leadership University with Arthur Carmazzi, bringing together leadership development, organizational culture, and practical business education. He is the author of two books and has delivered keynote presentations in more than 15 countries, sharing insights on leadership, entrepreneurship, sales, resilience, commercial growth, and personal development. His work has also been featured on media outlets including CBS, NBC, and FOX. Through his ventures, speaking, writing, and advisory work, Steven continues to help entrepreneurs, executives, and organizations strengthen their revenue capabilities, improve financial and commercial decision making, attract the right capital, and build businesses designed for sustainable growth and long term value.
Seth Cushing – AI & Solution Ownership Practice Lead at CompassX Lead and Founder of Bodhi AI
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Seth Cushing
Seth Cushing is the AI & Solution Ownership Practice Lead at CompassX Lead, founder of Bodhi AI, an entrepreneur, enterprise AI transformation leader, and Human + AI strategist focused on helping organizations adopt artificial intelligence in ways that create measurable business value without sacrificing trust, accountability, security, or the people behind the work. His career spans enterprise technology leadership, digital transformation, AI governance, organizational change, and large scale transformation initiatives across industries including healthcare, financial services, telecommunications, retail, government, manufacturing, cybersecurity, and data infrastructure. Seth Cushing – Press Materials_… Seth’s approach to artificial intelligence is built around the belief that the most important transformation is not Human versus AI, but Human + AI. He argues that AI is most valuable when it amplifies human strengths rather than simply replacing people, combining the speed, scale, pattern recognition, and automation of technology with human judgment, creativity, empathy, context, ethics, and accountability. Seth Cushing – Press Materials_… A central principle in his work is that leaders should first ask what work AI can remove from employees before asking which employees AI can replace. By automating repetitive and administrative tasks, Seth believes organizations can give people more time to solve problems, build relationships, make decisions, innovate, and perform the work that requires distinctly human capabilities. He also emphasizes that successful AI adoption depends heavily on trust and transparency, particularly as employees navigate uncertainty about how automation may affect their roles. His view is that organizations should involve employees in the transformation, clearly communicate how AI will be used, and create systems that allow people to participate in redesigning the future of their own work. Seth Cushing – Press Materials_… Through Bodhi AI and his broader enterprise work, Seth helps executives move beyond isolated experiments, proofs of concept, and casual use of generative AI toward practical integration into real business workflows. He focuses on areas such as AI strategy, governance, citizen developer ecosystems, AI powered applications, automation, executive dashboards, and Human + AI operating models that can be deployed responsibly across large organizations. Seth encourages leaders to judge AI initiatives by the business problems they solve and the measurable outcomes they create, such as time saved, costs reduced, revenue generated, improved customer experiences, or increased employee capacity, rather than simply measuring whether an organization is using the latest technology. Seth Cushing – Press Materials_… Governance is another major part of his philosophy. Seth advocates clear boundaries around data privacy, security, intellectual property, compliance, accuracy, and accountability, while cautioning against creating restrictions so rigid that employees simply work around them. His approach favors guardrails that allow responsible innovation while preserving the places where human review and decision making remain essential. Seth Cushing – Press Materials_… He is also a strong advocate for citizen development, the idea that employees who understand a business problem but do not have traditional programming skills can use AI and low code tools to build workflows, applications, automations, and other solutions. Seth believes this can democratize innovation by enabling organizations to tap into the knowledge of the people closest to everyday operational challenges. Seth Cushing – Press Materials_… His work also emphasizes AI literacy as an increasingly important workplace skill. Rather than expecting every employee to become an engineer, Seth teaches that people need to understand how to communicate with AI systems, evaluate their outputs, recognize limitations, protect sensitive information, and know when human judgment must take priority. Seth Cushing – Press Materials_… Seth’s own story is shaped by resilience and reinvention. A former U.S. military service member and former foster youth, he experienced a service related injury and medical discharge at age 21 before redirecting his career toward technology and business transformation. He later went on to lead major enterprise initiatives, work across highly regulated industries, develop technology solutions, and build expertise around the organizational and human challenges that often determine whether transformation succeeds or fails. Seth Cushing – Press Materials_… He also holds multiple patents and brings experience managing complex technology portfolios and large enterprise ecosystems. Today, in addition to his work with CompassX Lead and Bodhi AI, Seth is committed to mentorship and expanding access to technology and entrepreneurial opportunities for foster youth and people from underrepresented communities. Seth Cushing – Press Materials_… Through his advisory work, leadership, and speaking, Seth helps organizations separate AI hype from practical opportunity, design governance before complexity turns into chaos, build trust with employees, and create operating models where artificial intelligence strengthens human capability instead of diminishing it.