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Dilip Venkatachari came to banking from Google and PayPal, where moving fast was the default and scaling meant adding servers. As SEVP and Chief Information and Technology Officer at U.S. Bank, he now runs technology for an institution built on decades-old core systems where the data is people's money, and his team is moving agentic AI out of the experimentation phase and into how the bank actually operates. Dilip explains why he held off on productivity metrics during the bank's AI rollout and let teams run their own experiments first, why the real work of scaling AI turned out to be data, identity, security, and observability rather than model selection, and how he modernizes legacy systems by hollowing out the core in business-driven chunks instead of attempting a risky rip-and-replace. He also makes the case that banking's heavily codified procedures, from KYC to disputes, are unusually well suited to agents.  Listen or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Visit ciopod.com for more episodes. 3 Takeaways: Why Dilip's team launched "Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom" and deliberately skipped productivity metrics early, to avoid rewarding behaviors nobody understood yet.How U.S. Bank treats data, identity, integration, and observability as the real bottleneck to scaling AI, with the goal of making each new use case cheaper than the last.Why Dilip argues banking's codified procedures, from customer onboarding and fraud checks to dispute management, give agentic AI clear control points and a clear definition of what good looks like.Chapters: (00:00) Introduction(02:09) Dilip's Career Path(03:34) Tech Scale vs. Bank Scale(05:39) Innovation With Control(08:24) What CIOs Actually Prioritize(10:44) Scaling AI Use Cases(11:42) Agentic AI in Banking(14:13) Managing the Human Side of AI Adoption(16:10) Evangelize, Then Experiment(17:58) AI Plumbing & Security(18:43) Cybersecurity Group Therapy(22:59) Modernizing Legacy Systems(27:47) Leadership Lessons at Scale About Dilip: Dilip Venkatachari is Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Information and Technology Officer at U.S. Bank, where he is responsible for global technology infrastructure, security, products and services, and digital and technology transformation. He also serves on the board of U.S. Bank Europe. Dilip joined U.S. Bancorp in 2018 and joined the company's executive leadership team in 2023. In 2026, he was named one of American Banker's Most Innovative People in Finance for his work developing agentic AI and digital-asset infrastructure across the bank. Before U.S. Bank, Dilip held senior executive roles at Google and PayPal/eBay, and spent time at McKinsey & Company helping large U.S. and international banks accelerate their digital transformations. He also co-founded and led three startups — Compass Labs, CashEdge, and CommerceSoft. Dilip holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and master's and bachelor's degrees in electrical engineering from Rice University and the Indian Institute of Technology, respectively. He holds more than a dozen U.S. patents. Guest Highlights: "The hardest part here isn't proving that it works. The hardest part is how do you scale it? How do you industrialize it?" "If we put productivity metrics, speed metrics right now, there's a risk we are creating incentives for behaviors which we don't quite understand." "AI for us is not just another technology program. It's a new way of building and running the bank." Get Connected: Yousuf Kahn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yousufakhan/ Dilip Venkatachari: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dilipvenkatachari/ Our Sponsor: Want to accelerate software development by 500%? Meet Blitzy, the only autonomous code generation platform with infinite code context, purpose-built for large, complex enterprise-scale codebases. While other AI coding tools provide snippets of code and struggle with context, Blitzy ingests millions of lines of code and orchestrates thousands of agents that reason for hours to map every line-level dependency. With a complete contextual understanding of your codebase, Blitzy is ready to be deployed at the beginning of every sprint. Blitzy handles the heavy lifting, delivering over 80% of the work autonomously. The platform plans, builds, and validates premium-quality code at the speed of compute, turning months of engineering into a matter of days. It’s the secret weapon for Fortune 500 companies globally. To hear how engineering leaders are transforming the way they deliver software, visit blitzy.com. Schedule a meeting with their consultants to enable an AI-Native SDLC in your organization today. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Ashwin Ballal never spent a day in IT before Freshworks handed him the CIO title. He trained as a materials scientist, then worked his way through marketing, product, and engineering roles at KLA-Tencor before the CEO asked him to run IT. Three CIO jobs later, now at Freshworks, he's become the company's single most important customer, shaping its product roadmap from inside the org he runs. In this conversation, Ashwin explains why AI-generated code needs more human verification, not less, why counting token usage tells you nothing about whether AI is actually working, and how Freshworks tore apart a "Frankenstack" of roughly 400 disconnected systems by refusing to customize its own workflows. He also gets candid about what worries him most heading into the next phase of enterprise AI: agents running with privileged access and few real guardrails. Listen in for an unfiltered read on where AI is actually delivering, and where it's just noise. Listen or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Visit ciopod.com for more episodes. 3 Takeaways: Ashwin argues AI-generated code needs more engineers, not fewer, because someone still has to verify what the model produces before it reaches production.He says most companies are tracking the wrong AI metric, counting token usage instead of asking what revenue or savings actually resulted.Freshworks cut a "Frankenstack" of roughly 400 disconnected systems down by implementing tools out of the box instead of customizing them.Chapters: (00:00) Introduction(03:16) Early Life & What Drives Ashwin(05:06) From PhD to CIO(07:51) Career Lessons & Leadership Style(10:56) Why Freshworks, Why Now(13:57) The CIO as Product Customer(17:05) AI Adoption & Rethinking Workflows(22:24) Killing the Frankenstack(25:30) Agent Risk & Guardrails(27:20) Lightning Round About Ashwin:  Ashwin Ballal joined Freshworks in May 2024 as Chief Information Officer. His significant leadership experience of over 30 years in technology and business strategy will now be channeled to spearhead all facets of IT infrastructure, systems, and operations within Freshworks. Prior to this new responsibility, Ballal served as the Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer at Medallia. He successfully led and revamped the IT and security, workplace