AWS Executive Insights

The automotive retail industry is at a genuine inflection point. Rules are being rewritten, the competition is intensifying, and the pressure to transform has never been greater.

In this episode, Hartmut Wagner, CEO of Nextlane, shares how his company is helping dealerships and manufacturers navigate that complexity through a cloud-based open ecosystem, transforming from the inside out in the process.

For Hartmut, the key isn't the technology. It's the culture behind it, leading with values, proving AI's impact through real use cases, and empowering people until adoption stops feeling like a directive and starts feeling natural.

This episode offers leaders a practical perspective on driving transformation in a traditional industry, building a culture of curiosity and innovation, and why enabling your people is always the most powerful place to start.

AI transformation at enterprise scale isn't a project with a finish line; it's an organizational reckoning with how people learn, work, and create value. Vivian Sun, Senior Director of Data & AI at Jabil, brings that reality into sharp focus in this episode of AWS Executive Insights.

In conversation with Taimur Rashid, Managing Director of the AWS Generative AI Innovation Center, Vivian explains why AI demands continuous learning, not a one-time skillset. She also explores how Jabil's Octopus Organization model works in practice, with a central body setting strategy and guardrails, while distributed teams retain the freedom to innovate in the ways that work best for them. Together, these principles are what turn early pilots into lasting organizational change.

This episode offers leaders a practical framework for scaling AI transformation across a global organization, while keeping people, not technology, at the center of the journey.

For DNB, transformation isn't just a strategy. It's a survival imperative.

In this episode, Kjerstin Braathen, CEO of Norway's largest bank, makes the case that the pace of change in financial services today is unlike anything we've seen before. Not just digitization, but a full reimagining of what it means to build a bank from the ground up in a digital world.

Her answer? Stop tweaking the edges. Pick the must-win battles that matter most, move fast, and bring your people with you. Because at DNB, technology is only as powerful as the people behind it. And that means empowering everyone across the organization to lead the change.

This episode offers leaders a compelling perspective on what it really takes to transform at speed, without leaving your culture behind.

As AI agents become part of day-to-day business operations, security leaders face a new set of questions around identity, autonomy, permissions, and control. In this episode of AWS Executive Insights, Pascal Bornet speaks with Steve Schmidt, Chief Security Officer at Amazon, about how organisations should approach security in an era shaped by AI agents and automation.

Bornet and Schmidt discuss why agents should have their own identity, how companies should think about permissions and logging, and why human judgement still matters in high-stakes environments. They also cover the risks introduced by prompt injection, the role of external guardrails, and how AI is already helping defenders move faster against threats at scale.

This episode offers a practical view of how security teams and business leaders can respond to the rise of AI agents, with clear actions companies can take now to build safer systems from the start.

Learn more about AWS Agentic AI: https://aws.amazon.com/ai/agentic-ai/?trk=80F9DhCw5AKb6zC

Clearwater Analytics has gone from concept to over 800 AI agents in production, and Darrel Cherry, VP and Distinguished Engineer, shares the story behind that journey. In conversation with Arvind Mathur, Executive in Residence at AWS, Cherry traces how Clearwater built its own AI studio, multi-agent orchestration system, and no-code agent development environment before most of today's tools and frameworks even existed.

Cherry also details how Clearwater ensures accuracy in a zero-error-tolerance industry, from building a custom LLM evaluation framework to maintaining full audit trails across every agent action.

This episode offers leaders a practical blueprint for scaling AI from internal experimentation to enterprise-wide adoption, while maintaining the accuracy and trust that high-stakes industries demand.

What does it take to bring world-class connectivity to the billions of people and businesses that have never had reliable access? Tom Soderstrom, AWS Executive in Residence, and Chris Weber, VP of Business at Amazon Leo, share how Amazon Leo (formerly known as Project Kuiper) is building toward that vision one launch at a time, with over 200 satellites in orbit since this conversation took place in December 2025.

Soderstrom and Weber discuss what sets Amazon Leo apart, from gigabit downlink speeds and private connectivity that never touches the public internet, to a customer-obsessed approach to service, support, and partnerships. This episode offers a compelling look at the technology, partnerships, and customer obsession driving Amazon Leo forward, and the global impact it stands to make along the way.

For over 65 years, the Jane Goodall Institute has been quietly building one of the most extraordinary conservation datasets on earth, captured largely by hand in the forests of Gombe. Now, AI is unlocking its full potential. Dr. Lilian Pintea, VP of Conservation Science at JGI, joins Shaown Nandi, Vice President of AWS Technology, to share how decades of rigorous field research are shaping a thoughtful and powerful approach to AI in conservation science.

Lilian discusses how JGI is building an AI platform to identify individual chimpanzees, extract behavioral insights from video, and unlock decades of multilingual field data. Grounded in JGI's community-led Tacare conservation model, he explains why earning community trust and designing for sustainability from the start are not just values. They are prerequisites.

This episode is a reminder that the most enduring AI innovations are the ones built with the planet and its people in mind.

Most organizations are experimenting with AI. Far fewer are transforming with it. Bernhard Mühlreiter, Senior Partner at McKinsey & Company, makes the case for why that gap is closing and what it takes to be on the right side of it.

In conversation with Richard Taylor, Retail and Consumer Goods Lead APJ at AWS, Mühlreiter outlines the three things that distinguish AI leaders: bold ambition, managing AI as a true transformation program, and broad-based capability building. He explores why lack of speed remains the biggest disappointment he sees in organizations today, and why, as Andy Jassy has noted, speed is ultimately a leadership decision.

From T-shaped transformation frameworks to agile "digital factory" team structures, this episode offers executives a clear-eyed and practical perspective on how to move from isolated pilots to enterprise-wide AI impact.

Enterprise transformation is entering a new phase, and the organizations that get it right won't just be adopting A; they'll be fundamentally rethinking how work gets done. Rajendra Prasad, Group Chief Executive at Accenture Technology, shares how Accenture is helping enterprises use AI as an innovation lens to redesign core business processes, not just automate them.

In conversation with Shaown Nandi, Vice President of AWS Technology, RP introduces Accenture's Reinvention Deployment Engineers (RDEs), a new class of talent that combines deep technology expertise, industry and business process knowledge, and change management capability to drive enterprise reinvention at scale. He also shares his framework for measuring AI ROI, why embedded instrumentation of value is non-negotiable, and what C-suite leaders need to understand about the shift from BI to AI as the new user interface.

For leaders navigating the pressure to adopt AI quickly while delivering real business impact, this episode offers a practical and compelling roadmap.

Security leadership has never been just about technology, but in the age of AI, the stakes for getting it right have never been higher. George Gerchow, Chief Security Officer at Bedrock Data, brings a candid and hard-won perspective on what it takes to build high-performing security teams and lead with purpose in a rapidly evolving threat landscape.

In conversation with Clarke Rodgers, Senior Principal from the Office of the CISO at AWS, George shares how the security leader's role has shifted from basement-level blocker to boardroom-level business partner, and why approachability, vulnerability, and transparency are now core leadership traits. He explores how AI is transforming both sides of the security equation, from agentic tools that help defenders scale, to AI-powered bots lowering the barrier to entry for threat actors.

From DevSecOps to responsible AI frameworks to the case for reviving defense in depth, this episode offers security leaders a grounded and practical perspective on building teams and strategies that can move fast without compromising trust.