UVA Conference on Ethical AI in Business | UVA Darden School of Business

Minding the Gap: How AI Drives Performance
and What Limits Its Impact

Artificial Intelligence is transforming business, augmenting human capabilities, streamlining operations and fueling innovation across industries from marketing to healthcare. Yet with its rapid adoption come pressing challenges: concerns over job displacement, ethical blind spots, unreliable outputs and a persistent gap between expectation and reality. As leaders weigh when and how to invest, AI presents both promise and peril, placing a premium on expertise, experimentation and thoughtful strategy.

On 5 December 2025, the UVA Conference on Ethical AI in Business will cut through the noise to explore these opportunities and challenges head-on. Hosted at The Forum Hotel by the UVA Darden School of Business and organized by the LaCross AI Institute, this event brings together leading researchers and business experts to share research-grounded insights, real-world case studies and ethical frameworks for AI adoption. Anchored in Darden’s renowned expertise in business ethics, the conference will equip leaders with the clarity and perspective needed to capture AI’s potential while managing its risks.

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Keynote Speakers

Anton Korinek, Professor of Economics, Department of Economics | Professor, Darden School of Business

Anton Korinek is a Professor in the Department of Economics and Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia and the faculty director of EconTAI - the Economics of Transformative AI Initiative. He was recently named to the 2025 TIME100 list of most influential people in AI. He is also a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution and a member of Anthropic’s Economic Advisory Council. Anton researches the economic and societal implications of artificial intelligence and is also a Research Associate at NBER and CEPR. His work has been published in leading journals and cited by outlets including The Economist and The Wall Street Journal. He earned his Ph.D. in Economics from Columbia University and studied economics, math, and law at the University of Vienna.

Peter McCrory, Head of Economics at Anthropic

Peter McCrory is the Head of Economics at Anthropic, focused on producing research and data on the impact of artificial intelligence on the labor market and the broader economy. Previously, he led labor research at LinkedIn's Economic Graph Research Institute, using LinkedIn's data to study important aspects of worker and firm behavior. At LinkedIn, he also worked on an applied science team, using experimentation, machine learning, and econometric tools to solve practical business problems. Prior to LinkedIn, Peter was a U.S. economist at J.P. Morgan, where he analyzed, forecast, and published research on economic and policy topics. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley.

