CIO Classified

This episode features Cisco Sanchez, SVP and CIO at Qualcomm, who shares his business-first philosophy to technology cultivated over 25 years of IT experience. Sanchez emphasizes the importance of IT professionals loving both technology and the business, creating roadmaps that align with business goals, and utilizing frameworks like Charlie Feld's approach. 

About Cisco:

Cisco Sanchez is Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer for Qualcomm Incorporated. As the leader of Qualcomm’s global IT organization, Cisco is responsible for leading the strategic direction for IT infrastructure, Information Security & Risk Management, Cyber Resiliency, Enterprise Applications, and End User Productivity solutions. Cisco is also responsible for driving large scale Pre-Silicon, Post Silicon and Enterprise-wide digital transformation initiatives improving Qualcomm’s agility, leverage, efficiency and security. He collaborates with the executive and business unit leadership and focuses on enabling forward-looking innovative technology solutions to achieve Qualcomm’s vision and deliver strategic value.

Sanchez has more than 24 years of engineering and IT experience. Prior to Qualcomm, Sanchez spent over 15 years at FedEx Ground company. At FedEx Ground, Sanchez served as the SVP & CIO after having worked his way up the ranks, gaining expertise in architecture design, acquisition integration and enterprise IT systems. Throughout his career, Cisco has led many initiatives to ready FedEx for the next generation of business needs, processes, and data resources, including system upgrades, data center migrations, cyber security management and data analytics ecosystem development, to name a few. Cisco holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Colorado State University and a master’s degree in management information systems from Colorado Technical University.

Guest Quote:

"We love technology. I love technology. I'm a developer, but we should also love the business and understand it thoroughly. So when I first came in, my goal was to not make drastic changes, but understand the business to the best ability possible. I use a framework that looks at the models and try to understand, here's what the business does, here's how it does it, the technology underneath, here's how the enablement activity works. And I think by doing that, it gives you a different, deeper perspective of how the business is interacting and what they do.”

Timestamps:

• *(03:30) - The Role of AI in Modern IT
• *(09:10) - Frameworks for Business-First IT
• *(17:50) - Selling the Vision
• *(18:50) - AI Innovations at Qualcomm
• *(23:30) - The Convergence of IoT and AI

Links:

• Connect with Ian Faison and Cisco Sanchez on LinkedIn
• Learn more about Qualcomm
• Ready for more conversations about strategic leadership in AI, automation, and orchestration? Check out The New Automation Mindset Podcast by Workato.

Carter Busse, CIO at Workato, explores how AI is reshaping business decisions and empowering citizen developers. With over 20 years of IT leadership experience, Carter shares real-world automation examples and advice on navigating point solution vendors. He also discusses orchestrating data across systems, democratizing automation, and future trends that will revolutionize the industry. 

About Carter:

Carter Busse, CIO at Workato, is one of the leading innovators in IT/Business partnerships in automation. An accomplished IT executive, Carter brings a rich history in technology, including leading IT during three IPOs—Excite@Home, Salesforce.com, and MobileIron. Carter was hired by Marc Benioff personally as employee #70 at Salesforce. Over the years, he has developed a specialty in constructing highly effective, collaborative teams (90+), executing business strategies, and driving revenue growth while reducing operating costs. Carter is a sought-after advisor of IT leaders around the country, a Bay Area Orbie CIO Award winner, and listed on the Forbes CIO Next list of the top 50 CIOs in the United States.

Guest Quote:
“Architecture is key. Very key. So, you set up the right infrastructure in a secure place to let people iterate in a safe place—that takes a lot of architecture. You don't want stuff being put into production that these guys built and break. Who gets the first call? It's IT.  So, I really feel like our role is changing from doing more building and more enabling and more architecture.”

Timestamps:

• *(00:00) - Impact of AI on business decisions
• *(04:15) - Empowering citizen developers
• *(07:20) - Real-world automation examples
• *(20:05) - Navigating point solution vendors
• *(23:35) - Democratizing automation with training and metrics
• *(31:15) - Future trends and CIO secrets

Links:

• Connect with Ian Faison and Carter Busse on LinkedIn
• Learn more about Workato 
• Catch up on past episodes featuring conversations between leading CIOs

In this episode, Shelia Anderson, CIO at Aflac, discusses how the company is using AI to modernize while handling legacy systems. Shelia highlights key initiatives such as digital claims processing, establishing an AI center of excellence, and transforming internal operations. She also emphasizes the importance of aligning business goals, maintaining ethical AI practices, and developing the workforce as Aflac integrates new technologies.

