CDO Magazine Podcast Series

Samantha Fletcher, Head of National Security Programs at AWS, tells Dr. Adita Karkera, Chief Data Officer, Government and Public at Deloitte, what responsible agentic AI requires in national security: bounded autonomy, a clear audit trail and human authority over decisions with irreversible consequences. Fletcher also explains why agencies should get the data house in order now and how edge processing turns ISR analysis from hours into seconds.

How can national security agencies accelerate AI adoption while working with classified data and evolving mission requirements? Samantha Fletcher, Head of National Security Programs at AWS, discusses secure cloud infrastructure, interoperable intelligence data, and workforce readiness with Dr. Adita Karkera, Chief Data Officer for Government and Public Services at Deloitte.

Shebani Baweja, Group Chief Data Officer at Standard Chartered, speaks with Bryan Lee, Group Head of Data at United Overseas Bank, about why governance, agility and innovation reinforce each other when they are designed well. Baweja also maps how the CDO role is moving from risk and control leader to strategic enabler as AI becomes embedded across the bank.

Beth Hiatt explains why AI initiatives need clear business priorities and why governance programs can lose traction when organizational maturity is overlooked. Jessie Smith, Chief Product Officer at Ataccama, explores how data leaders can assess readiness, adjust execution, and connect AI use cases to measurable business outcomes.

Legacy technology architectures were not designed for artificial intelligence, making tail-end data reviews a major bottleneck for scaling enterprise AI. In this interview, Shebani Baweja, Group Chief Data Officer at Standard Chartered, speaks with Bryan Lee, Group Head of Data at United Overseas Bank, about embedding data controls directly into development pipelines. Discover how automating data governance and building trusted data products accelerates enterprise innovation.

How can government agencies prepare data for advanced analytics and AI while maintaining quality, governance, privacy, and public trust?

Neil Cooke, Chief Data Officer at the State of Texas, discusses the challenge with Dr. Adita Karkera, Chief Data Officer, Government and Public at Deloitte, including agency data maturity assessments, responsible AI practices, and practical data literacy.

Kyle DuPont, Founder and CEO of DataXray, speaks with CDO Magazine Editorial Board Member Maribeth Achterberg, that most enterprise AI strategies stop at a stack of Copilot licenses with no way to measure return. DuPont breaks down why a typical enterprise project takes roughly eighteen months to move from proposal to a budgeted rollout, and argues that real safeguards start with knowing exactly where sensitive data, especially within unstructured files, lives.

Beth Hiatt, SVP of Product Management, Data Governance and Responsible AI, tells Jessie Smith, Chief Product Officer at Ataccama, that even flawless data quality cannot earn AI trust without the right business context. Hiatt also walks through why data stewardship is shifting away from manual human review and toward agents that handle metadata, quality checks and classification on their own.

Shebani Baweja, Group Chief Data Officer at Standard Chartered, tells Bryan Lee, Group Head of Data at United Overseas Bank, that scaling AI across a bank is an enterprise challenge rather than a technology one. Baweja explains why data governance has shifted from a defensive compliance function into a source of competitive advantage, and names three enablers essential to scaling AI safely: data access, data quality and data risk management.

Neil Cooke, Chief Data Officer for the State of Texas, tells Dr. Adita Karkera, Chief Data Officer, Government and Public at Deloitte, that leading a statewide data program depends less on technology and more on governance, communication and trust. Cooke walks through the shift into the interim CDO role and the questions that still guide the office today: what matters most, how it is measured, where the data lives, and who can be trusted to own it.