Jeremy Rifkin

Jeremy Rifkin Speaker Biography

Globally Renowned Futurist, Economic and Social Theorist, Bestselling Author and Advisor to Global Leaders

Jeremy Rifkin is an internationally renowned economic and social theorist, futurist, bestselling author, political advisor, and one of the world’s most influential voices on the technological, economic, and environmental forces reshaping civilization. For more than four decades, he has explored how breakthroughs in science and technology transform business, the global economy, work, infrastructure, society, and humanity’s relationship with the natural world. As President of the Foundation on Economic Trends, Rifkin has advised governments, political leaders, global institutions, and business executives on major economic transformations involving technology, energy, infrastructure, climate change, and sustainability. His sweeping vision connects developments that are often considered separately—from artificial intelligence and distributed computing to renewable energy, water, transportation, automation, and economic organization—to reveal the larger transformations shaping the decades ahead.

Keynote Speaker Jeremy Rifkin at a Glance

• Internationally renowned futurist, economic and social theorist, and advisor to governments and global leaders
• Author of 23 books translated into 35 languages, including Rescuing the Future, Planet Aqua, The Age of Resilience, The Third Industrial Revolution and The Zero Marginal Cost Society
• Principal architect of influential Third Industrial Revolution economic strategies in Europe and China
• Longtime advisor to European Union leadership on economic transformation, energy, climate, and infrastructure
• Leading thinker on artificial intelligence, technological disruption, sustainability, climate resilience, energy, water, and the future of work
• Frequent speaker before business, government, academic, labor, and civil-society organizations around the world

Rescuing the Future: Artificial Intelligence and the Next Great Transformation

Jeremy Rifkin’s newest book, Rescuing the Future: Reimagining Artificial Intelligence in a World on the Edge, brings his decades of thinking about technology, economics, infrastructure, and ecology directly into the rapidly evolving debate over artificial intelligence. Rifkin challenges the assumption that the future of AI will inevitably be controlled by a small number of powerful technology companies operating massive centralized computing systems. He examines an alternative model built around distributed artificial intelligence connected to local ecosystems, communities, infrastructure, and what he describes as bioregional commons. Jeremy Rifkin’s perspective on AI is therefore much broader than the technology itself. He asks leaders to consider who controls intelligent systems, how those systems interact with economic and ecological networks, and whether artificial intelligence will reinforce centralized industrial structures or contribute to more distributed and resilient forms of economic and social organization. Rescuing the Future extends a question that has run throughout Rifkin’s career: how will transformative technologies alter the way human beings organize economic life and relate to one another and the planet?

Architect of the Third Industrial Revolution

Jeremy Rifkin is widely known for developing the Third Industrial Revolution framework, a sweeping economic vision based on the convergence of new communication technologies, renewable energy, intelligent infrastructure, mobility and logistics, and increasingly distributed forms of economic activity. His ideas have influenced policymakers and economic development strategies internationally. Rifkin has served as an advisor to European Union leadership and has worked with national governments and regions on strategies for transitioning toward digitally connected, renewable-energy economies. His Third Industrial Revolution framework has also influenced economic planning in China. Rather than viewing technological innovations independently, Jeremy Rifkin examines what happens when multiple infrastructure revolutions converge. Communications, energy, transportation, logistics, buildings, and digital networks together create the operating system upon which economies function. For business and government leaders, his work provides a powerful framework for understanding why fundamental changes in infrastructure can create entirely new industries, business models, employment patterns, and competitive environments.

Planet Aqua and the Emerging Blue Deal

Jeremy Rifkin’s Planet Aqua: Rethinking Our Home in the Universe introduces another major evolution in his thinking about climate change and the future of civilization. Rifkin argues that humanity has traditionally viewed Earth as a land planet with vast quantities of water surrounding it. Instead, he asks us to understand Earth as a water planet whose hydrosphere connects virtually every aspect of climate, ecology, infrastructure, economics, and life itself. As climate change disrupts the hydrosphere, floods, droughts, heat waves, wildfires, changing precipitation, melting glaciers, and rising seas increasingly affect communities and economies. Jeremy Rifkin argues that this new reality requires moving beyond simply managing water as an economic resource toward recognizing water as the fundamental life source around which human settlements, infrastructure, economic systems, and public policy must adapt. His work has helped advance discussion of a Blue Deal to accompany the Green Deal, placing water resilience at the center of long-term economic and environmental planning.

The Age of Resilience

For much of the industrial era, economic progress has been measured through efficiency, productivity, speed, and humanity’s ability to control the natural world. Jeremy Rifkin argues that the disruptions of the 21st century require a profound change in that mindset. In The Age of Resilience: Reimagining Existence on a Rewilding Earth, Rifkin examines the transition from an industrial model focused on efficiency and extraction toward systems capable of adaptation, regeneration, and resilience. That shift has enormous implications for business and government. Organizations increasingly operate in an environment characterized by climate disruption, technological acceleration, geopolitical uncertainty, supply-chain vulnerability, resource pressures, and rapid economic change. Jeremy Rifkin challenges leaders to rethink systems designed primarily for maximum efficiency and consider how resilience can become an organizing principle for infrastructure, communities, businesses, and economies.

