The Lavin Agency

The Lavin Agency A speakers bureau that represents the best original thinkers, writers, and doers. Making the world a smarter place since 1989.

The Lavin Agency is the world’s largest intellectual talent agency, representing leading thinkers, writers, and doers for speaking engagements, personal appearances, consulting, and endorsements.

Vijay Gupta's new book, Restrung, is out today!This Lavin Exclusive Speaker is a MacArthur Fellow, internationally celeb...
06/09/2026

Vijay Gupta's new book, Restrung, is out today!

This Lavin Exclusive Speaker is a MacArthur Fellow, internationally celebrated violinist, and founder of Street Symphony: the nonprofit that has brought music into shelters, jails, clinics, and reentry programs across Los Angeles.

Restrung is Vijay's searing memoir of collapse and renewal. It traces his journey from playing Carnegie Hall at 8, to burning out, to finding restoration through music. It reveals how music is not just performance, but medicine, connection, and survival itself. Award-winning author Alex Ross (The Rest Is Noise) calls Restrung "a singular, transfixing document. At once brutally honest and passionately hopeful."

Lavin is proud to exclusively represent Vijay for speaking engagements and events. In his powerful, intimate keynotes, he shows audiences how art builds trust across difference, restores dignity under pressure, and transforms pain into healing.

Learn more about Vijay and his book on our website at the link in bio.

Congratulations, Vijay!

Congratulations to Lavin Exclusive Speaker Martin Ford, whose prescient and hugely influential New York Times bestseller...
06/02/2026

Congratulations to Lavin Exclusive Speaker Martin Ford, whose prescient and hugely influential New York Times bestseller, Rise of the Robots, is being rereleased today!

First published in 2015, Rise of the Robots argued that AI was poised to transform the economy, replace jobs, and change how we all think about work. At the time, it was a provocative claim. Today, it reads like a prophecy. This new 2026 edition has been extensively updated to cover the latest advances in generative AI and robotics, and to examine what the unfolding disruption means for individuals, institutions, and the economy as a whole.

A McKinsey Award-winning author, software entrepreneur, and TED mainstage speaker, Martin has spent over two decades at the forefront of the conversation about AI, automation, and the future of work. Rise of the Robots is the book that started it all.

The Lavin Agency is proud to represent Martin for keynotes, conferences, events, and fireside chats. Drawing on Rise of the Robots and his broader body of work, Martin helps investors, executives, policymakers, and individuals cut through the hype—distinguishing real AI opportunity from real AI risk, and making the case that the decisions we make right now will determine whether the coming disruption produces inequality or prosperity for all.

Learn more about Martin and his book on our website at the link in bio.

Congratulations, Martin!

Congratulations to Lavin Exclusive Speaker Vijay Gupta, whose new book, Restrung, is out next Tuesday!An internationally...
06/02/2026

Congratulations to Lavin Exclusive Speaker Vijay Gupta, whose new book, Restrung, is out next Tuesday!

An internationally celebrated violinist and founder of Street Symphony—the nonprofit that has brought music into shelters, jails, and reentry programs across Los Angeles—this MacArthur Genius has spent his career at the intersection of art, justice, and healing. Restrung is his memoir of finding purpose, connection, dignity, and survival through the medicine of music.

Vijay played Carnegie Hall at eight, studied at Juilliard and Yale before most had finished high school, joined the Los Angeles Philharmonic at nineteen, gave a celebrated TED Talk seen by millions, and launched a nonprofit. But behind the scenes, he was burning out. Restrung follows him through ambition, collapse, and finally to an unexpected reawakening, where he discovered that the music he’d spent his life studying was not mere entertainment, but a lifeline of connection and survival itself.

Award-winning author Alex Ross (The Rest Is Noise) writes that Restrung is "a singular, transfixing document of Vijay Gupta's mission to make music in a way that matters to people who live on society’s margins. In place of comfortable clichés about the healing powers of art, Gupta gives us a vision that is at once brutally honest and passionately hopeful. Publishers Weekly calls it simply "a virtuoso performance."

The Lavin Agency is proud to exclusively represent Vijay Gupta for keynotes, conferences, events, and fireside chats. Drawing on his memoir and over a decade of frontline work with Street Symphony, Vijay's talks show audiences how music and art can build trust across difference, restore dignity under pressure, and transform pain into healing.

Learn more about Vijay and his book on our website at the link in bio.

Congratulations, Vijay!

06/01/2026

“Radical, deeply-rooted joy is one of those things that no matter how hard they try, they cannot take from us.”

Happy Pride Month from The Lavin Agency!

Every June, we have the opportunity to envision and fight for a world where we can all embrace our unique identities. In the midst of oppression, it can sometimes feel hard to celebrate—but Gabby Rivera says that joy is what gives us the strength to keep fighting.

Gabby is a Lavin Exclusive Speaker and author of Juliet Takes a Breath, as well as the first Latina ever to write for Marvel Comics. Through her own story of q***r Latinx joy, she inspires audiences to lean into vulnerability and embrace joy as a source of strength, resilience, and connection. You can learn more about her on our website at the link in bio.

AI is remaking the world around us: from the predictive apps and algorithms we use every day to the literal landscape of...
05/27/2026

AI is remaking the world around us: from the predictive apps and algorithms we use every day to the literal landscape of data centers and Silicon Valley. How can we take back control of these tools and use them to build the world we want?

