
Director, Scarlatti
Adam is the founder of Scarlatti, a research, evaluation and analytics company with 30 staff and four offices around the country. Despite the company’s growing size, he is still hands-on at the wheel, with his work spanning most of the areas that Scarlatti operates in including programme design, social and market research, workforce research, impact modelling and more recently, AI in education.
Before this, Adam was Chief Operating Officer of Celentis, a commercial science company owned by AgResearch, and before that a consultant for leading strategy consultancy McKinsey & Company, based in London.
Adam holds a Bachelor of Engineering (First Class Honours) from the University of Auckland and a Doctorate in Engineering from the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom.
Written assessments alienate learners who face literacy, neurodiversity, location or language barriers. This prevents many from reaching their potential in formal education. To address this, Scarlatti (funded by the Food and Fibre CoVE) has built and piloted what may be the world's first conversational AI agent for formal oral assessment. Come up to speed in our session, which will include: A global snapshot – Drawing on a rolling two-monthly scan of AI products and pilots, we will map the newest conversational AI tools in education, and highlight shifts in public perception. Demo and NZ case study - We will conduct a live demo of our agent, and share the results of recent NZ pilots with dairy and horticulture learners. How to guide & lessons learnt – A rapid walkthrough of our step-by-step playbook: how to decide whether an agent is right for your learners, and how to build, pilot and evaluate it. We will share the lessons we learnt the hard way. Interactive Q&A – We will open the floor for attendees to ask questions. Participants will leave with: - A global snapshot on AI in assessment - QR code access to the demo - A "is this right for us?" checklist - A step-by-step playbook on how to make one.