Technology, Automation and the Future of Work

Jeremy Rifkin was examining the consequences of automation decades before artificial intelligence became a central business concern. His influential book The End of Work explored how advances in automation and information technology could dramatically change employment and productivity. Today, the emergence of generative AI, advanced robotics, machine learning, and intelligent digital systems has made many of those questions even more urgent. Rifkin encourages audiences to look beyond predictions about individual occupations and consider the broader transformation of economic life. How will organizations define productivity when machines perform increasing amounts of cognitive and physical work? What skills will remain uniquely valuable? How might education change? How will people participate meaningfully in economic and civic life? Jeremy Rifkin places today’s AI revolution within the much longer history of technological transformation, helping audiences distinguish short-term disruption from deeper structural change.

The Zero Marginal Cost Society and a More Distributed Economy

In The Zero Marginal Cost Society, Jeremy Rifkin examined how digital networks and increasingly connected infrastructure can dramatically reduce the marginal cost of producing and distributing certain goods and services. The implications extend beyond information. As communications, energy, transportation, manufacturing, and other systems become increasingly digitized and connected, Rifkin argues that new forms of distributed and collaborative economic activity can emerge alongside conventional markets. His work explores what this transformation could mean for established companies, entrepreneurs, consumers, governments, and communities—and how organizations can adapt when traditional assumptions about ownership, production, distribution, and value creation begin to change.

Advisor to Governments and Global Leaders

Jeremy Rifkin’s work extends far beyond books and academic theory. He has advised European Union leadership for decades and worked with political leaders on strategies addressing economic development, renewable energy, climate change, digital infrastructure, and the transition toward a Third Industrial Revolution economy. His work has brought him into conversations with presidents, prime ministers, European Commission leadership, policymakers, corporate executives, scientists, environmental leaders, and economic planners around the world. Rifkin has also addressed executives and organizations across a broad range of industries, giving him a perspective that bridges public policy and private enterprise. This ability to connect technology, economics, infrastructure, public policy, and environmental change distinguishes Jeremy Rifkin from futurists who focus primarily on individual technologies or short-term trends.

A Prolific and Influential Author

Jeremy Rifkin is the author of 23 books translated into 35 languages. His body of work chronicles many of the most consequential economic, technological, and environmental debates of the past half-century. His major works include Rescuing the Future, Planet Aqua, The Age of Resilience, The Green New Deal, The Zero Marginal Cost Society, The Third Industrial Revolution, The Empathic Civilization, The European Dream, The Hydrogen Economy, The Age of Access, The Biotech Century and The End of Work. Across these books, Jeremy Rifkin has repeatedly explored ideas before they entered mainstream business and political discussion—from biotechnology and automation to renewable energy, distributed economic networks, climate resilience, and artificial intelligence. Rather than predicting isolated trends, Rifkin examines how technological revolutions alter the larger systems in which businesses, governments, and societies operate.

A Global Voice on Economic and Social Transformation

Jeremy Rifkin speaks before business, government, academic, labor, and civil-society audiences around the world. Over the course of his career, he has lectured at hundreds of universities internationally and addressed executives and leaders confronting major technological and economic transitions. His presentations are particularly relevant for global leadership conferences, economic forums, sustainability and climate events, technology and AI conferences, energy meetings, government and public-policy forums, corporate leadership programs, universities, and organizations confronting major transformation. Jeremy Rifkin does not simply ask audiences what the next technology will be. He asks them to consider what happens when multiple transformations occur simultaneously—and how those changes may reshape the fundamental assumptions upon which today’s organizations and economies were built.

Understanding the Forces Reshaping Civilization

As artificial intelligence accelerates, climate disruption intensifies, energy systems change, water becomes an increasingly urgent global issue, and traditional economic structures evolve, leaders face decisions whose consequences may extend far beyond the next business cycle. Jeremy Rifkin provides audiences with a framework for seeing those developments as interconnected parts of a much larger transformation.

Jeremy Rifkin challenges leaders to look beyond today’s headlines and understand the deeper technological, economic, ecological, and social forces reshaping civilization—and what those transformations mean for the future of business, government, communities, and the planet.

Jeremy Rifkin can be booked for keynote presentations, corporate meetings, global leadership conferences, AI and technology summits, economic forums, sustainability and climate conferences, government programs, and association events through Speakers.com. Contact Speakers.com to learn more about Jeremy Rifkin’s speaking fee, availability, and customized presentation options.