Lavin Exclusive Speakers Karen Hao and Carissa Véliz are two of our most influential voices on the effect AI is having on our world and how we can forge a better path forward. This past weekend, they had a rousing discussion at the world-renowned Hay Festival about the promises, perils, and dilemmas shaping AI and the world ahead.

Karen is the instant New York Times bestselling author of Empire of AI, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, and one of TIME's 100 most influential people in AI. Karen breaks down the mythology that Silicon Valley is building around AI and illuminates a path towards a future of technological progress that benefits us all.

Carissa is the author of the highly acclaimed new book Prophecy, in which she reveals how predictions, like the algorithms and AI tools we use every day, can become self-fulfilling prophecies to sell a specific future. And those who understand how to use them (or how not to use them) will be the ones who can chart their own course and defy the odds.

Congratulations to Karen and Carissa on a great event!

Learn more about both of these incredible speakers on our website (link in bio).

Congratulations to Lavin Exclusive Speaker Shalini Kantayya, whose new documentary, Love Apptually, had a hugely success...
04/29/2026

Congratulations to Lavin Exclusive Speaker Shalini Kantayya, whose new documentary, Love Apptually, had a hugely successful world premiere over the weekend!

The Lavin team was delighted to attend the premiere of this vital documentary on Saturday. Our EVP of Intellectual Talent Charles Yao and our founder and CEO David Lavin are pictured with Shalini at the Hot Docs festival.

Shalini is a two-time Emmy-nominated director known for her award-winning documentaries, including Coded Bias, which Vice calls "the most important film about AI you can watch today." In Love Apptually, she follows one journalist's quest to unpack the dating apps and algorithms that shape our social lives, exploring how a multi-billion-dollar tech industry is quietly changing who and how we meet. Shalini is also a long-time Lavin Exclusive Speaker whose talks give audiences a clear picture behind the scenes of our screens and social media—and offer vital insight into how we can be more human in the AI future.

Learn more about her at the link in bio!

04/22/2026

Technology has given us a way out of the climate crisis, says Derek Thompson. We can use it to build a world that's better for the planet—and for us.

Derek is a Lavin Exclusive Speaker and the #1 New York Times bestselling co-author of Abundance (with Ezra Klein). In this interview, he explains how advancements in technology have given us agency over the problems we're facing, and how an abundance agenda can help us solve them.

Learn more about Derek at the link in bio!

04/22/2026

This Earth Day, more of us are feeling the weight of climate anxiety. But Britt Wray says we shouldn't ignore it—instead, we should use it to find hope, purpose, and agency in the climate crisis.

Britt is a Lavin Exclusive Speaker and the author of Generation Dread. She is the Director of CIRCLE at Stanford Psychiatry, a research and action initiative focused on Community-minded Interventions for Resilience, Climate Leadership and Emotional wellbeing at the Stanford School of Medicine.

In this exclusive Lavin interview, Britt explains how our emotions surrounding the climate crisis can become one of our greatest tools for saving our planet.

Learn more about Britt at the link in bio!

Carissa Véliz's new book, Prophecy, is out today!This Lavin Exclusive Speaker is an Oxford professor and author who has ...
04/21/2026

Carissa Véliz's new book, Prophecy, is out today!

This Lavin Exclusive Speaker is an Oxford professor and author who has become one of our most incisive voices on privacy, AI, and power. In Prophecy, she argues that understanding prediction (including the algorithms and AI tools we use every day) and knowing when to use it can help us defy our odds for outsized success. Anil Seth, author of Being You, calls it "essential reading for the times we live in."

In her keynotes, Carissa helps audiences understand how prediction works, what it's doing to our decision-making, and how to prepare more wisely for an uncertain world.

Lavin is proud to exclusively represent Carissa for speaking engagements and events. Learn more about her and her book at the link in bio.

Congratulations, Carissa!

Congratulations to Lavin Exclusive Speaker Carissa Véliz, whose new book, Prophecy, is out next week!Carissa is an Assoc...
04/16/2026

Congratulations to Lavin Exclusive Speaker Carissa Véliz, whose new book, Prophecy, is out next week!

Carissa is an Associate Professor at the University of Oxford’s Institute for Ethics in AI and one of the clearest thinkers working at the intersection of AI, privacy, and power today. The author of Privacy Is Power (named a best book of 2020 by The Economist), she's a philosopher who's advised the UK and Spanish governments as well as companies worldwide.

In Prophecy, she argues that prediction—including the AI tools and algorithms we use every day—is never just about knowing the future. It’s also about power: who gets sorted, steered, approved, denied, and defined before they’ve had the chance to act. Carissa makes a compelling case that our obsession with reducing risk can actually make us more vulnerable, not less, and shows us how to understand prediction and defy the odds.

Roger McNamee, bestselling author of Zucked, calls Prophecy “the most important book you will read for years.” Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, calls it “captivating,” praising Carissa for elucidating “complex philosophical and technological concepts with ease.”

The Lavin Agency is proud to exclusively represent Carissa Véliz for keynotes, conferences, events, and fireside chats. In her talks, Carissa draws on philosophy, policy, and the everyday reality of AI-driven decision-making to show audiences what prediction can and cannot do. She helps leaders think more clearly about risk and agency so that they can use AI more wisely, prepare better for risk, and use uncertainty for outsized success.

Learn more about Carissa and her book at the link in bio!

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