Future Cities — CEO of Smart City Expo USA Aarti Tandon

Fred Schonenberg
Hello everyone and welcome to the VentureFuel Visionaries Podcast. I'm your host, Fred Schonenberg. On today's show, I'm so excited to have Aarti Tandon. She is the CEO of Smart City Expo USA. She's a visionary leader at the crossroads in entertainment, justice, and known for driving innovation that builds smarter, more inclusive, and future-ready cities.

With a diverse background as a lawyer, an activist, a documentary producer, she brings a unique perspective on how cutting-edge technologies like AI and blockchain can drive global competitiveness. Today, we're gonna explore her inspiring journey, uncover how smart cities can shape a more modern and inclusive future for communities across America. So please join me in welcoming Aarti Tandon. Aarti, it is so nice to have you today.

Aarti Tandon
Fred, it's such a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me.

Fred Schonenberg
I know it's gonna be a good episode when I'm not ready to hit record cause I'm enjoying our pre-conversation so much, but I would love it if you could help our listeners kind of understand what Smart City Expo is and maybe how you found yourself as CEO of that.

Aarti Tandon
Yeah, so Smart City Expo USA is the U.S. edition of Smart City Expo World Congress, which takes place in Barcelona every year. 25,000 people have visited that event for the last decade. And 2019, after hosting a few Smart City Expo events in New York, I reached out and asked them if I could own the U.S. license. And I felt like there was a really big gap about what was taking place in technology and what was being deployed in cities. And the real issue is people just don't know what they don't know.

But how I got there is a very non-linear background. And you've probably read from my bio, I always wanted to do human rights law. I ended up going to a law school here in New York and didn't really know much about it. In my second year of school, I ended up being mentored by a lawyer who represented the estates of Bob Marley, Miles Davis, John Lennon, Billie Holiday, and learned a tremendous amount of entertainment. I then graduated and went into software and technology law and then started my own practice in entertainment and represented all these young filmmakers and producers who are actually all startups. I mean, they're all entrepreneurs really at the end of the day.

One of my clients was a producer for Blue Jeans and he ended up getting a 14-year federal prison sentence for a nonviolent drug offense. And I worked with an extraordinary group of people and ended up getting President George W. Bush to commute his sentence seven years early. And I was a 33-year-old kid. I mean, it was, but I felt like I understood mental gymnastics and we did things like get them into the London School of Economics and prison. And so I had this career in entertainment. 

I ended up doing some work with Will.I.Am. I produced the film on solar energy, its ability to address income inequality. And the director and I were able to get Leonardo DiCaprio to come in and be an executive producer and sell it to Netflix. Then I was asked to do another film about the women in Rwanda who made rape a crime of war. So everything just started to come sort of at the intersection of entertainment and justice.

And then there was the technology part because through all of that, I was asked to produce a smart cities conference in New York and I was like, what a silly term. I wanna talk about what makes the city smart. And these guys were really at the forefront. They saw the smart cities movement taking place around the world. And over three years, Fred, we had 50 global mayors come to New York from Milan to Rotterdam, Vancouver. And then that led to me calling Fira. And here we are now. We posted events in Atlanta, Miami, two in New York and we will soon be announcing 2026.

Fred Schonenberg
I can't wait. And for our listeners, we're not gonna reveal 2026. We're gonna do it in text, but it's very exciting. I got a little preview, which is pretty cool. Let me ask you this, for anyone that's listening that's like, I don't even know what a smart city is. What would Smart City Expo USA even be about or show me? Can you kind of level set us on the term or at least your interpretation of what that term is?

Aarti Tandon
Yeah, so I think for such a long time, it's about IOT and sensors and just a very futuristic city, but the future is here and it's now. We believe that cities can't be smart if you have homelessness, hunger, poverty, if you can't access clean air and water and decent transportation. Like there's truly nothing smart about a city that has crime. And so how do we deploy these next gen technologies to increase quality of life? That's what we've been very focused on. 

And the rest of the world has been on the smart city movement for over a decade. I mean, you go to India and Brazil and Europe. New land, everything is digital. Many countries, especially ones that had dealt with war have leapfrogged into the future. Estonia is Estonia for a reason. So how do we in America build a digital economy where everybody's included, a modern, inclusive, future ready economy? That's what we're focused on. And we felt like the rest of the world was, when you land in India at the airport, there's bamboo and AI determining what the temperature should look like, crowd control.

But in America, we'll sell you a smart car, a smart refrigerator, a smart home, but we don't actually have a national strategy. So when you speak to mayors and city officials or even governors, there's no real parameters around how to deploy blockchain, how to deploy AI. What do you do with all this data? Cities just don't even know how to process their data and make great decisions.

