Alex Bilal-Spring
speaker
1,400 appearances
8 recordings
1 series
first heard Mar 2026
last heard 11 Aug
Alex Bilal-Spring’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 8 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 2.
Appearances
Time travel with me back to a smidge over five years ago, the spring of 2021.
Starting in the UK and Ireland and quickly reaching the ears of countries around the globe, articles announced that Amazon was entering the hair and beauty space with a salon landing on London's high streets.
The first ever Amazon salon opened in partnership with Elena Lavagny, owner of Neville Hair and Beauty.
Its promise was to trial some of the latest technology available at the time.
Amongst other things, augmented reality and hair consultations, entertainment on fire tablets at each style and station, and point and learn technology for digital brand videos and educational content about products found on shelves.
There are a few things I remember vividly from my experience watching this piece of news land in the industry and the discussions that unfolded.
I remember people having lots of questions, some of those being underlined by fear, like what does this mean for the industry going forward and will this become the new norm?
While for others, the reaction was more akin to outrage.
How dare they?
No amount of tech will ever be able to do what we do at the standards of service and care that we do, kind of sentiment.
We didn't officially cover any of it on Forest FM.
It didn't really feel aligned with any of the themes that we were exploring at the time.
But I do remember it being on people's mind quite a bit and having more than one off-air conversation about it with podcast guests.
And now here we are in 2026 in a deeply tech-driven world pushing the boundaries of what's possible and a similar response still emerges.
the recognition that this industry is deeply, deeply human, that we must protect that aspect of it that makes it so special, and to use technology to make more time for connection.
It's a huge part of what I feel transpired as we talked about AI and automation with Jennifer Jade Alvarez and Rich Cullen earlier this season on the podcast.
It was also reflected in how AI was introduced at the Forest Summit 2026 and discussed in the context of our latest features launch.
In late April, Tamara Reid, who did feature on the podcast back in season three, authored a piece for the Forrest blog.
In it, a section where she wrote,
Here's the part that often gets overlooked.
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