Conference Details

Program

TIME	SESSION
7:30 - 8 a.m.	Registration and Breakfast
8 - 8:30 a.m.	Welcome and Opening Remarks Grove Ballroom Scott Beardsley, Dean and Charles C. Abbott Professor of Business Administration, UVA Darden School of Business
8:30 - 8:45 a.m.	2025 Theme: Minding the Gap Grove Ballroom Marc Ruggiano, Founding Director of the LaCross AI Institute and Special Advisor for AI Initiatives, UVA Darden School of Business
8:45 - 9:30 a.m.	Opening Keynote Grove Ballroom Peter McCrory, Head of Economics, Anthropic
9:30 - 9:45 a.m.	Break
9:45 - 11 a.m.	Morning Sessions I Session A Maelle Perez, Ph.D Candidate, UVA Darden School of Business Session B Via Zoom Luca Cian, Killgallon Ohio Art Professor of Business Administration, UVA Darden School of Business Raj Venkatesan, Ronald Trzcinski Professor of Business Administration and Academic Director, LaCross AI Institute, UVA Darden School of Business Session C Anil Vulikani, Professor, Computer Science, UVA Biocomplexity Institute
11 a.m. - Noon	Morning Sessions II Responsible AI and Autonomy: Priciples, Policy, and Practice Jesse Kirkpatrick, Associate Research Professor and Co-Director, Mason Autonomy and Robotics Center, George Mason University AI in 2025: Bubble or Not? Ian Appel, Associate Professor, UVA Darden School of Business Marc Lipson, Robert F. Vandell Professor of Business Administration at The Darden School of Business AI & Ethics Speakers TBD
Noon - 1 p.m.	Lunch & Networking Grove Ballroom
1 - 2:15 p.m.	Afternoon Sessions I Fail Fast, Learn Faster: AI as a Co-Founder (Moderator) Omar Garriott, Executive Director of the Batten Institute for Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Technology Investing in the AI Theme Across Public & Private Markets (Moderator) Rodney Sullivan, Executive Director of the Mayo Center for Asset Management, UVA Darden School of Business Vitali Bezouchko, Data Chief Officer at Investure Nick Snoad, Vice President at Marlinspik Nick Stablein, Director, Technology Investments \| Partnerships & Ecosystems at Cleveland Avenue Fireside Chat: Privacy & Ethical AI Becky Heironomus, Director of Product Management, Meta
2:15 - 3:15 p.m.	Afternoon Sessions II Rewriting the Stack: How AI is Redefining Tech and What's Being Lost in Translation (Moderator) Carlos Bortoni, Senior Director, Tech Hub, Batten Institute for Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Technology, UVA Darden School of Business Minding the People Gap: The Human Side of AI Implementation (Moderator) Lisa Cannell, Senior Managing Director, Client Solutions, UVA Darden Executive Education & Lifelong Learning AI in Marketing Via Zoom (Moderator) Raj Venkatesan, Ronald Trzcinski Professor and Academic Director, LaCross AI Institute, UVA Darden School of Business Jimmy Sindhwad, AI Product Lead at Doordash John Stauffer, Chief Strategy Officer at Merkle Americas Jason Campagna, President, R&D and Chief Medical Officer at Inventiva Pharma
3:15 - 3:30 p.m.	Break
3:30 - 4:30 p.m.	Closing Keynote Grove Ballroom Anton Korinek, Professor of Economics, Department of Economics and Professor, UVA Darden School of Business
4:30 - 5:30 p.m.	Closing Remarks & Wrap-Up Grove Ballroom Yael Gruska-Cockayne, Senior Associate Dean for the Full-Time MBA, Landmark Communication Professor of Business Administration, Academic Co-director for the LaCross AI Institute, and Special Advisor to the Provost on AI Raj Venkatesan, Ronald Trzcinski Professor of Business Administration and Academic Director of the LaCross AI Institute
5 - 6 p.m.	Networking Reception

Keynotes

Anton Korinek, Professor of Economics, Department of Economics | Professor, Darden School of Business

Anton Korinek is a Professor in the Department of Economics and Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia and the faculty director of EconTAI - the Economics of Transformative AI Initiative. He was recently named to the 2025 TIME100 list of most influential people in AI. He is also a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution and a member of Anthropic’s Economic Advisory Council. Anton researches the economic and societal implications of artificial intelligence and is also a Research Associate at NBER and CEPR. His work has been published in leading journals and cited by outlets including The Economist and The Wall Street Journal. He earned his Ph.D. in Economics from Columbia University and studied economics, math, and law at the University of Vienna.

Peter

Peter McCrory, Head of Economics at Anthropic

Peter McCrory is the Head of Economics at Anthropic, focused on producing research and data on the impact of artificial intelligence on the labor market and the broader economy. Previously, he led labor research at LinkedIn's Economic Graph Research Institute, using LinkedIn's data to study important aspects of worker and firm behavior. At LinkedIn, he also worked on an applied science team, using experimentation, machine learning, and econometric tools to solve practical business problems. Prior to LinkedIn, Peter was a U.S. economist at J.P. Morgan, where he analyzed, forecast, and published research on economic and policy topics. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley.

Lodging

Directions to The Forum

DIRECTIONS

Parking will be available through ParkMobile in the Darden Parking Garage (zone 5516).

Past Events

UVA Darden Conference Links Ethical Value Chain to AI Boom

In December 2024, the University of Virginia Darden School of Business hosted its first public event for the LaCross Institute for Ethical Artificial Intelligence in Business. The conference, themed “The Value Chain of Ethical AI,” convened thought leaders from academia, industry, and government to explore both the opportunities and ethical challenges presented by AI’s rapid evolution.

Key takeaways and highlights from the event are available in The Darden Report.

2024 Conference Archive

2024 Photos

To view the full set of photos from the 2024 conference visit the Photo Gallery.