services, corporate procurement, and travel divisions during his tenure there. His preceding role was as the Chief Information, Intelligence, and Data Officer of KLA Corp. Guest Highlights: "Oh, 90% of my code is written by AI. How do you know if it's right? Who verified it, right?" "Let's count token usage. I mean, that's not a behavior you want. What outcomes change?" "If you thought the SaaS crawl was the Wild Wild West, Yousuf, you ain't seen anything yet." Get Connected: Yousuf Kahn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yousufakhan/ Ashwin Ballal: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashwin-ballal-9a89961/ Our Sponsor:  Want to accelerate software development by 500%? Meet Blitzy, the only autonomous code generation platform with infinite code context, purpose-built for large, complex enterprise-scale codebases. While other AI coding tools provide snippets of code and struggle with context, Blitzy ingests millions of lines of code and orchestrates thousands of agents that reason for hours to map every line-level dependency. With a complete contextual understanding of your codebase, Blitzy is ready to be deployed at the beginning of every sprint. Blitzy handles the heavy lifting, delivering over 80% of the work autonomously. The platform plans, builds, and validates premium-quality code at the speed of compute, turning months of engineering into a matter of days. It’s the secret weapon for Fortune 500 companies globally. To hear how engineering leaders are transforming the way they deliver software, visit blitzy.com. Schedule a meeting with their consultants to enable an AI-Native SDLC in your organization today.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Trevor Schulze has spent over a decade running AI transformations, going back to early work in visual computing and machine learning in the semiconductor industry. So when he says AI broke his old operating rhythm as CIO, it's not a hot take — it's a confession. A year into using GPT-era tools, he realized his old pace of decision-making, and his old definition of what a change agent does, no longer applied. If he's overwhelmed, he says, he can't imagine how the rest of the C-suite is holding up. In this conversation, Trevor lays out why he now treats his CHRO and general counsel as closer partners than ever, breaks down the 20/60/20 split he sees in how employees are actually adopting agentic tools, and explains "Genesys on Genesys" — his push to apply the same customer-experience thinking his platform gives to customers to Genesys's own employees. Listen for a clear-eyed look at what it actually takes to lead IT through this moment, not just talk about it. Listen or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Visit ciopod.com for more episodes. 3 Takeaways: Why Trevor believes every CIO has to reallocate their own time and speed of working now that AI's pace has outstripped the old CIO playbook.Trevor's read on adoption inside his own company: roughly 20% of employees are already all in on agentic tools, 60% just need examples, and 20% won't touch it at all.Why Trevor started applying Genesys's own customer experience platform to the employee experience, once he realized employees deserve the same proactive attention as customers.Chapters:(00:00) Introduction(02:47) Genesys Cloud Explained(04:38) The CIO as AI Leader(05:56) AI Is a Team Sport(08:35) Why CIOs Need to Partner With CHROs(10:16) Transforming How IT Delivers(12:04) Keeping Up With the AI Pace(16:15) The Future of Customer Experience(18:00) Genesys Running on Genesys(19:51) Data, Scale & Privacy(21:14) Career Advice for CIOs(25:42) Lightning Round About Trevor: Trevor Schulze is the Chief Information Officer at Genesys, where he leads the global information technology organization and is responsible for driving the company’s AI and cloud strategy to support innovation and growth. Trevor brings more than 30 years of experience in enterprise technology and digital transformation. Prior to joining Genesys in 2025, he served as Senior Vice President and Chief Digital and Information Officer at Alteryx, where he led enterprise AI initiatives and digital modernization. He has also held CIO and senior IT leadership roles at RingCentral, Micron Technology, Broadcom, AMD, and Cisco Systems, with a focus on aligning technology with business outcomes. Guest Highlights:"I have to rethink my role as a CIO. I no longer can continue to function as a change agent in a company with my old behaviors or my old speed of working." "AI is a team sport." "What if attention is free? What if attention to your customer no longer is a cost structure you need to worry about?" Get Connected: Yousuf Kahn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yousufakhan/ Trevor Schulze: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tschulze/ Our Sponsor: Want to accelerate software development by 500%? Meet Blitzy, the only autonomous code generation platform with infinite code context, purpose-built for large, complex enterprise-scale codebases. While other AI coding tools provide snippets of code and struggle with context, Blitzy ingests millions of lines of code and orchestrates thousands of agents that reason for hours to map every line-level dependency. With a complete contextual understanding of your codebase, Blitzy is ready to be deployed at the beginning of every sprint. Blitzy handles the heavy lifting, delivering over 80% of the work autonomously. The platform plans, builds, and validates premium-quality code at the speed of compute, turning months of engineering into a matter of days. It’s the secret weapon for Fortune 500 companies globally. To hear how engineering leaders are transforming the way they deliver software, visit blitzy.com. Schedule a meeting with their consultants to enable an AI-Native SDLC in your organization today. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Parul Saini has spent enough time in serious IT leadership roles (Splunk, Zuora, Uber) to know the difference between organizations that are genuinely building AI capability and those that are performing it. Her read?  The governance assumptions that barely held together in the SaaS era are already being outpaced by agent deployments. The executives making AI strategy calls often haven't built anything themselves. And the boards mandating AI fluency are not getting results. This episode is a direct conversation about what it actually takes to close that gap — from why Parul believes every executive needs to personally build, break, and debug an agent before making another strategic call, to what responsible AI adoption looks like when the security tooling hasn't caught up with the technology.  Listen or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Visit ciopod.com for more episodes. 