Monika Bielskyte is a foresight strategist, speculative designer and founder of Protopia Futures. Nike appointed her its first Futurist in Residence; she is an EY Luminary and creator of the Protopia World Stack, a science-informed, life-centric futures methodology.
Her work identifies when attachment to legacy accelerates obsolescence and distinguishes pioneering signals from promotional hype. Across AI, spatial computing, XR, synthetic media and emerging interfaces, she examines the values and incentives governing what gets funded — and how these systems may expand human agency or be weaponized within cognitive and hybrid warfare through behavioral manipulation and disinformation.
Her research draws on Global Majority contexts and edge insights from non-apparent disability and neurodivergence, revealing needs and possibilities that standardized foresight models overlook. She translates future complexity into culturally novel storyworlds that change what people expect — and what institutions attempt.
Selected clients include Google, Microsoft, L’Oréal, BBC, Disney/Marvel’s Black Panther, McKinsey, UNESCO and the World Economic Forum. She has lectured at CERN, the Royal Society and Rockefeller University.
ROLES & AFFILIATIONS:
Leads the practice behind the Protopia World Stack — integrating Protopia Futures, Embodied Futures and Storyworld Design — to move organizations beyond incremental innovation toward fundamental transformation grounded in real-world testing and delivery.
NIKE – FUTURIST IN RESIDENCE 2025-2026
As Nike’s former Futurist in Residence, brought Embodied Futures and Storyworld Design into long-range exploration to rethink performance beyond competition through joy, play and human connection, informed by biological and sensory research.
Works with creatives, producers and funders to cultivate a new generation of regenerative visions for long-form media, co-leading workshops applying Protopia and Storyworld Design to translate future complexity into distinctive screen worlds to affect real-world change.
INCLUSIVE AI LAB – FUTURIST ADVISOR
Examines how fictional portrayals of AI steer technological development, investment priorities, public imagination and institutional risk, while identifying machine-learning pathways that work with biological and ecological systems rather than abstracting or replacing them.
Brings cross-domain foresight to EY’s internal strategy, external collaborations and Wavespace client engagements, identifying forces that could redraw industry boundaries, unsettle incumbent advantage and open new arenas for investment and growth.
ALCD – PARTNER + CO-AUTHOR
Co-built African Life-Centric Design, widening foresight beyond imported defaults and anchoring science, design and technological innovation in contextual realities, lived experience, multiple systems of knowledge and humanity’s dependence on the biosphere.
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