About Shelia:

Shelia Anderson is an information technology executive with extensive Fortune 100 CIO, services, and consulting experience, particularly in Financial Services and Insurance. Partnering with C-level stakeholders, she drives business change and digitally enables organizations through multi-million dollar technology strategies, agile development, and support initiatives for applications and infrastructure. She is well-versed in a range of technologies, from legacy systems to cloud, AI, and LLMs, focusing on maturing organizations through cloud migration, agile transformation, and digital enablement. With a significant passion and proven results in mentoring and developing talent in STEM, supporting women in technology, and building exceptional teams, Shelia has demonstrated organizational leadership over 2000+ employees across multiple global locations and managed budgets exceeding $600 million.

Shelia has received multiple honors and recognitions for her leadership and contributions to the IT field, including the 2023 and 2024 Top 100 Women in FinTech, the 2021 Boston CIO of the Year SuperGlobal Orbie Award, the 2018 Elite Women in Insurance recognition, and the Distinguished Engineering Alumni Award.

Guest Quote:

“[When it comes to AI] start with your business. Simple, really. Understand your business, your business challenges, and your business opportunities. Always start with ‘why’ and anything that you deliver from there, the closer you can tie the work that you're doing to the business value, the more successful both you and your company will be at the end of the day.”

Timestamps:

*(01:40) - Aflac’s AI Journey

*(03:55) - AI at Scale: Transforming Aflac

*(09:00) - Building Automation and Innovation into Culture 

*(26:15) - Leadership Insights and Advice

*(31:15) - Future Trends and Strategies

Links:

• Connect with Ian Faison and Shelia Anderson on LinkedIn
• Learn more about Aflac's services
• Check out the My Special Aflac Duck® mentioned in this episode
• Catch up on past episodes featuring conversations between leading CIOs

Can't get enough AI and automation content? Listen to The New Automation Mindset podcast presented by Workato.

Our Sponsor:
Workato® makes the creation and implementation of automations 10X faster than traditional platforms. As the leader in AI-powered enterprise automation, Workato enables enterprises to automate their business processes across the organization by integrating their applications, data, and experiences. Designed with best-in-class security and governance, scalability, performance, and availability, our low-code, no-code platform makes it easy for IT and business teams to integrate their applications and automate their processes, drawing from thousands of automation “recipes” built by the Workato community.

With Workato's democratized approach to automation and integration, business technologists are empowered to fuel their organization’s digital transformation. Workato® is trusted by over 17,000 of the world's top brands, including Broadcom, Intuit, and Box.

Just like the role of the CIO has transitioned from a back-office data manager to a business enabler, how CIOs build and maintain internal and external partnerships has also greatly evolved. In this episode, Madlin Sadler, COO of the International Rescue Committee, and Colleen Berube, CIO and SVP of Operations at Zendesk, draw insights from their own collaboration to talk about the many ways partnerships can be powerful—from bringing in new perspectives to providing resources and solutions—as well as share their advice on building strategic partnerships for today's CIO.

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Quotes

“The need to have great partnerships with people who are helping us push our thinking has been more critical than ever… particularly for us, meaning that we transform and innovate in a way that I don't think we could if we didn't know what was out there and what the world was capable of achieving with us. Partnerships for us are really pushing us to the next level.” - Madlin Sadler, COO of the International Rescue Committee

“Part of the value that you can bring as a technology leader is really not about the technology at all—it's about having the visibility to see what's happening in different parts of the business, and you can bring those things together and influence different thinking by looking more holistically at what could be happening in the company.” - Colleen Berube, CIO and SVP of Operations, Zendesk

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Time Stamps:

* (1:46) Meet Madlin and Colleen, and learn about their roles

* (6:38) How the role of CIO has evolved to include operations

* (11:21) Emphasizing productivity in the hybrid workplace

* (16:46) Why internal and external partnerships are important for success 

* (23:27) Secrets every CIO and exec should know

* (24:53) Madlin and Colleen ask each other questions

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Sponsor

This podcast is brought to you by Asana. Asana is a leading work management platform that empowers teams to orchestrate their work — from daily tasks to big strategic initiatives — all in one place. By enabling the world’s teams to work together effortlessly, Asana helps organizations of all sizes and industries achieve their goals, faster. Learn more at Asana.com.