3 Takeaways: Every executive needs to personally build an agent, watch it fail, and understand why The same governance gaps that took years to close in the SaaS era are already compounding in AI agent deployments The most important thing Parul would do immediately in a new CIO role: rebuild how people experience work, starting with what she calls personalized productivity Chapters: [00:00] Hands-On AI Mandate [01:53] Career Journey & Uber Lessons [04:20] Scaling Trust & Partnerships [07:20] Founding AI AllyWorks [11:07] Managing AI Budgets [16:09] Operationalizing Agents & COE [21:13] The New CIO Playbook [23:43] Agent Security & Governance [25:30] Board Fluency & Leadership About Parul:  Parul Saini is the Founder of AI Ally Works, where she serves as a fractional AI and technology advisor for small and mid-size businesses navigating the shift to AI-driven operations. She brings deep enterprise experience from leadership roles at Uber, Splunk, and Zuora, where she built IT organizations that moved from reactive support functions to proactive business partners. At Uber, she led technology operations across a 30,000-person global company and drove early AI adoption starting in 2023. After stepping away from full-time executive life to prioritize her health, she recognized that the small businesses forming the backbone of the U.S. economy had no one with real CIO-level expertise in their corner on AI — and built AI Ally Works to change that. Guest Highlights: "I always thought my job was to take that cognitive overload that stakeholders have with regards to technology and take that on myself, so they can focus on their primary jobs and be a hundred percent successful." "The things that will prevent catastrophe are not moving as fast as the technology enabling these agents. Even now when I talk to my peers, I don't think the answer is clear." "Unless the agent you've built breaks and you have no idea what broke it—unless you understand what your teams are working with—you won't be able to make the right decisions or the right strategic moves. It's absolutely critical for us to have that hands-on experience right now." Get Connected: Yousuf Kahn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yousufakhan/ Parul Saini: https://www.linkedin.com/in/parul-saini-it-management-leadership/ Our Sponsor:  Want to accelerate software development by 500%? Meet Blitzy, the only autonomous code generation platform with infinite code context, purpose-built for large, complex enterprise-scale codebases. While other AI coding tools provide snippets of code and struggle with context, Blitzy ingests millions of lines of code and orchestrates thousands of agents that reason for hours to map every line-level dependency. With a complete contextual understanding of your codebase, Blitzy is ready to be deployed at the beginning of every sprint. Blitzy handles the heavy lifting, delivering over 80% of the work autonomously. The platform plans, builds, and validates premium-quality code at the speed of compute, turning months of engineering into a matter of days. It’s the secret weapon for Fortune 500 companies globally. To hear how engineering leaders are transforming the way they deliver software, visit blitzy.com. Schedule a meeting with their consultants to enable an AI-Native SDLC in your organization today. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Fred Laluyaux has spent 25 years on the same problem: enterprises are drowning in decisions no human should be making. With 50 million digitized decisions across companies like Unilever, Exxon, and Hershey, he now has the data to prove it. When operators override the machine, performance goes down. Not sometimes — in aggregate, every time. In this episode, Fred breaks down the agentic vs. deterministic tradeoff most CIOs are getting wrong, why the software stack most companies rely on today is heading for collapse, and what a company whose entire stack is just SAP and Aera tells you about where enterprise software is going. Hit play. 3 Takeaways: After 50 million digitized decisions, the data is clear: when operators override the machine, performance drops. One Aera customer runs their entire operation on SAP and Aera. Nothing in between. That's where the stack is going. Fred calls them "born in digital" decisions — they can't be made by humans because the value is gone before the meeting starts. Chapters: [03:08] Fred’s Career Journey and Lessons Learned [05:17] Why Aera Was Created [05:45] The Vision for a Self-Driving Enterprise [08:28] The Decision Memory Problem in AI [10:28] The Reality of AI ROI [11:58] From Analytics to Decision Intelligence [12:56] Humans vs Fully Autonomous Systems [15:28] What It Means to Digitize Decisions [18:42] How Aera Actually Works [22:42] Trust, Governance, and the Waymo Analogy [27:51] Deterministic vs Agentic AI [29:13] The Cloud Capacity Wake-Up Call [30:15] Where Aera Fits in the Enterprise Stack [31:54] Fast ROI and the “4-4-4” Framework [32:55] Why the Software Stack Is Collapsing [36:21] Delayering Organizations and New AI Roles [39:02] Born-Digital Companies and Micro-Decisions [43:57] Explainability, Governance, and Feedback Loops About Fred:  Fred Laluyaux is Co-Founder, President, and CEO of Aera Technology, the leader in decision intelligence and creator of Aera, the first decision intelligence agent. An entrepreneur and Silicon Valley veteran, Fred brings an impressive track record building successful startups and driving technology innovation. Prior to launching Aera, Fred was the CEO of Anaplan, which he grew to a $1 billion valuation. He has held several executive positions at SAP, Business Objects, and ALG Software. As a thought leader on the future of work and host of the Decision Intelligence podcast, Fred frequently shares his vision with influencers through media interviews and speaking engagements at industry conferences. His views have been published in business and trade publications. A technology and startup advisor, Fred is an investor and active board member of several startups in the U.S. and Europe. Guest Highlights: "We're in 2026, and the reality is that our models have not changed for 100 years. We're still relying on people to decide how to forecast, how to allocate inventory, how to change a plan." "We've got enough data, I mentioned the 50 million decisions, to demonstrate that whenever the humans are touching the system and are messing with the recommendation, they actually degrade the performance." "The autonomy is not another version or better version of my planning tool or my replenishment tool. It replaces the need to have a human touch with that software, and therefore I don't need that software anymore." Get Connected: Ian Faison: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ianfaison Fred Laluyaux: https://www.linkedin.com/in/flaluyaux/ Our Sponsor:  This episode is brought to you by Aera Technology. Enterprise AI has hit its stride. Across industries, companies are moving beyond pilots and proofs of concept, and into real, enterprise-wide results: better decisions, faster execution, and meaningful bottom-line impact.  