Behind the Growth

Kushal Munir, Executive Vice President and Head of IT at Green Shield, joins Imran Mian on Behind the Growth to unpack what it really takes to turn emerging technology, especially generative AI, into measurable business value inside complex, regulated organizations. The conversation traces Kushal’s career from early startup and IBM roles into enterprise leadership, and how shifting from purely technical execution to outcome-driven leadership reshaped the way he approaches technology, teams, and decision-making. 

Kushal walks through a real-world GenAI use case at Green Shield focused on improving member care. Rather than centering on models or tools, he explains why success came from defining business outcomes early, embedding governance and safety upfront, and integrating AI directly into existing workflows. He emphasizes that GenAI only scales when business partners are involved from day one and when solutions are designed to fit how people already work, not as standalone experiments. 

The discussion then moves into the harder parts of AI adoption: managing hype, setting realistic expectations, and navigating risk in healthcare and insurance. Kushal shares how a fast but disciplined crawl-walk-run approach, paired with early investment in an AI Centre of Excellence, helped build trust across the organization. He also explains why involving legal, privacy, security, and compliance teams as co-designers, not late-stage approvers, creates the conditions for responsible innovation without slowing momentum. 

Closing out the episode, Kushal reflects on leadership lessons shaped by past technology bets, including early cloud adoption, and shares how he cuts through AI noise today. His focus remains consistent: clarity over complexity, alignment over speed for its own sake, and anchoring every technology decision to real business value for customers and employees alike.

Kushal breaks down: 
- Why AI expectations break teams 
- When governance speeds execution 
- Making GenAI work in practice 
- Customer experience over internal hype 
- Why clarity drives momentum 

Visit mlarteka.com/podcast to learn more about each guest and read key insights for every episode.

Ilse De Bruin, Managing Partner at Trade Exchange, joins host Mudassar Malik on Behind the Growth to break down how logistics and supply chain leaders are navigating a world where volatility is no longer episodic, but constant. Drawing from real operating environments, Ilse explains why today’s disruptions, like tariffs, trade policy shifts, and capacity constraints, are forcing enterprises to rethink how decisions get made, not just how systems are built. 

The conversation reframes logistics from asset orchestration to decision orchestration. Ilse explains why owning infrastructure matters less than the ability to interpret signals, simulate trade-offs, and act quickly under pressure. She makes a clear distinction between digitization and intelligence, outlining why visibility alone doesn’t move the needle unless systems can surface impact, prioritize action, and support judgment in real time. 

At the ground level, Ilse gets practical about where customer experience breaks down. She describes how unclear ownership, fragmented handoffs, and slow exception handling force customers to chase answers. Offering a solution, she details how leading organizations reduce friction by standardizing decision thresholds, aligning teams around shared context, and embedding decision support directly into daily workflows. An example of airline disruption management shows what consequence-aware operations look like when done well. 

The episode closes with a grounded take on AI as Ilse cuts through the hype around full autonomy to explain where AI is actually creating value today, and why context, interoperability, and human judgment still matter. For enterprise leaders, Ilse offers a clear-eyed look at how to modernize complex operations without losing control, trust, or accountability. 

Ilse also shares her views on:
- Why volatility in supply chain never settles
- Owning assets is no longer the advantage
- How digitization quietly fails
- Why customers chase clarity
- The limits of AI autonomy

Visit mlarteka.com/podcast to learn more about each guest and read key insights for every episode.

Zamina Walji, VP Growth Businesses at EQ Bank, joins host Imran Mian on Behind the Growth to talk about how she builds scalable systems, accountable teams, and a culture of innovation inside one of Canada’s most forward-thinking digital banks. 

Drawing from her experience across consulting, retail, and financial services, Zamina explains how customer obsession remains her constant growth driver. She describes the balance between structure and speed, how accountability, process, and standardization enable agility rather than slow it down, and why involving risk and compliance early helps teams move faster with confidence. 

The conversation dives into how EQ Bank uses AI as a practical growth lever, applying it to customer experience, underwriting, marketing, and compliance. Zamina shares her focus on next-phase innovation—AI-powered lead generation and automation that scale responsibly without losing sight of human judgment and customer value. 

She also talks about leadership and culture: hiring people who thrive in both startup and enterprise environments, setting bold goals that unlock creativity, and maintaining clarity in decision-making. Her approach for navigating transformations offers a grounded view of how to blend innovation with operational discipline, and how to keep customer experience at the centre of it all. 

Zamina also explores: 
- When risk and compliance drive growth 
- Accountability as a path to scale 
- Where AI delivers true business value 
- Building teams for speed and depth 
- Focus as a leadership advantage 

Visit mlarteka.com/podcast to learn more about each guest and read key insights for every episode.

Jyoti Bansal, Founder & CEO of Harness, Traceable, and Unusual Ventures, joins host Mudassar Malik to discuss the ideas and lessons that have shaped each of his companies. He begins with the transition from engineer to founder, describing how a “burning passion” to solve a specific engineering challenge pushed him toward building a product, and ultimately a business. Jyoti also shares the investor question that led him to quit his job and commit to AppDynamics, along with the early rejections that forced him to refine his pitch and validate the problem.  