Fred Schonenberg
So that leads me to a question sort of that I intended to ask later, but it's right here. It's like, what are the biggest challenges cities face when trying to modernize and become future-ready? I'm sure every mayor would love to be the mayor that made their city, took it to the future state and leapfrogged into tomorrow. What are those challenges that they're facing that maybe they'd wanna go to an event like yours to learn more about? 

Aarti Tandon
Yeah, so here's, people just don't know what they don't know. They have their heads down. They're dealing with so many other issues and then their teams, like people, don't realize that most cities don't have a Chief Technology Officer or Chief Resilience Officer. Like they shouldn't even have the staff. If they have the staff, the staff's not really going around the world and saying like, hey, I've learned about storm surge from Rotterdam, right? 

Like one of the companies that was featured this year is a company called Sand Technologies. Now, Sand has all the AI sensors that are in the Thames water system, managing the water for the city of London, letting them know if it's going to burst, if there's too much pressure, if something's too old, you get to be proactive as opposed to reactive. You have to wonder, those AI sensors, like why aren't they in Flint or Jackson, Mississippi? And it's just because they don't know about them.

And people wanna say it's about procurement, it's about X, it's about Y, but truly at the end of the day, it's about problem solving. If you don't know the solutions that are out there, you can't deploy them. This company also has an academy where they have trained 250,000 AI and data scientists across Africa. Now, these guys are putting sensors, connecting rural hospitals with the federal hospitals and making sure that if the power goes out, drones are being sent to deliver medicine. I know there's pilots taking place in Arkansas and Kentucky and across middle America, but think about that. We can now use evitals and drones and new ways to save lives, like reach people in Appalachia, reach people in our shared community.

When people think about autonomous vehicles. So many people who are elderly or disabled can't drive. I mean, you can have an autonomous vehicle come and pick you up. There's just so many use cases. And so I think that that's what we're trying to get people to understand. 

Fred Schonenberg
Yeah, I love it. So much as just understanding what's there. Of course, if you're a government official, you're working crazy hours on the here and now. And so to be able to pick your head up and go and see what's out there and being exposed to that, that's such a big part of it. 

You mentioned some really interesting technologies. I'm curious if at your most recent event, was there anything that jumped out at you that was surprising or impressive in terms of new innovations or new technologies that you thought were, wow, I haven't seen that before? That's something everyone should know about.

Aarti Tandon
So I want everyone to visit our site or I think it's our YouTube page, but one of the most, we had many compelling discussions, but one of them was by Joseph Bradley, who is the CEO of Tonomus Neom, which is building the digital infrastructure for the Saudi city of Neom. And regardless of what people feel about that Saudi city, at least they're pushing the envelope. But the talk that Joseph did was about identic AI. And when people hear AI, they're like, oh my God, I'm gonna lose my job. They don't even know what it means. And for people experimenting with chat GPT and that's, but they haven't really scratched the surface. 

But what he talked about was identic AI is you wake up in the morning and your AI system knows that you want to work out in the morning, that you believe in meditation. They look at your schedule and they basically say, you know, Art, you need a couple hours. We've looked at how the traffic is going to be from X to Y, take this road or take that bus. And we've moved some things around in your schedule because we know you really wanna see your mom today.

And it's like, it's you, it's a personalized version of how you wanna live your life. But you're not replacing the job. I mean, yes, maybe you have an executive assistant, but people who don't have executive assistants and all that, like they're increasing their quality of life because someone's able to map the world out for them and their universe and help you move through it in a more seamless way. Like his talk is mind blowing.

Fred Schonenberg
Yeah, it's very cool. And the potential of agentic is pretty nuts. I love the idea of this as everybody having an executive assistant, how much does that open up your day, your possibilities and what's there. And what you tapped into there, which is very interesting is like, also like, okay, traffic patterns, like what routes are the best to go and like cutting down that commute time, which of course cuts down energy consumption and sustainability, right? 

There's all these benefits of that in so many different directions, but also with any of these technologies, there has to be a what's in it for me moment. And like, there's your what's in it for me. Like you get to do the things you wanna do and your day is more efficient and focused on value. So that's why I think that one in particular has some real upsides.

Aarti Tandon
Well, it's interesting that you say that because my dear friend is a former mayor of Helsinki and he believes that a smart city is one that gives every citizen or resident one hour back in their day. Because you show up and you know the train's running late and so you choose a bike share or you choose X or you have sense and Wi-Fi in the park that allow you to spend time with your child, your friend out in the open air, but still can get some work done. You can save because of the cameras. I mean, these are the reasons that we have this.