Health Care Panel Panel with full room Kirsten Martin Keynote Panos Discussion RajKeynote Talent Management Panel Tom Davenport Keynote Yael Wrap Up

2024 Speakers

SCOTT C. BEARDSLEY
Dean and Charles C. Abbott Professor of Business Administration
UVA Darden School of Business

THOMAS H. DAVENPORT
Bodily Bicentennial Professor of Analytics 2024-25, UVA Darden School of Business

YAEL GRUSHKA-COCKAYNE
Altec Styslinger Foundation Bicentennial Chair in Business Administration, UVA Darden School of Business

KIRSTEN MARTIN (MBA '99, Ph.D. '06)
William P. and Hazel B. White Professor of Technology Ethics and Professor of IT, Analytics, and Operations, Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame

MARC RUGGIANO (MBA '96)
Special Advisor for AI Initiatives, UVA Darden School of Business

RAJ VENKATESAN
Ronald Trzcinski Professor of Business Administration, UVA Darden School of Business

GABRIELLE (GABE) ADAMS
Associate Professor of Public Policy and Business Administration and, by Courtesy, Psychology (Social)
UVA Darden School of Business

CHIRAG AGARWAL
Assistant Professor of Data Science
UVA School of Data Science

MICHAEL ALBERT
Assistant Professor, UVA Darden School of Business

YIORGOS ALLAYANNIS
Robert F. Bruner Distinguished Professor of Business Administration, UVA Darden School of Business

MADHUR BEHL
Associate Professor of Computer Science and Systems and Information Engineering,
UVA School of Engineering and Applied Science

ANEESH CHOPRA
Chief Strategy Officer, Arcadia

CHELSIE GARRIOTT
VP of Marketing at AvePoint

OMAR GARRIOTT
Executive Director, Batten Institute for Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Technology
UVA Darden School of Busines

SEAN HARRISON
Chief Analytics Officer, Acentra Health

BECKY HEIRONOMUS
Director of Product Management and Head of Facebook Risk and Regulatory Readiness, Meta

TOM HARTVIGSEN
Assistant Professor, UVA School of Data Science

LEIDY KLOTZ
Professor, UVA School of Engineering and Applied Science

SARAH LEBOVITZ
Assistant Professor, UVA McIntire School of Commerce

MICHAEL LENOX
University Professor and
Tayloe Murphy Professor of Business Administration
UVA Darden School of Business

SAMUEL LEVY
Assistant Professor of Business Administration
UVA Darden School of Business

PANOS MARKOU
Assistant Professor, UVA Darden School of Business

REZA MOUSAVI
Assistant Professor, UVA McIntire School of Commerce

IAN O'KEEFE
Founder and CEO, iKona Analytics

DIRK PETERSEN
VP, North America at Insight222

ROSHNI RAVEENDHRAN
Assistant Professor, UVA Darden School of Business

MONA SLOANE
Assistant Professor, Assistant Professor of Media Studies
UVA School of Data Science, UVA College of Arts and Sciences

ALAN SUSI
VP, Global Head of Organizational Analytics & People Insights, S&P Global

MARTY WEINER
Former CTO, Reddit and Founding Engineer, Pinterest

ZHIHAO ZHANG
Assistant Professor, UVA Darden School of Business

2024 Program

Download Program [PDF]

Inaugural Event: "Responsible Leadership in the Age of AI"

The inaugural event in December 2023 brought together more than 100 business leaders, scholars and policy makers to Darden's Sands Family Grounds in Rosslyn, Virginia to discuss the role of leadership in ensuring that artificial intelligence is developed and employed in beneficial ways.

Key takeaways and other highlights are available here.

Download the resulting whitepaper, "Building Stakeholder Trust in AI" [PDF]