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Links

• Connect with Ian on LinkedIn
• Connect with Madlin on LinkedIn
• Connect with Colleen on LinkedIn
• Learn more about the International Rescue Committee
• Learn more about Zendesk
• Learn more about Caspian Studios

Spending money is easy when investment opportunities are everywhere, but it’s harder to predict if something is worth the cost. In this episode, IT leaders from the public and private sectors tell us about the times their investments paid off—from new technology to the employee experience. You’ll hear advice from Tim Chester, VP of IT and CIO at the University of Georgia, and Carrie Rasmussen, CIO at Ceridian, on how to keep pace with the increasing demand for digital transformation, and much more.

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Quotes

“Frankly, it’s time to invest… AI machine learning and science hires are key, and we're investing in our high-performance computing to support faculty in those important fields.” - Tim Chester, VP of IT, CIO, at the University of Georgia

“We do have to put certain initiatives on the back burner, but more importantly, we are being asked how do we take inefficiencies and repurpose them so that it's not a budget cut, but a reallocation of funds through proper harvesting.” - Carrie Rasmussen, CIO at Ceridian

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Time Stamps:

* (1:46) Meet Tim and Carrie, and learn about their roles

* (5:35) How to priortize spending and when to reallocate funds

* (20:54) Peer leadership advice for discussing budgets

* (23:32) Investing in human capital with DEI efforts

* (35:40) Tim and Carrie ask each other questions

* (35:40) Secrets every CIO should know

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Sponsor

This podcast is brought to you by Asana. Asana is a leading work management platform that empowers teams to orchestrate their work — from daily tasks to big strategic initiatives — all in one place. By enabling the world’s teams to work together effortlessly, Asana helps organizations of all sizes and industries achieve their goals, faster. Learn more at Asana.com.

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Links

• Connect with Ian on LinkedIn
• Connect with Tim on LinkedIn
• Connect with Carrie on LinkedIn
• Learn more about the University of Georgia
• Learn more about Ceridian
• Learn more about Caspian Studios

The competition to attract and retain talent remains fierce, and today’s leading CIOs understand that creating an employee experience model should be just as high of a priority as technology and innovation. In this episode, we’ve compiled advice from CIOs and technology leaders who are creating employee-centric cultures at their companies, and examine strategies used by successful organizations—from VMware to the Boston Red Sox—that keep employees engaged, productive, and happy.

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Quotes

“The key is to offload work that doesn't require synchronous co-creation to the machine. Find ways to make that work readable, visible, doable, and extensible by the machine.” - Wendy Pfeiffer, CIO, Nutanix 

“You need to have a defined workflow that is the map of how work gets done across the organizations. Then, have some monitoring on them to make sure that you're continually reflecting and speeding yourselves up.” - Alex Hood, CPO, Asana

“We've done a few things to mix it up a bit in town halls. For example, we've had people on the team kick off the meeting. We've had some people singing—some people play the guitar. We've even had some people singing and playing guitar at the same time. We always try to mix it up and have something interesting upfront.” - David Vidoni, VP of IT, Pegasystems 

“There's a tendency to throw human capital at problems. We're looking at ways where we can bring a lot more automation and hopefully, a lot more efficiency to how their particular jobs operate. This way, people can be better informed and able to leverage data that they've never had before—really make decisions that otherwise were historically time-consuming.” - Brian Shield, SVP and CTO, Boston Redsox.

“If we can fundamentally change the culture and get into a place where people feel genuinely and sincerely delighted, surprised, and amazed by the experience of using technology, they will be more productive. They will feel good about who they work with and what they're doing.” - Jason Conyard, SVP and CIO, VMWare

“We've been really focused on the onboarding experience because so many people boarded during the pandemic. We've been trying to keep our game up by making it very simple and seamless, especially when you're doing it from a remote perspective.” - Ginna Raahauge, EVP and CIO, Zayo Group

“We get employees involved in the decision-making process. We want them to have a say in which tool, vendor, and features they like… We believe technology is now a utility and everybody needs to participate in the decision-making process.” - Prasad Ramakrishnan, SVP of IT and CIO, Freshworks

“We can't just assume people coming in know how to be a technologist, or know the basics of tackling technology. We have to create a great employee experience before they start, the day they start, and all the way through.” - Carter Busse, CIO, Workato