This isn't all about, you know, big mother and tracking your data. At some point, everybody's opting in regardless. That leads me to also why identic AI was super interesting because when I think about privacy and blockchain, like you're only having to distribute the information that is required and data sovereignty is literally the biggest thing out there now. And that's what I'm headed into in the coming year.

Fred Schonenberg
Oh yeah, it is crazy interesting how much data we all create, produce, who's selling it, who's using it, where's that control. There's a lot of interesting pieces of that story. I'm curious, that brings me to sort of like this… I mentioned to you that someone on my team went to the conference and came back and was like, you have to talk to Aarti. Like this was really provocative and mind blowing. 

And the part that they were sharing with me was this collaboration that you had between government, industry leaders, startups, and individuals, right? Like there's a lot of players here that can benefit from this, but also have to kind of work together, which we know is always challenging. Can you talk a little bit about how you foster that collaboration and how you see yourself in that sort of, you know, center of the Venn diagram?

Aarti Tandon
First of all, I'm thrilled that your colleague was there and had such glowing comments. I think one of the talks that really exemplified that was we had the CEO of the Paris Olympics, Fred. I mean, think about transforming a city like Paris using the public infrastructure in the way they did. But when you hear him talk about it, how did he galvanize a city like Paris? It's not like Parisians are, oh my God, I love tourists. I can't wait for all of you to show up and take over. Right? 

Fred Schonenberg
That's not their vibe, no.

Aarti Tandon
No, it's not their vibe. And a lot of it was not actually tech related. What was interesting is that Etienne is an Olympian himself. And he said that when we started putting, you know, talking about the Olympics resistance and all of that, they won the bid in 2017. When they started to put the circles up, people started to feel a sense of pride. 

The circles, those symbols went up on the Eiffel Tower. It was like a beacon of hope to the rest of the world. And then like everyone galvanized to clean up the sand and they like all the art projects and all of the transportation and security. And you kind of have to wonder if the French could galvanize public private sectors for one summer of sports. We have 11 or maybe 13 cities that have all four major leagues within their city limits. Having games every single day, you have to wonder why we have incredible connectivity inside stadiums for the fan experience. We don't have connectivity in public wifi, I mean, in public housing. 

And you have to start thinking about how there's gonna be a rebalancing. And so that's where my deep belief in bringing the public sector, private sector, startups and everyone together is how we're gonna create change. And we had open AI on stage with the CIO of the state of Maryland and talking about government innovation. We had startups in the discussion about water infrastructure and resiliency. So you need big tech and you need to have little tech because one, as you know, is more innovative, faster, you know, they can move things around and experiment and fail forward where not everyone can take a risk.

Fred Schonenberg
Yeah, it's so interesting. I would love to click in. I mean, one of the things that's exciting, right? There's energy in my company right now around sports. I love sports, you can tell from my background, but also like my team is excited because you have all these major sporting events coming to the US from the World Cup to the Olympics over the coming years. 

And I wonder if, have you seen this as you've looked around the world? Paris is a great example of these events becoming these catalysts for advancing urban technology and infrastructure. Like, is this a moment where US cities can kind of step up, catch up, galvanize? What is your thought on that?

Aarti Tandon
Well, Fred, you would have absolutely loved the conference because we had five of the FIFA World Cup host city CEOs there. And it was Alex Lazzari from New York, New Jersey, it was Dallas, it was Houston, it was San Francisco, it was Philadelphia. It was the first time they were all on stage together. We had the head of sports at the Wall Street Journal moderating the discussion, John Clegg. They really talked about the fact that like, especially in Philly, hosting more than the World Cup, they're hosting the 250th anniversary of America.

And like, Philly again, think about it, amazing infrastructure in terms of their transportation, in terms of Ivy League schools and hospitals and sports teams and all of that. And yet, we didn't talk about this on stage, but like there's gun violence and education issues. I feel there's such an important opportunity at this moment in time to modernize our infrastructure that everybody can participate in a modern inclusive future, but they all have different challenges.

That was really interesting to hear, right? Like some people's interest is gonna be transportation. I mean, think about the LA Olympics. Transportation is regardless of the fires and everything else, like how are you going to move all those people around? So I think that there were a lot of exciting learnings coming from the event. We also had the head of World Cup planning for New Jersey transit. We had people from NVIDIA and Cisco and Dell all talking about smart spaces and like what they're doing with cameras. I mean, it was one of those moments where it was like, we know that if your city is not smart, there's literally no way for you to host a major sporting event. So yes, they do go hand in hand and sports is an incredible catalyst.