From there, he explains why product excellence is only half of the equation, and why matching that with a strong go-to-market is essential. Jyoti outlines how both AppDynamics and Harness expanded: first by winning a single, focused use case, then by adding new capabilities once the foundation was proven. This leads into his view that platforms work only when every module is best-of-breed, and why customers won’t accept integrated but mediocre tools.  

Jyoti and Mudassar then dig into Harness’s “startup within a startup” model. Each module operates like an internal venture with its own product leader as “startup CEO,” responsible for product quality, revenue, and customer success. Jyoti explains why Harness avoids bundling, how internal startups are funded, which signals guide new investments, and how small teams, increasingly AI-enabled, allow for faster experimentation at lower cost.  

He closes with the lessons he carried forward from earlier startups, including building impressive technology without business justification, hitting growth limits when the addressable market stays narrow, and watching strong products struggle under high sales costs. His final advice: solve a problem you care about, make sure the market cares as well, and focus relentlessly on delivering solutions that work for customers.  

Jyoti digs into topics like: 
- The investor question that changed everything
- Product greatness vs. go-to-market reality 
- Turning one use case into a platform 
- A startup-within-a-startup operating model 
- Why small teams build faster (especially with AI) 

Visit mlarteka.com/podcast to learn more about each guest and read key insights for every episode.

Mohammad Yousaf, Chief of Operations and Technology at National Mortgage Insurance Corporation, joins host Mudassar Malik to discuss how trust, alignment, and disciplined technology choices drive lasting transformation in financial services. 

Mohammad traces his path from telecom engineering into banking and mortgage finance, explaining why he moved from building technology to shaping business strategy. He highlights how lessons from team sports shaped his leadership style, where trust and alignment aren’t just cultural values but the foundation for effective execution. 

The conversation turns to transformation in operations and technology. Mohammad cautions against chasing trends and stresses the importance of the first 90 days, identifying the right processes to change, involving underwriters and processors early, and co-creating solutions. He shares a practical example of a middleware upgrade that unlocked revenue growth once reframed around speed and customer impact, showing how technology decisions gain traction when tied directly to business outcomes. 

Closing the discussion, Mohammad outlines how leaders can build cultures that adapt quickly while managing legacy resistance, and why AI adoption must stay anchored in transparency and borrower-first principles. Throughout the episode, he offers a clear, grounded guide to balancing innovation with responsibility. 

Mohammad also explores: 

• Trust and alignment in execution 
• Defining transformation beyond buzzwords 
• The first 90 days of change 
• Turning middleware upgrades into revenue 
• Why AI must stay borrower-first 

Visit mlarteka.com/podcast to learn more about each guest and read key insights for every episode.

Rohit Prabhakar, Global Head of Experiences & Capabilities at Visa, joins Mudassar Malik on Behind the Growth to explore how leaders can move from AI add-ons to AI-native marketing ecosystems that deliver hyper-personalized experiences at scale. With a career spanning technology, product, and marketing, Rohit grounds the discussion in two priorities: customer obsession and business enablement.

He outlines a two-track AI adoption model: use AI as a partner to incrementally improve existing systems, while also reimagining processes from the ground up to remove legacy constraints. At the core is unified, high-quality data, breaking down silos so machine learning and large language models can work with accuracy and relevance. 

Rohit pinpoints content creation as the long-standing blocker to personalization at scale and explains why recent advances in generative AI make on-demand, context-specific assets achievable. He distills three essential building blocks for AI-native systems: connected data, robust machine learning, and LLMs. 

The conversation closes on leadership and change management. Rohit shares how small, empowered teams can drive transformation, why human oversight must remain in the loop with AI, and what marketing leaders should prioritise as expectations, speed, and productivity demands rapidly increase.

Rohit dives into themes like: 
- Building AI-native marketing ecosystems 
- Overcoming personalization’s content bottleneck 
- Unifying customer data for scale 
- Structuring change through small wins 
- Keeping humans in the AI loop 

Visit mlarteka.com/podcast to learn more about each guest and read key insights for every episode.

Valerie McMurtry, President & CEO of Children’s Aid Foundation of Canada, joins Mudassar Malik on Behind the Growth to discuss how purpose-driven leadership, data, and partnerships are reshaping outcomes for children and youth in care. Drawing from her experience leading Canada’s largest charity in this space, Valerie explains how aligning mission, strategy, and innovation drives measurable change. 

The conversation begins with Valerie’s career journey from corporate marketing to the nonprofit sector. She shares how her upbringing shaped her focus on solving complex social issues and why she pursued work with deeper purpose. This background informs her leadership approach today, where she prioritizes long-term outcomes over short-term wins. 

