Alex Haitoglou

Alex Haitoglou is the co-founder and CEO of Ovida, the world’s first AI platform designed to augment the human side of coaching and help coaches, clients, and leaders grow. Ovida achieves this by enhancing coaching and core communication skills, using AI-derived objective data, insights, and video reviews for self-reflection together with human mentoring by experts.

Alex is a business leader, tech entrepreneur and passionate coaching practitioner. He studied Business Economics and German in the UK and Germany, worked for Procter & Gamble in multiple countries leading global brands and ran for 4 years the P&G’s Grow Coaching program. Alex continued in executive leadership roles at Walgreens Boots Alliance before becoming an entrepreneur and founding Ovida together with his co-founder Bryan Watson.

Ovida’ mission is to unite human expertise and advanced AI to unlock the communication potential of people and organisations. Ovida is working with coaching and leadership training schools, businesses and the world’s leading universities on coaching skills training.

The Ovida team is passionate about academic research. We have built ongoing collaborations with Dr. Nicky Terblanche (Univ. of Stellenbosch), Dr. Rebecca Jones (Henley Business School), Dr. Terry Maltbia (Columbia University), Dr. Woody Woodward (NYU), Dr. Andrea Giraldez-Hays (UEL) amongst many others.

The first independent peer- reviewed paper on Ovida, with title “ Using artificial intelligence-enhanced video feedback for reflective practice in coach development” was published in July 2023 in Coaching: An International Journal of Theory, Research and Practice, and we are in the process of completing multiple other research projects.

First and foremost, people. Our ability to grow, learn, create, and change the world around us — for the best but also for the worst — inspired me onto this journey of using AI to improve core human skills. Also, people that push the boundaries of thinking, creativity and connection. I have a long list of people I admire and I aim to learn from, both from the past and from the present.

Finally, the recent advancements of AI represent a unique opportunity to solve major human level problems that we have never been able to tackle in the past, but also to be the worst thing we have invented. What inspires me is the journey to make this change a positive change. It is not going to be easy, but I believe it is fundamental that we all come together to make AI a positive force for human development.

Apart from my parents and my wife, my most influential relationship in my life has been my first coach. I was a very confused 19 year old, with very little idea of what I wanted and experiencing a lot of mess in my life. I understood that I needed help, and after trying different approaches and people I was lucky to meet Stelios, who became my first coach and later on mentor. The positive impact this relationship had in my life was incredible, and also got me deeply interested in coaching, psychology, and how humans communicate and grow.

Man’s Search for Meaning, Victor Frankl

Sapiens, Yuval Harari

The New Peoplemaking, Virginia Satir

The Republic, Plato

The Singularity is Near, Ray Kurzweil