Sarah
Mehler
Founder, CEO at Left Field Labs
"Reclaiming Leadership in the Era of Collective Intelligence "
"Reclaiming Leadership in the Era of Collective Intelligence "
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Session: Reclaiming Leadership in the Era of Collective Intelligence
AI’s true potential lies not in its speed or scale—but in its ability to expand human capacity. But across every industry, the same story is unfolding: AI has made us more efficient, but generally less imaginative in the problems we seek to solve.For nearly two decades, Sarah Mehler has guided the world’s leading technology companies through that shift, helping them move from automation to augmentation. In this session, she explores collective intelligence—the intentional design of systems where human insight and machine systems amplify each other. Using real examples from Left Field Labs’ collaborations with Google, Hasbro, and Salesforce, Mehler illustrates how this choreography can exponentiate outcomes, creating greater results than humans or machines could achieve alone.
Key Takeaways
- How to audit your AI approach for extractive patterns. Leaders will learn a diagnostic framework to assess whether their AI systems extract value or co-create it—with specific organizational signals that reveal the difference.
- How to choreograph the human-machine feedback loop. Creative and technical teams will see detailed workflow diagrams from Best Phones Forever and illumend showing exactly where humans led, where AI contributed, and how to architect those transitions.
- Bring ambition back to AI implementation. Attendees will gain permission to pursue ambitious AI moonshots beyond efficiency gains, backed by survey data proving innovation-focused organizations outperform those chasing marginal improvements.
Bio
Sarah Mehler is the Founder and CEO of Left Field Labs, a creative technology firm recognized for nearly two decades as a go-to partner for ambitious brands looking to harness emerging tech for real-world impact.Sarah leads Left Field Labs at the intersection of imagination and pragmatism, helping clients including Google, Amazon, Meta, Salesforce, and Qualcomm, design entirely new products, experiences, and ways of doing business. From defining early mobile and voice interfaces to GenAI applications that solve real problems, her work sits at the intersection of innovation, utility, and human experience.
Sarah believes firmly in creating systems of collective intelligence—spaces where human creativity and machine capability work together to expand what people and organizations can achieve. It’s an approach that’s made Left Field Labs a trusted partner to marketers, product teams, and engineers across the Fortune 100.
In 2025, her agency posted its fourth consecutive year of double-digit growth, buoyed by an explosion of interest in solutions connecting AI and brand experiences. A vocal advocate for responsible innovation and inclusive leaders, Sarah also serves on the Pachamama Alliance, supporting regenerative climate initiatives. She is engaged in efforts to build “The New Green Loop” to spur climate action with AI, blockchain, and dMRV technologies.
Her work has been recognized by the Webby Awards, The Drum, and Campaign US, which honored her as a 2025 40 Over 40 recipient.