Aera's agentic decision intelligence is built to help you seize the opportunity. Aera dynamically composes decision flows using unified decision data and multi-engine orchestration to drive action at scale. It continuously senses what's happening across your enterprise, recommends and executes the best course of action within your transaction systems, and learns from every outcome to keep improving. Leading global companies are already using Aera across supply chain, inventory, logistics, and finance, delivering rapid ROI through reduced costs, lower working capital, and better customer outcomes. This is the self-driving enterprise. And it's here now. Visit AeraTechnology.com to book a demo Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Nik Seetharaman has watched the offensive side of cybersecurity adopt AI tools at a pace defenders can't match. So, he built a company to close that gap.  Before founding Wraithwatch, he was the first CIO of Anduril, a defense tech company he joined when it was 100 people and helped scale through hypergrowth. His path (Palantir to SpaceX to building AI-native cyber defense platforms for over a dozen federal agencies) gives him a view most CIOs and CISOs don't have. In this episode, Nik makes the case that AI has created a forcing function for CIOs and CISOs to finally work together, plus, shares how to run a pilot that actually moves the needle, why blocking AI tools backfires, and what the OpenClaw security drama gets right and wrong. 3 Takeaways: The CIO-CISO turf war is now a competitive disadvantage. Whoever figures out AI collaboration first wins. Treat every internal AI rollout like a startup: small cohort, parallel security review, measure the outcome in revenue. The best investment a new CIO can make isn't a security stack—it's coffee with people. Chapters: [01:46] What Wraithwatch Builds [05:25] AI Forces CIO / CISO Alignment [07:55] OpenClaw Security Tradeoffs [09:21] SecOps at Developer Speed [12:49] Rolling Out Risky Tools [14:44] Why Leaders Must Use AI [19:01] How to Reorg for the AI Era [22:30] Vendor Hunting for Grand Slams [25:49] $30M Contract and What's Next About Nik: Nik Seetharaman is the Founder and CEO of Wraithwatch, a next-generation cyber defense company building AI-native command-and-control platforms for the United States and its allies. He co-founded the company alongside fellow SpaceX alumni Grace Clemente and Carlos Moss. Before starting Wraithwatch, Nik served as the first CIO of Anduril, a defense technology company he joined when it was approximately 100 people, where he built the cybersecurity function from the ground up and saw the company through hypergrowth. His career spans cybersecurity leadership roles at Palantir, SpaceX, and Andel, giving him a rare vantage point across the offense-defense asymmetry that defines today's threat landscape.  Guest Highlights:"You can't have the attackers operating at the speed of a machine out here, and the defenders operating at the speed of a human in here." "Any business that's able to figure out this equation and execute it successfully is going to just crush their competition—because they're gonna move at warp speed and their competition will still be moving at human speed." "If I could rewind my first days at Andel, it's not to deploy more controls, it's not to learn about some new security stack or software—I would've just had more coffee with people. The human capital you build doing that pays off in spades. Because that's the thing that's rare in an age where the machines are taking over." Get Connected: Ian Faison: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ianfaison Nik Seetharaman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikseetharaman/ Resources: OpenClaw: https://openclaw.ai LangChain: https://www.langchain.com Cursor: https://cursor.com Our Sponsor:  Want to accelerate software development by 500%? Meet Blitzy, the only autonomous code generation platform with infinite code context, purpose-built for large, complex enterprise-scale codebases. While other AI coding tools provide snippets of code and struggle with context, Blitzy ingests millions of lines of code and orchestrates thousands of agents that reason for hours to map every line-level dependency. With a complete contextual understanding of your codebase, Blitzy is ready to be deployed at the beginning of every sprint. Blitzy handles the heavy lifting, delivering over 80% of the work autonomously. The platform plans, builds, and validates premium-quality code at the speed of compute, turning months of engineering into a matter of days. It’s the secret weapon for Fortune 500 companies globally. To hear how engineering leaders are transforming the way they deliver software, visit blitzy.com. Schedule a meeting with their consultants to enable an AI-Native SDLC in your organization today. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

When Ellora Sengupta joined EverCommerce as CIO, she inherited the IT of over 50 acquisitions — multiple operating models, fragmented tech stacks, and business units that had zero reason to trust a central IT function.  Most CIOs would have reached for a consolidation roadmap. Ellora reached for something better: earning the right to be plugged into, instead of just mandating it. In this episode, Ellora tells Yousuf how she's drawn the line between what actually needs to be standardized and what should be left alone so acquired businesses keep their edge.  Key Moments: [00:01:00] What Is EverCommerce — and What Makes 50+ Acquisitions So Unusual [00:03:00] The CIO's Real Job: Standardize Some Things, Protect Others [00:04:30] What Multi-Acquisition IT Looks Like vs. Organic Growth [00:05:00] How Ellora Built Trust with Business Units That Didn't Ask for IT [00:07:30] High-Growth SaaS DNA: Customer Obsession, Speed with Discipline, and AI [00:09:30] Why AI Doesn't Get Its Own Budget at EverCommerce [00:11:00] The Personal Story: Starting Over as an Immigrant with Zero Network [00:15:30] How Her Leadership Philosophy Evolved — and the Family Myth She Unlearned [00:17:30] Running the SVASE CIO Educational Fund and Giving Back [00:21:00] The Skills That Actually Matter for Future IT Leaders [00:22:00] Lightning Round About Ellora: Ellora Sengupta is the CIO of EverCommerce, where she oversees enterprise applications, data and analytics, security, corporate IT, infrastructure, and enterprise PMO across a portfolio built through 50+ acquisitions. She brings a "General Manager" mindset to IT leadership, having scaled technology functions at high-growth pre-IPO companies and $50B+ enterprises alike — including stints at Procore, Samsara, Cisco, and Workday. Ellora was named Bay Area CIO of the Year in the 2022 ORBIE Awards (Large Corporate category). She currently serves as president of the SVASE CIO Educational Fund, raising scholarships and providing mentorship for underprivileged students pursuing careers in technology. Guest Highlights: "My success is not how fast can I standardize or make things consistent. My success is — are those vertical businesses ready to plug into the shared services that my team is creating because it makes them better." "Your team is not your family. In a family, it's unconditional. But in a team you need everybody to perform. It doesn't help anyone if you are carrying along a non-performer — the rest of the team has to carry