“Continuously learning about new technologies or new ways of working… that creates a resilient culture by default.” - Apratim Purakayastha, CTO, SkillSoft and SumTotal

“If your team is happy and productive, that customer experience will resonate and other people in the organization will look to IT to help solve their problems rather than a potential blocker to getting things done.” - Johan Dowdy, Global Head of IT, Asana

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Time Stamps:

* (1:45) Why it’s important to create less work about work

* (8:05) Creative solutions to increase employee engagement

* (11:50) Ideas for optimizing the employee onboarding process

* (16:57) How to make employees feel like their voices are heard

* (21:36) How to build resilience into the workplace culture 

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Sponsor

This podcast is brought to you by Asana. Asana is a leading work management platform that empowers teams to orchestrate their work — from daily tasks to big strategic initiatives — all in one place. By enabling the world’s teams to work together effortlessly, Asana helps organizations of all sizes and industries achieve their goals, faster. Learn more at Asana.com.

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Links

• Connect with Ian on LinkedIn
• Learn more about Caspian Studios

Key partnerships between CIOs and their internal departments are evolving rapidly, creating new ways of working and opening up new revenue streams. In this episode, we talk to Adam Glick, CISO at SimpliSafe, and Marc Linster, CTO at EDB, about where they see relationships with CIOs going in the future and ask them their secrets for success when it comes to cloud infrastructure, data security, and more. 

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Quotes

“Where you're going to see a big separation between organizations is how they're wielding technology, so the CIO has a really large task. They're most successful when they're thinking about the needs of the business and the employee experience.” - Adam Glick, CISO, SimpliSafe

“I see more and more the CIO becoming a facilitator of information. Yes, IT has to be managed in the right way securely, but it has to be accessible – it has to be usable.” - Marc Linster, CTO, EDB

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Time Stamps:

* (1:47) Meet our guests, Marc & Adam

* (6:40) How to strategize for creating cloud infrastructure 

* (9:30) Cloud security best practices for CIOs

* (14:15) The CIOs role in strengthening data security

* (18:35) How CIOs can help CTOs turn volumes of data into actionable insights

* (20:42) What does the future role of the CIO look like?

* (23:25) Working with other departments to improve the employee experience

* (29:51)  Projects on the horizon for EDB and SimpliSafe

* (33:06) Marc and Adam ask each other questions

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Sponsor

This podcast is brought to you by Asana. Asana is a leading work management platform that empowers teams to orchestrate their work — from daily tasks to big strategic initiatives — all in one place. By enabling the world’s teams to work together effortlessly, Asana helps organizations of all sizes and industries achieve their goals, faster. Learn more at Asana.com.

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Links

• Connect with Adam on LinkedIn
• Connect with Marc on LinkedIn
• Learn more about SimpliSafe
• Learn more about EDB

The impact of today’s economic climate is felt everywhere – even in the CIO’s office. In this episode, we ask two leading CIOs how they save money on IT and talent while still producing results. You’ll hear from Jason Conyard, CIO at VMware, and Ginna Raahauge, EVP & CIO of Digital Transformation at Zayo Group, who discuss how to keep attrition in check and streamline and optimize your organizational costs, plus much more.

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Quotes

“We're seeing interest rate changes. There are concerns about the availability of fuel and the impact of the cost of power around the world. I think that's going to probably color the 2nd half of the year and almost certainly into next year as well. Now, some people of course will look at that and they'll be concerned… but I also recognize that this presents an opportunity for companies to cut some of the sandbags that have been weighing down the balloon as organizations have grown. They've probably focused on transforming and not necessarily turning things off, or optimizing business processes. As we see that challenge ahead, it also creates that opportunity for us to streamline and optimize.” - Jason Conyard, CIO at VMware

“Just because I can technically solve your problem doesn't mean I should solve it with technology. I think this does go back to the old adage of systems, processes, and data. I think if we give more of our users, customers, and partners access to data insights, they can make different decisions around things. Then sometimes, you can even avoid some of the process of reengineering that takes a long time and a lot of energy, and it isn't even a system or a process that you need.” - Ginna Raahauge, EVP & CIO of Digital Transformation at Zayo Group

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Time Stamps:

* (1:51) Meet our guests, Jason & Ginna

* (4:07) New economic challenges facing CIOs in 2022

* (11:04) Keeping attrition in check by improving the employee experience

* (17:04) When should I use technology to improve employee productivity?

