John Higgins is chair of Global Digital Foundation and founder of its AI Assurance Club. The Club brings an engineering mindset to AI governance with a particular focus on the AI value chain. It organises an annual International AI governance roundtable with unique multi-stakeholder participation.

John speaks at events and participates in fora concerned with effective and responsible use of AI.

He became the public face of the digital sector in Europe in November 2011 speaking regularly on platforms and at conferences throughout Europe and beyond as Director General of DIGITALEUROPE, the association for the digital technology industry in Europe. He led the association until April 2017, following nine years as head of its UK member, Intellect, now TechUK. He is a former President of the BCS, the UK’s Chartered Institute of IT.

In spring of 2017 he became a Senior Advisor to global communications company, Burson, Cohn & Wolfe for digital and AI. He chairs the Advisory Board of Eutopia, a consortium of ten European Universities.

The Queen appointed him a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) in 2005