that slack." "I don't have a separate budget for AI. I have a budget and I need to make sure that my tools are AI enabled." - Visit ciopod.com for more episodes. Check out our new YouTube channel and subscribe to never miss an episode. Our Sponsor:  Want to accelerate software development by 500%? Meet Blitzy, the only autonomous code generation platform with infinite code context, purpose-built for large, complex enterprise-scale codebases. While other AI coding tools provide snippets of code and struggle with context, Blitzy ingests millions of lines of code and orchestrates thousands of agents that reason for hours to map every line-level dependency. With a complete contextual understanding of your codebase, Blitzy is ready to be deployed at the beginning of every sprint. Blitzy handles the heavy lifting, delivering over 80% of the work autonomously. The platform plans, builds, and validates premium-quality code at the speed of compute, turning months of engineering into a matter of days. It’s the secret weapon for Fortune 500 companies globally. To hear how engineering leaders are transforming the way they deliver software, visit blitzy.com. Schedule a meeting with their consultants to enable an AI-Native SDLC in your organization today. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Two words that make most engineers shudder: code refactoring. Now raise the stakes — refactoring decades of legacy systems inside a large enterprise. A tech debt-heavy project of this scale needs a leader who has driven complex digital transformations, like Gayatri Narayan (formerly PepsiCo, Microsoft, Amazon). Now, as President of Technology at Builders FirstSource, Gayatri Narayan is achieving a 3–4x increase in engineering velocity since joining less than a year ago.  Gayatri joins host Yousuf Khan to unpack the strategy behind those results, including how to deploy AI across the SDLC, how to rigorously evaluate ROI on AI investments, and how to lead change across complex enterprise tech stacks.Key Moments: 01:30 – Why Construction Technology Is Ready for Transformation 04:05 – AI Strategy: Elevating UX and Customer Experience 08:20 – Evaluating AI Investments: ROI, NPV, and Operating Costs 12:45 – Achieving 3–4x Engineering Velocity 16:05 – Humans in the Loop: Craft, Code Review, and AI Amplification 18:35 – Where the Industry Gets AI Adoption Wrong 20:30 – Leadership Advice: Start with the Customer About Gayatri: Gayatri Narayan is a general management executive with more than 15 years of experience leading product, engineering, data science, and operations across global enterprises, with full P&L responsibility and a track record of driving profitable growth through digital transformation.  She currently serves as President of Technology at Builders FirstSource, where she leads enterprise technology strategy, modernizes legacy systems, and embeds AI into the software development lifecycle to accelerate innovation across the residential construction value chain.  Previously, she served as Senior Vice President of Digital Products and Services at PepsiCo and held multiple general management roles at Microsoft, including leading Product and Engineering for Intelligent Communications across Teams and Skype as well as Enterprise PaaS and SaaS businesses; she also held leadership roles at Amazon spanning Marketplace Transportation and Logistics and several major retail categories. Guest Highlights: “We’ve seen a three to four times increase in engineering velocity — especially in refactoring legacy systems where historically there was very little knowledge of how the system actually worked.” “With generative AI, companies that have existed for 20 or 30 years don’t have to get bogged down by legacy stacks. They can embrace emerging technologies without spending 18 to 24 months just refactoring.” “It really comes down to efficiency of time. The developer’s surface area of impact expands dramatically — it’s not just about writing code anymore, it’s about delivering business value faster.” Visit ciopod.com for more episodes. Check out our new YouTube channel and subscribe to never miss an episode. Our Sponsor:  Want to accelerate software development by 500%? Meet Blitzy, the only autonomous code generation platform with infinite code context, purpose-built for large, complex enterprise-scale codebases.  While other AI coding tools provide snippets of code and struggle with context, Blitzy ingests millions of lines of code and orchestrates thousands of agents that reason for hours to map every line-level dependency.  With a complete contextual understanding of your codebase, Blitzy is ready to be deployed at the beginning of every sprint. Blitzy handles the heavy lifting, delivering over 80% of the work autonomously. The platform plans, builds, and validates premium-quality code at the speed of compute, turning months of engineering into a matter of days. It’s the secret weapon for Fortune 500 companies globally.  To hear how engineering leaders are transforming the way they deliver software, visit blitzy.com. Schedule a meeting with their consultants to enable an AI-Native SDLC in your organization today. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

On this episode of CIO Classified, host Yousuf Khan sits down with Ravi Thadani, Global Head of IT at Enphase Energy, a company powering over 5 million homes across 160 countries with clean, solar-driven energy. With 85 million microinverters producing 30 gigawatts of power, Ravi’s team is at the epicenter of a massive, real-time data operation—and every IT decision directly impacts the customer experience. About Ravi:  Ravi Thadani is a seasoned IT executive with extensive experience leading large-scale digital transformations across Fortune 500 companies. He has driven strategic initiatives across ERP, CRM, PLM, HCM, SCM, analytics, AI/ML, network architecture, cloud infrastructure, and M&A integration. With oversight of multi-$10M budgets and teams of over 300, Ravi has supported business units ranging from $2B to $70B in revenue. Known for his strategic vision and execution, Ravi is recognized for fostering cross-functional alignment, driving agile transformation, and cultivating high-performing teams. His leadership approach is grounded in strong business partnerships, stakeholder governance, innovation, and a relentless focus on outcomes. Timestamps: 01:50 – Enphase Energy's Global Operations 03:40 – Ravi's Role and Responsibilities 06:00 – Managing Customer Data and CRM 16:45 – Driving Change as a CIO 19:50 – The Role of Data in AI 20:55 – The Importance of Data Cleaning 21:20 – Effective Data Governance Strategies 23:45 – Architecting for Scalability 27:30 – Challenges in Hardware and Software Integration Guest Highlights: "AI isn’t replacing you—people using AI are. The adoption curve is about enabling people to do more, not just reducing headcount." "The biggest failure point in IT projects? Treating them like IT projects. Every transformation has to be owned by the business." "Your architecture should always assume 10x growth. Even if you’re not scaling today, you