* (21:53) Projects on the horizon for VMware and Zayo Group

* (28:03) Secrets CIOs should know 

* (32:25) Lessons CIOs can learn from working in a startup  

* (37:11) Jason and Ginna ask each other questions

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Sponsor

This podcast is brought to you by Asana. Asana is a leading work management platform that empowers teams to orchestrate their work — from daily tasks to big strategic initiatives — all in one place. By enabling the world’s teams to work together effortlessly, Asana helps organizations of all sizes and industries achieve their goals, faster. Learn more at Asana.com.

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Links

• Connect with Jason on LinkedIn
• Connect with Ginna on LinkedIn
• Learn more about VMware
• Learn more about Zayo Group

In this episode, Darren Person, Global CIO at The NPD Group, and Max Chan, CIO at Avnet, share their insights about the use of AI in enterprise industries and reveal how to reap its benefits without breaking the bank. They address knowing when it is time to introduce AI, how to approach boards about it, how to leverage AI to drive employee experience and expand your business, and much more.

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Quotes

“You cannot do AI or machine learning without good data. Don't ever think that AI is this black box that magically is going to solve all your problems. You have to go through the hard work, the iterations, the training of the models, testing the algorithm. Don't forget the importance that data is for this journey because without it, there's really no way to be successful and scale for your organization.” - Max Chan, CIO at Avnet

“Data tells a story. It's our job to figure out what story that data tells, and then how to make sure that we are telling the right story with it. Like anything in statistics, you can use data in a variety of different ways. It’s about the quality of the data that really drives that story. All these tools will help you get there, but at the end of the day, you still need to make sure that the story that you tell is accurate, to the point, and it's understandable within the data as well.” - Darren Person, Global CIO at The NPD Group

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Time Stamps:

* (1:53) Meet our guests, Max and Darren

* (3:33) The current state of AI for enterprise B2B and B2C companies

* (13:12) How to scale AI in your company

* (21:40) The approach boards should take toward AI

* (28:01) How to leverage AI to drive employee experience 

* (32:37) Secrets CIOs should know about data

* (31:59) Max and Darren ask each other questions

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Sponsor

This podcast is brought to you by Asana. Asana is a leading work management platform that empowers teams to orchestrate their work — from daily tasks to big strategic initiatives — all in one place. By enabling the world’s teams to work together effortlessly, Asana helps organizations of all sizes and industries achieve their goals, faster. Learn more at Asana.com.

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Links

• Connect with Max on LinkedIn
• Connect with Darren on LinkedIn
• Learn more about The NPD Group
• Learn more about Avnet

Today’s modern CIO is expected to do much more than just keep the lights on and make sure you can log in to your system. Join Sanjay Macwan, CIO and CISO at Vonage, and Harry Temkin, CIO at DriveWealth, as they discuss their evolving roles before revealing what makes an effective leadership model, including the main drivers behind employee productivity and retention.

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Quotes

“CIOs should obsess about this every day: how do we make sure that our employees and company are able to do their job better? … So one of the things that I really obsess about is self-serve and automation. How do I create self-serve models through automation so that if you're a salesperson, he or she is able to get things done in a self-serve model and they don't have to ask for it on a regular basis?” - Sanjay Macwan, CIO and CISO at Vonage

“From a retention standpoint, an employee that feels empowered and has the ability to make decisions and impact strategy is typically one that you keep for a very long time and feels very satisfied. They feel like they actually own something.” - Harry Temkin, CIO at DriveWealth 

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Time Stamps:

* (2:01) Sanjay & Hary share more about their respective roles

* (4:32) The next big projects coming out of Vonage and DriveWealth

* (8:22) What drives employee retention (with examples) 

* (15:37) How automation can drive employee productivity

* (22:17) How a customer-centric culture can influence innovation 

* (29:47) The evolving responsibilities of the modern CIO

* (32:31) Sanjay and Harry ask each other questions

* (38:40) Secrets more CIOs should know 

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Sponsor

This podcast is brought to you by Asana. Asana is a leading work management platform that empowers teams to orchestrate their work — from daily tasks to big strategic initiatives — all in one place. By enabling the world’s teams to work together effortlessly, Asana helps organizations of all sizes and industries achieve their goals, faster. Learn more at Asana.com.

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Links

• Connect with Sanjay on LinkedIn
• Connect with Harry on LinkedIn
• Learn more about Vonage
• Learn more about DriveWealth