Valerie then outlines the foundation’s mission: improving education, employment, mental health, and stability for young people who have experienced abuse, neglect, and abandonment. She explains why these priorities matter, the scale of the challenge in Canada, and how data guides funding decisions. She also discusses redefining success based on youth feedback, broadening it beyond traditional metrics to reflect individual progress. 

Finally, she highlights how the foundation has evolved from traditional philanthropy to testing new service models through social innovation and venture funding. Using examples like the TELUS Mobility for Good program, Valerie demonstrates how corporate partnerships can go beyond sponsorship to deliver real impact. She closes by urging business leaders to integrate social responsibility into their strategies, not as a side effort, but as a way to build stronger organizations and communities. 

Valerie dives into topics like: 
- Leaving corporate to find purpose 
- The hidden scale of child welfare 
- Why success metrics needed rewriting 
- Taking risks with social innovation 
- Building partnerships that actually work 

Visit mlarteka.com/podcast to learn more about each guest and read key insights for every episode.

Brian Shickluna, Director of Software Engineering at Staples Canada, joins Mudassar Malik on Behind the Growth to unpack the leadership principles and organizational design strategies that have shaped his career. Drawing on experience from startups to large enterprises, Brian shares what it really takes to build and scale high-performing engineering teams. 

The conversation begins with Brian’s reflections on his career path and how working across industries taught him the value of seeing beyond technical expertise. He explains why leaders need a breadth of perspective to guide teams effectively, especially as they move from hands-on roles to broader organizational influence. 

Further diving deep into the concept of “legacy mindset,” Brian explores why outdated thinking and overcomplicated processes often hold organizations back more than their tech stacks. He challenges common assumptions about transformation and describes how simplifying workflows and clarifying roles can unlock speed and agility at scale. 

Finally, Brian shares his approach to fostering a culture of experimentation, empowering teams to take ownership of their ideas, and avoiding the traps of micromanagement. He closes with practical insights on servant leadership, psychological safety, and why senior executives should prioritize structure and mindset as the foundation for sustainable growth. 

Brian unpacks topics like: 
- The silent risks of structural debt 
- Designing orgs that outlast people 
- Breaking out of micromanagement 
- Protecting engineers from alert fatigue 
- When structure beats great ideas 

Visit mlarteka.com/podcast to learn more about each guest and read key insights for every episode.

Naresh Babu, AI Technology Leader and Digital Transformation Specialist at mobileLIVE, joins Mudassar Malik to unpack the tough decisions behind core banking modernization. Together, they explore how leaders can balance customer demands, operational resilience, and the rising costs of legacy systems. 

Naresh shares how his early career as a COBOL developer shaped his understanding of resilience and why banks today must rethink their technology stacks to stay competitive. He highlights the primary drivers for modernization, including talent shortages, escalating OPEX, and shifting customer expectations, and contrasts how traditional and digital-first banks experience these pressures differently. 

The discussion dives into the pros and cons of incremental upgrades versus full system replacements, with Naresh offering practical frameworks for assessing risk tolerance and aligning modernization strategies with organizational workflows. He also warns against relying on satellite systems that create blind spots and long-term technical debt. 

Finally, Naresh examines how AI and cloud technologies are reshaping modernization efforts and why governance, KPI design, and a “customer downtime zero” mindset are critical for success. 

Naresh dives into topics like: 
- Rethinking customer expectations in banking 
- The true costs of legacy systems 
- When incremental upgrades backfire 
- AI tools in modernization strategies 
- The trap of satellite architectures 

Visit mobilelive.ca/podcast to learn more about each guest and read key insights for every episode.

Visit mlarteka.com/podcast to learn more about each guest and read key insights for every episode.

Zahid Salman, President and CEO at GreenShield, joins Imran Mian on Behind the Growth to unpack the strategy behind building Canada’s first payer-provider platform, and how a nonprofit model is enabling innovation at enterprise scale. 

Zahid opens with the personal experiences that shaped his purpose-driven approach to leadership and shares how he moved from a traditional actuarial career into healthcare transformation. He breaks down GreenShield’s initial hypothesis: that Canadians would benefit from a single organization delivering both insurance and care. He further sheds light into how they moved early, acquiring eight companies in 18 months to accelerate the shift from coverage to service delivery during the pandemic. 

He also discusses the internal and external complexities of that pivot, from winning the trust of plan members and advisors to unifying employees behind a new mission. Zahid also shares how GreenShield Ventures helps the organization look beyond its near-term roadmap, building IP and capabilities around where the market is heading, not just where it is today.

Throughout the conversation, Zahid reflects on how identity shapes leadership, why DEI remains central to GreenShield’s strategy, and what it takes to drive real impact in underserved communities. He closes with insights on AI's potential in proactive care, the growing role of private sector in delivering public healthcare, and the discipline required to scale without losing sight of purpose.

Zahid also explores: 
- Diversifying with success 
- Betting on a model before demand 
- Gaining trust as a healthcare insurer 
- Scaling impact without chasing profit 
- The role of tech in unlocking M&A value 

Visit mlarteka.com/podcast to learn more about each guest and read key insights for every episode.