Fred Schonenberg
Yeah, I loved your initial prompt of like, what can the sports teams that are already existing in those cities, can they be a constant catalyst as well as these sort of inflection moments? I've been very impressed seeing what the Milwaukee Bucks basketball team has done. They call it the deer district, but they've just improved downtown in such a meaningful way and kind of changed the vibe down there. 

There's lots of examples of that, but I think there's something pretty interesting about the individual teams having a responsibility and an opportunity to collaborate with the cities. I'm curious, you mentioned-

Aarti Tandon
I'm gonna pause you for one quick second, Fred. You brought up the first question that John asked Alex. We talked about the Milwaukee Innovation District how on many levels besides technology, the way they use the labor unions, it was like really a model for the future. But Josh Harris now has RFK Stadium and that's gonna be super interesting to see how they present. 

All these people are now investing in women's sports and new stadiums. And there's the new soccer stadium for NYC FC. I think it's the first all electric stadium in the country. These are actually smart cities within themselves, the way they manage data, the way they move people around, the temperature, security, facial recognition, biometrics. Quick note, Paris did not use any facial recognition which is super interesting. They used a lot of digital twins and they didn't use any physical wanding of people entering. They used a lot of drones and sensors. It was amazing.

Fred Schonenberg
That is crazy interesting. Just think about it from a security standpoint. Wow, that's okay. Let me ask you this, you mentioned startups and you guys had a pitch competition. Were there any emerging technologies or specific startups that you saw on that stage where you were like, oh, this is really cool. This impressed me. I wanna share this with everyone.

Aarti Tandon
The winner of our startup competition was AC2 which is an augmented reality where developers can visualize development in real time. It's been an extraordinary program. I've been following Dana, the CEO's work for many, many years. And so she rightfully won the competition but I did hear that the CEO of BizTech was so dynamic, so interesting. And he basically has a… it's a metaverse essentially. And he had this Ukraine verse project where you can sort of visualize post-war reconstruction through metaverse technologies. But I think his presentation was super engaging.

Then we had Snap Transportation. I think they have sort of an autonomous pods and they're doing work in a pilot program in Chattanooga. But I think they're doing work in the Middle East.

And Chattanooga, by the way, I don't even know. Have you spent any time learning about Chattanooga? 

Fred Schonenberg
Man, I know the Choo Choo, the Chattanooga Choo Choo. I think I went there when I was 12. It's been a minute.

Aarti Tandon
So we had the CIO of Chattanooga with us last year, but they were one of the first cities to lay down their own fiber. Because when you think about economic development, you need the infrastructure. Now they're leaders in quantum computing and they're building quantum centers. And there's these pockets of incredible innovation taking place across the United States. I think our goal is to bring them all together because we don't really have the way Dubai or Saudi or anything puts their entire city or country on display and highlights all the opportunities. And I think that we're looking to be that active tissue.

Fred Schonenberg
I love that. So Aarti, where can people go to learn more about Smart City Expo USA and learn more about what you have coming down the pike? 

Aarti Tandon
Yeah, so you can go to smartcityexpousa.com and you'll see all of our extraordinary speakers. You'll see people who were from, like as I mentioned, OpenAI and Coinbase. And so we really take a holistic look at cities. And then you can see all of the programs on, I think we have a YouTube. So if you weren't able to be there, you can catch all the videos. 

And again, we're really focused on sports and music and festivals because it's all about driving economic development. As people start to visit these cities in the next couple of years, you have to be able to create seamless interactions for them, whether it's a payment system, whether it's security, it's all of that. And in order for us, because you started out with us talking about being future ready and global competitive, like people hear about AI and data centers and all of this. 

But at the end of the day, you have to make sure your cities are not on fire. They're not flooding. They have the energy to be able to support the infrastructure that's required for AI and data centers. But you also have to make sure that they have connectivity and basic human rights that are gonna allow them to participate in the next economy. Like we have to have tech and talent and culture. Like we can't ask people to build all of this and then not give people the skills to participate in that economy. 

And I think connectivity should be the most basic thing that we have. We can't compete with the rest of the people online. And then of course security, right? We need to make sure that we've got cybersecurity and are protecting a digital economy.

Fred Schonenberg
I love it. Well, Aarti, thank you so much for not only your time today, but everything you're doing to spark change. And we'll definitely see you next year at Smart City Expo USA. We're very much looking forward to it. 

Aarti Tandon
We're gonna be collaborating in advance of that, Fred. So we got a lot of work to do together. 

Fred Schonenberg
Let's do it. I'm excited.

Aarti Tandon
Thank you.