need a conscious plan for when you do." Get Connected: Yousuf Kahn on LinkedInRavi Thadani on LinkedInHungry for more tech talk? Check out latest episodes at ciopod.com:  Ep 65 - Accelerating Software Development at Enterprise ScaleEp 64 - How Autonomous AI is Solving the Enterprise Modernization ChallengeEp 63 - How AI is Expanding the CIO RoleLearn more about Caspian Studios: caspianstudios.com Our Sponsor:  Want to accelerate software development by 500%? Meet Blitzy, the only autonomous code generation platform with infinite code context, purpose-built for large, complex enterprise-scale codebases. While other AI coding tools provide snippets of code and struggle with context, Blitzy ingests millions of lines of code and orchestrates thousands of agents that reason for hours to map every line-level dependency. With a complete contextual understanding of your codebase, Blitzy is ready to be deployed at the beginning of every sprint. Blitzy handles the heavy lifting, delivering over 80% of the work autonomously. The platform plans, builds, and validates premium-quality code at the speed of compute, turning months of engineering into a matter of days. It’s the secret weapon for Fortune 500 companies globally. To hear how engineering leaders are transforming the way they deliver software, visit blitzy.com. Schedule a meeting with their consultants to enable an AI-Native SDLC in your organization today. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

When you’re managing $60 trillion in assets across dozens of products and 30 global jurisdictions, technical debt isn’t just an inconvenience—it’s an existential risk. Jason Adams, Interim CTO of Charles River, a State Street Company, leads 800 engineers building mission-critical trading platforms for the world’s largest asset managers. Joined by Sid Pardeshi, Co-Founder and CTO of Blitzy, he explains how State Street is using an AI-augmented SDLC to modernize decades-old systems, refactor legacy code, and dramatically increase developer productivity—without compromising the rigor required in financial services. Jason frames the strategy around three pillars:  AI for engineering (copilots and polyglot support),AI for operations (APM, observability, and proactive monitoring), andAI embedded in products (LLM-powered explainers).Using Blitzy’s agentic approach—iterative context building, dependency mapping, and targeted code generation—State Street compressed months of work into weeks while maintaining strict quality gates. About the Guests: Jason Adams Jason Adams is the Interim CTO of Charles River, a State Street Company. He brings deep expertise in modernizing legacy fintech infrastructure into scalable, cloud-native systems that support mission-critical financial services at global scale. Previously, Jason was Head of Platform Product and Strategy at Charles River Development and CTO of Mercatus (acquired by State Street and now part of Charles River for Private Markets). He has led high-impact initiatives across engineering, product, and cloud infrastructure, with extensive experience guiding end-to-end delivery teams. Today, Jason is driving a comprehensive SaaS transformation at CRD, focused on building resilient, future-ready architectures. From scaling global engineering organizations to delivering secure, high-performance platforms, he is committed to advancing innovation, agility, and long-term growth across Charles River, State Street Alpha, and State Street. Sid Pardeshi Sid Pardeshi is a technology leader and entrepreneur, currently Co-Founder and CTO of Blitzy. He holds a Harvard MS/MBA and previously served as a Software Architect at NVIDIA, where he built deep expertise at the intersection of AI, large-scale software systems, and product innovation. At NVIDIA, Sid was recognized as a Master Inventor, earning the Inventor’s Jacket for driving AI-powered product innovation, with more than 25 U.S. patents filed across gaming, augmented reality, and virtual reality. He is also a seasoned software engineer with a strong track record in application performance optimization, delivering native client load-time improvements of up to 90%. Beyond hands-on engineering, Sid has led and coordinated software design, framework requirements, and application architecture across global teams of 500+ engineers. Today, he applies this blend of innovation, technical depth, and organizational leadership to building autonomous software development platforms that help enterprises modernize at scale. Timestamps: 00:30 – Jason on Managing $60 Trillion in Assets 01:55 – Challenges and Strategies in Financial Services 07:00 – Embracing AI for Modernization 09:10 – AI in Software Development Lifecycle 15:55 – Ensuring Quality and Compliance with AI 23:55 – AI in Operations and Incident Response 26:00 – Proactive Workflow Monitoring 26:20 – AI in SDLC: Creation to Operations 30:00 – Challenges in AI Recommendations 33:20 – Iterative Context Building with AI 36:00 – Human Side of AI Transformation 42:30 – Adopting AI Tools in Financial Services Guest Highlights: "One of the things that excites me the most right now is the ability to use an AI-augmented SDLC to drive modernization. Otherwise, with this many systems, it's too hard." — Jason  "You have to invest in the non-attractive parts first. You have to build a foundation that's gonna support being able to bring on solutions and tools that could change your overall enterprise SDLC. That's a lot of work and that's a major investment." — Jason  "We are unlocking by adding these additional capabilities and additional assurance that improves quality exponentially more than we could have in the past. Now I can have an agent swarm check itself—multiple agents doing code review at a level of depth we just don't have time to get to." — Jason Get Connected: Jason Adams on LinkedInSid Pardeshi on LinkedInYousuf Kahn on LinkedInIan Faison on LinkedInHungry for more tech talk? Check out latest episodes at ciopod.com:  Ep 63 - How Autonomous AI is Solving the Enterprise Modernization ChallengeEp 62 - Running IT Like a Growth EngineEp 61 - What Manufacturing Can Teach You About Scaling Enterprise AILearn more about Caspian Studios: caspianstudios.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Most enterprises have roadmaps stretching 3-5 years out. What if you could compress that to 1-2 years?  