2023 Conference Archive

2023 Program

TIME	SESSION
8:00 - 9:00 am	Registration and Breakfast
9:00 - 9:15 am	Welcome and Dean Remarks Potomac River Room Philip E. Bourne, Stephenson Dean, UVA School of Data Science Raj Venkatesan, Ronald Trzcinski Professor of Business Administration, UVA Darden School of Business
9:15 - 10:00 am	Opening Keynote: Private Sector Perspective Potomac River Room Andrew Gamino-Cheong, Co-Founder and CTO, Trustible AI Jamie Jones, VP of Field Services and Technical Partnerships, Git Hub Brad Doss, Senior Director, Customer Engagement, Git Hub (moderator)
10:00 - 11:00 am	Panel 1: AI Ethics in Society, Policy and Practice Potomac River Room Renée Cummings, Assistant Professor of the Practice in Data Science, UVA School of Data Science Ron Keesing, SVP for Technology, Head of AI/ML Accelerator, Leidos Jepson Taylor, Chief AI Strategist, Dataiku Marc Ruggiano, Inaugural Director, UVA Darden-School of Data Science Collaboratory for Applied Data Science (moderator)
11:00 - 11:15 am	Break
11:15 am - 12:00 pm	Research and Tech Talks (concurrent sessions) The Psychology of AI Arlington Classroom Roshni Raveendhran, Assistant Professor in Business Administration, UVA Darden School of Business We Are All AI Experts Now: How AI Impacts Society and Vice Versa Capital Classroom Mona Sloane, Assistant Professor of Data Science and Media Studies, UVA School of Data Science
12:00 - 1:00 pm	Lunch
1:00 - 2:00 pm	Panel 2: AI Implications for Cross-Sector Leaders Potomac River Room Matt Gers, Strategy and Operations, Meta Alex Pascal, Senior Fellow, Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, Harvard Kennedy School Kinney Zalesne, Senior Advisor, GETTING-Plurality and former General Manager, Corporate/Responsible Growth Strategy, Microsoft Omar Garriott, Executive Director, Batten Institute, UVA Darden School of Business (moderator) Hosted by UVA Darden’s Batten Institute for Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Technology
2:00 - 2:15 pm	Break
2:15 - 3:15 pm	Faculty-led Small Group Breakouts (concurrent sessions) Arlington, Capital, and National Landing Classrooms Renée Cummings, Assistant Professor of the Practice in Data Science, UVA School of Data Science Yael Grushka-Cockayne, Professor of Business Administration and Senior Associate Dean for Professional Degree Programs, UVA Darden School of Business Raj Venkatesan, Ronald Trzcinski Professor of Business Administration, UVA Darden School of Business
3:15 - 3:30 pm	Break
3:30 - 4:00 pm	Report-Out: Key Themes from Group Discussions Potomac River Room
4:00 - 4:45 pm	Closing Keynote: AI Hype vs. Reality and Navigating the Tech Regulatory Landscape Potomac River Room Adam Ruttenberg, Partner, Cooley
4:45 - 5:00 pm	Final Remarks Potomac River Room Jeanne Liedtka, Interim Dean and United Technologies Corporation Professor of Business Administration, UVA Darden School of Business
5:00 - 7:00 pm	Networking Reception

2023 Speakers

Philip E. Bourne
Stephenson Dean, UVA School of Data Science

Renée Cummings
Assistant Professor of the Practice in Data Science, UVA School of Data Science

Brad Doss
Senior Director, Customer Engagement, Git Hub

Andrew Gamino-Cheong
Co-Founder and CTO, Trustible AI

Omar Garriott
Executive Director, Batten Institute, UVA Darden School of Business

Matt Gers
Strategy and Operations, Meta

Yael Grushka-Cockayne
Professor of Business Administration and Senior Associate Dean for Professional Degree Programs, UVA Darden School of Business

Jamie Jones
VP of Field Services and Technical Partnerships, Git Hub

Ron Keesing
SVP for Technology, of AI/ML Accelerator, Lidos

Jeanne Liedtka
Interim Dean and United Technologies Corporation Professor of Business Administration, UVA Darden School of Business

Alex Pascal
Senior Fellow, Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, Harvard Kennedy School

Roshni Raveendhran
Assistant Professor in Business Administration, UVA Darden School of Business

Marc Ruggiano
Inaugural Director, UVA Darden-School of Data Science Collaboratory for Applied Data Science

Adam Ruttenberg
Partner, Cooley

Mona Sloane
Assistant Professor of Data Science and Media Studies, UVA School of Data Science

Jepson Taylor
Chief AI Strategist, Dataiku

Raj Venkatesan
Ronald Trzcinski Professor of Business Administration, UVA Darden School of Business

Kinney Zalesne
Senior Advisor, GETTING-Plurality and former General Manager, Corporate/Responsible Growth Strategy, Microsoft

2023 Photos