Brian Elliot is the Co-Founder and CEO of Blitzy, an enterprise-focused autonomous software development platform tackling one of technology's toughest problems: how do you modernize 20-100 million lines of legacy code when the developers who wrote it retired 15 years ago? In this episode, Brian explores: Why orchestrated AI agents can handle 80% of transformation work autonomously (and why humans still matter for the other 20%)The realities of enterprise buying cycles and why embedded on-site teams accelerate change managementWhy documentation and test coverage are the unsexy first steps that make everything else possibleAbout the Guest:  Brian Elliott is CEO and Co-founder of Blitzy. A serial entrepreneur, former Infantry Officer with the 1st Ranger Battalion, and West Point graduate in Systems Engineering with a Harvard MBA, Brian brings a unique blend of military precision, engineering expertise, and entrepreneurial vision to transforming enterprise software development. As CEO, Brian leads Blitzy's mission to empower systematic AI adoption across enterprises, transforming traditional development lifecycles into AI-native workflows. Under his leadership, Blitzy has developed an agentic platform where thousands of specialized AI Agents cooperate at inference to autonomously deliver enterprise-scale code that is tested, validated, and compiled. Focused on operational deployment at scale, Brian architected the company's proven Agentic SDLC Accelerator—a structured methodology that systematically guides engineering organizations from technical validation to full-scale enterprise adoption. This framework unlocks autonomous capabilities across the complete software development lifecycle. Timestamps: 01:25 – Understanding Blitzy's AI Capabilities 03:25 – Challenges and Solutions in Enterprise Software 06:00 – The Genesis of Blitzy 07:30 – Insights from Nvidia and AI Development 11:00 – Implementing AI in Enterprise Systems 18:00 – Change Management and Customer Collaboration 20:30 – Understanding Enterprise Security Needs 25:10 – Improving Code Quality and Test Coverage 28:15 – Blitzy's Mission and Market Direction 30:10 – Challenges and Opportunities in Enterprise Software Guest Highlight: "Code is beautiful in that it's verifiable. We're following enterprise best practices—everything goes to a dev branch where a human can look at it, review it, go through a typical QA process. The first thing we're gonna do is document their code so they know what's going on, then add test cases, then develop software at scale that's highly verifiable." Get Connected: Brian Elliot on LinkedInYousuf Kahn on LinkedInIan Faison on LinkedInHungry for more tech talk? Check out past episodes at ciopod.com:  Ep 62 - Running IT Like a Growth EngineEp 61 - What Manufacturing Can Teach You About Scaling Enterprise AIEp 60 - Why the Smartest CIOs Are Becoming Business StrategistsLearn more about Caspian Studios: caspianstudios.com Our Sponsor:  This episode is brought to you by Blitzy, the Enterprise Autonomous Software Development Platform with Infinite Code Context. Blitzy uses thousands of specialized AI agents that think for hours to understand enterprise scale codebases with millions of lines of code. Enterprise Engineering leaders start every development sprint with the Blitzy platform, bringing in their development requirements. The Blitzy platform provides a plan, then generates and pre-compiles code for each task. Blitzy delivers 80%+ of the development work autonomously, while providing a guide for the final 20% of human development work required to complete the sprint. Public companies are achieving a 5x engineering velocity increase when incorporating Blitzy as their Pre-IDE development tool, pairing it with their coding co-pilot of choice to bring an AI-Native SDLC into their org. Visit Blitzy.com and press book demo to learn how Blitzy transforms your SDLC from AI Assisted to AI Native. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode, Chetna explains how new automation strategies are evolving not only productivity, but the role of the CIO. Chetna emphasizes the importance of data quality and security when scaling a fast-growing company, as well as transparency and partnership in vendor relationships.  About the Guest:  Chetna is an award winning CIO, board member, and VC advisor with over 25 years of experience working in the Fortune 100 and serving as a 3X CIO for hyper-growth SaaS businesses. Chetna currently serves as CIO of Webflow, a hyper-growth Website Experience Platform SaaS company. Previously, she served as CDIO at Amplitude and ZoomInfo. Chetna is an advisor to prominent VC firms including Sequoia Capital, Accel, Ridge Ventures, and Mayfield and serves on the Customer Advisory Board (CAB) at Veza and, Productiv and was formerly at Snowflake and Google Cloud Platform CAB. She served on the Tech Committee with Carlyle and Thoma Bravo, and on the Advisory Board of Ninja Focus and Women & AI. She was a finalist and nominee for the Bay Area ORBIE, CIO award, a finalist for “2019 Markie’s Cultivator Award for Best Lead Management Program,” a recipient of the Delta Dental Women in Business Stevie Award of Excellence in Healthcare Transformation, and a Boeing Spirit of Excellence Award recipient. Outside of work, she enjoys traveling, hiking, and skiing and has a passion for exploring different cultures. Timestamps: 01:41 - About Chetna 04:53 - Automation as a starting point 07:16 - Employee productivity and the CIO 11:25 - Discovering new AI tools 13:44 - Evolving revenue systems 22:47 - How will the CIO role evolve? 28:37 - Lightning round Guest Highlight: “ AI has really taken productivity at a whole different level now. It has really helped us drive the pace in productivity we couldn't have fathomed before the event of the content generation. It's not just content generation anymore. It's way beyond that. The velocity at which we are innovating on the product is huge.” Get Connected: Chetna Mahajan on LinkedInYousuf Kahn on LinkedInIan Faison on LinkedInHungry for more tech talk? Check out past episodes at ciopod.com:  Ep 62 - Running IT Like a Growth EngineEp 61 - What Manufacturing Can Teach You About Scaling Enterprise AIEp 60 - Why the Smartest CIOs Are Becoming Business StrategistsLearn more about Caspian Studios: caspianstudios.com Our Sponsor: This episode was brought to you by Blitzy, the Enterprise Autonomous Software Development Platform with Infinite Code Context. Blitzy uses thousands of specialized AI agents that think for hours to understand enterprise scale codebases with millions of lines of code. Enterprise Engineering leaders start every development sprint with the Blitzy platform, bringing in their development requirements. The Blitzy platform provides a plan, then generates and pre-compiles code for each task. Blitzy delivers 80%+ of the development work autonomously, while providing a guide for the final 20% of human development work required to complete the sprint. Public companies are achieving a 5x engineering velocity increase when incorporating Blitzy as their Pre-IDE development tool, pairing it with their coding co-pilot of choice to bring an AI-Native SDLC into their org. Visit Blitzy.com and press book demo to learn how Blitzy transforms your SDLC from AI Assisted to AI Native. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This episode features Chidi Alams, CIO of Just Born — the company behind candy classics like Peeps, Mike and Ike, and Hot Tamales. Chidi shares how his team is using AI, automation, and smarter data systems to modernize operations, strengthen supply chain resilience, and double the business impact of technology. It’s a conversation about what it really means to run IT like a growth engine — not just keeping the lights on, but driving strategy, efficiency, and innovation. Plus, much more: Chidi’s take on “physical AI” in manufacturingHow the CIO role is evolving into a more strategic leadership positionWhy a values-driven tech culture might be the secret to long-term successWhether you’re a CIO, IT leader, or simply curious about how AI and data are reshaping business, this episode delivers grounded, real-world insights.  About the Guest:  Chidi Alams, CIO at Just Born, Inc., is a transformation executive with a proven track record of leading strategic initiatives that drive operational excellence, organic growth, and digital innovation. His experience includes both Fortune 500 and private equity-backed companies. Timestamps: 02:10 Transitioning Between Industries 03:26 Role and Responsibilities of a CIO 06:05 Business Transformation and Strategy 08:12 Managing Peak Seasons and Supply Chain 14:26 Leveraging Data and AI 21:20 Talent Acquisition and Company Culture 27:51 Future of Technology and CIO Role Guest Highlights: “ A lot of how we ran the business, even during the peak season, was a tremendous amount of tribal knowledge. We can't scale based on tribal knowledge, right? So having data systems, particularly as we bring in new people into the organization, helps us to be more predictive and meet demand during peak season.” “ CIOs have to become more business centric.  When you look at what's happening in large enterprises, you're seeing a fragmentation of technology leadership.  I do believe that there will be a convergence at some point.” “ I'm extremely interested and have been tracking what I think is a very important trend, not just in CPG but in retail and any consumer space — even pharma — and that is how can we leverage large language models that are trained for CPG to help drive product innovation. It’s already happening.” Get Connected: Chidi Alams on LinkedInYousuf Kahn on LinkedInIan Faison on LinkedInHungry for more tech talk? Check out past episodes at ciopod.com:  Ep 61 - What Manufacturing Can Teach You About Scaling Enterprise AIEp 60 - Why the Smartest CIOs Are Becoming Business StrategistsEp 59 - CIO Leadership in AI Security and InnovationLearn more about Caspian Studios: caspianstudios.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

CIO Classified is back!  More CIO secrets. More battle-tested IT wisdom.  Straight from leading CIOs across a wide range of industries.  In this episode, host Ian Faison and co-host Yousuf Khan dive into the deep end of technology leadership in manufacturing. Ben Davis, Executive Vice President of IT at Cambria, joins the show to talk about his sweeping digital transformation at the quartz manufacturing leader, and shares how his startup past helped him turn IT from a reactive function to a trusted business advisor.  Plus much more: How Cambria is leveraging AI in demand forecastingHow to optimize supply chains and improve customer experience How to do it all while managing a legacy infrastructure and cybersecurityThis episode is a must-listen for the modern CIO looking to bridge the gap between traditional industries and modern technologies without sacrificing security or business continuity.  About the Guest:  Ben Davis, EVP  IT, Cambria, is a technical leader who is passionate about introducing new technology, improved processes and unexplored data sets to businesses in a manner that allows them to achieve scalable revenue growth. He does this by helping business-minded technologists use automation, prioritization and critical thinking to deliver technology, process improvement and data in a high-value, cost-effective way.  Timestamps: 02:30 – From startups to manufacturing: Applying entrepreneurial DNA 07:00 – Communicating tech value across the organization 09:30 – Why AI in manufacturing is a game-changer 15:00 – Cybersecurity training, scorekeeping, and zero-trust realities 17:30 – Modernizing legacy infrastructure in manufacturing 23:00 – AI adoption vs. business architecture readiness 26:00 – Staying close to the customer experience as CIO 28:00 – Building, retaining, and empowering high-impact IT teams 31:00 – Governance, shadow IT, and the rise of internal agents 35:00 – AI tooling, data gaps, and minimizing technical debt 38:00 – Manufacturing success, excitement, and the human side of tech Guest Highlights: “ I think everybody under spends on cybersecurity. If I had an unlimited budget, I’d put the money towards that. I would also spend the money on data scientists, data modeling, data governance, mass data management to ensure that our data was ready to really take advantage of AI.” Get Connected: Ben Davis on LinkedInYousuf Kahn on LinkedInIan Faison on LinkedInHungry for more tech talk? Check out past episodes at ciopod.com:  Ep 60 - Why the Smartest CIOs Are Becoming Business StrategistsEp 59 - CIO Leadership in AI Security and InnovationEp 58 - AI-Driven Workplace TransformationLearn more about Caspian Studios: caspianstudios.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Eric Johnson, CIO at PagerDuty, shares why today’s most impactful CIOs are evolving into strategic business leaders. He explains how AI is driving a fundamental shift in how IT organizations operate—moving from reactive support functions to proactive, value-creating business enablers. About the Guest:  Eric Johnson is the Chief Information Officer at PagerDuty, responsible for PagerDuty’s critical IT infrastructure, data management and enterprise systems. Prior to joining PagerDuty, he was the CIO at SurveyMonkey, DocuSign and Talend. Before that, Eric spent 12 years at Informatica driving the information technology vision and strategy as the company scaled to a modern SaaS architecture. He is an active advisor and board member to several early-stage companies and a regular contributor to IT thought leadership. Timestamps: *(05:20) -  Embrace shadow IT and AI tools *(18:40) -  Changing role of the CIO *(30:00) -  Security and cybersecurity awareness *(33:35) -   Future of automation and AI Guest Highlights: “In the CIO org, they need to be business experts as much as the partners that they work with… because AI and the use of it and finding those high value use cases, it's gonna take folks in the CIO org to be a lot more knowledgeable about how the company operates and processes.” “Obviously, certain roles are going to change much more than others, but I think across the board, roles are going to change.” “As these changes come, how do you reorient the organization—the humans in the organization—to be able to find that higher value work?” Get Connected: Eric Johnson on LinkedInIan Faison on LinkedInResources: Learn more about PagerDuty: www.pagerduty.comHungry for more tech talk? Check out these past episodes:Ep 59 - CIO Leadership in AI Security and InnovationEp 58 - AI-Driven Workplace TransformationEp 57 - The CIO Roadmap to Executive LeadershipLearn more about Caspian Studios: caspianstudios.comCan’t get enough AI? Check out The New Automation Mindset Podcast for more in-depth conversations about strategies leadership in AI, automation, and orchestration. Brought to you by the automation experts at Workato. Start Listening: www.workato.com/podcast