Innovation Heroes

A decade of better tools. Better services. Better data. And yet the same statistic keeps showing up: 25-30% of enterprise technology spend is wasted. Why can't anyone move the needle?

Shane Cronin, Head of ITAM & FinOps Services at SHI International, breaks down why traditional approaches to IT asset management have stalled—and what it actually takes to turn savings reports into realized value. From the "Rubik's Cube effect" of enterprise dependencies to the cultural shift from cost-cutting to ROI storytelling, Shane offers a refreshingly blunt take on what's broken and how to fix it.

In this episode, you'll learn:

About the Guest: Shane Cronin leads ITAM and FinOps Services at SHI International, helping enterprises rethink technology governance in an AI-driven world. Shane has worked with hundreds of organizations to move beyond reactive audit defense toward proactive value realization.

#ITAM #FinOps #ITLeadership #CIO #TechnologyGovernance #CostOptimization #EnterpriseIT #AISpending #Innovation

Everyone’s talking about AI that writes code and answers questions. But what happens when AI has to operate in the physical world, where mistakes don’t just generate weird sentences, they have real consequences?

On this episode of Innovation Heroes, host Ed McNamara sits down with Tete Xiao, VP of Engineering and AI at Bot Auto, to explore what it actually takes to deploy AI that touches the real world. Tete helped create Meta’s Segment Anything model—a breakthrough that changed how machines understand images—and now he’s applying a decade of cutting-edge research to one of AI’s hardest challenges: making trucks drive themselves safely on U.S. highways.

Key takeaways:

For anyone thinking about AI in manufacturing, healthcare, logistics, or security, this conversation is essential listening.

The encryption protecting your most sensitive data has as an expiration date. Nation-states are harvesting encrypted traffic right now, stockpiling it until quantum computers become powerful enough to crack it in seconds.

In this episode, Ed McNamara sits down with Brad Bowers, SHI's Lead Field Chief Information Security Officer, who breaks down the quantum cryptography threat in terms IT leaders can actually act on. Brad brings over 20 years of security leadership experience from the Federal Reserve, FBI, AT&T, and Verizon to explain what's really happening—and what you need to do about it.

Key takeaways:

Whether you're defending critical infrastructure or planning ahead for retail operations, this is the quantum readiness roadmap you need. The threat isn't coming—it's already here.

Listen now to understand why waiting until 2029 means you're already too late.

#PostQuantumCryptography #Cybersecurity #QuantumComputing #CryptoAgility #InformationSecurity #ITLeadership #DigitalTransformation #SHI #InnovationHeroes

About the Guest:

Brad Bowers is Lead Field Chief Information Security Officer – Global at SHI International, with over 20 years of security leadership experience including work with the Federal Reserve, FBI, AT&T, and Verizon. Certifications: CISSP, GCIA, GCIH, GCFA, OSCP.

Connect with SHI:

AI ambition is colliding with physical reality.

As data centers push from 20-kilowatt racks to 120-kilowatt systems—with megawatt-per-rack infrastructure on the horizon—the limits of power and cooling have become impossible to ignore.

In this episode of Innovation Heroes, Ed McNamara explores the collision between AI ambition and energy reality with two guides who see the problem from opposite ends of the timeline.

Brian Smith of Idaho National Laboratory takes us inside the nuclear renaissance, where small modular reactors are being designed to deliver massive, carbon-free power on dramatically shorter timelines—"like building airplanes, not airports."

Meanwhile, Ryan Hotchkin of SHI International brings the conversation back to today's constraints: liquid cooling becoming mandatory, power capacity maxed out, and cloud costs rising for everyone.

Together, they map what IT leaders need to understand now—and what's coming next—if AI initiatives are going to scale instead of stall.

Key Takeaways:

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or watch on YouTube shi.com/heroes

#AI #DataCenter #NuclearEnergy #ITInfrastructure #Innovation

Related Resources:

State and local governments are under pressure to deliver modern services, but budgets, staffing shortages, and long procurement cycles make innovation feel impossible. In this episode of Innovation Heroes, host Ed McNamara talks with three leaders proving that AI-powered Smart Cities aren’t a futuristic concept. They’re happening now.

SHI’s Jack Hogan and Denise Collison join NVIDIA’s Michael Sherwood to unpack how a 2,500-person mountain town deployed wildfire detection, accessibility compliance automation, traffic intelligence, and a digital AI ambassador in just four months. They reveal how SHI’s “Imagine, Experiment, Adopt” methodology helps governments move from reactive to proactive decision-making, and why interoperability, ecosystem partnerships, and accelerated AI infrastructure are reshaping what’s possible.

Key Takeaways

Guests:

This episode is sponsored by NVIDIA.

As AI initiatives move from experimentation to production, CIOs and technical leaders struggle with AI infrastructure scalability, LLM model governance, and ROI validation.

Discover how SHI and NVIDIA's integrated solutions address these challenges head-on: www.shi.com/partners/nvidia

Enterprises are spending thousands — sometimes millions — on AI productivity tools. But for many, the big question remains: Are we getting what we paid for?

In this episode of Innovation Heroes, SHI's Chief of Staff to the CIO, Brooke Pierantoni, shares how SHI turned Microsoft Copilot and Copilot Chat into a measurable win: $1.4M in monthly productivity savings and a fully secured enterprise rollout completed in just six months.

Brooke breaks down the decisions that mattered most, from locking down data governance, to building a platform-first adoption model that tripled usage in 30 days. She also explains the real risks of shadow AI, why Copilot only works when your data house is in order, and how SHI is preparing to push adoption beyond 70% in the next 12–18 months.

Key Takeaways:

Featuring: Brooke Pierantoni, Chief of Staff to the CIO, SHI International

This episode of Innovation Heroes is brought to you by Microsoft and SHI.

Most chatbots fall short—slow responses, confusing menus, and frustrated users who abandon the experience. But what if you could replace that with a lifelike, multilingual Digital AI Ambassador — and prove it works in just six weeks?

In this episode, host Ed McNamara sits down with SHI’s Jack Hogan and HPE’s Robin Braun to break down how SHI and HPE built Digital Humans that are fast, secure, and genuinely engaging. They discuss why chatbots fail, how guardrails and ultra-low latency reshape customer interactions, and how SHI’s Imagine–Experiment–Adopt framework accelerates AI adoption.

Listeners will learn:

Featuring:

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This episode of Innovation Heroes is brought to you by HPE. If you're in retail, healthcare, financial services, or public sector and you're under pressure to deploy AI that actually works, reach out. Our team can get you production-ready Digital Humans in six weeks, not eighteen months.

>>> Book your executive review: shi.com/digitalhuman 

While everyone debates whether AI is overhyped, Intel's Stacey Shulman argues we're dramatically underhyping it—and our linear thinking is making us dangerously unprepared. AI capabilities are doubling every six months, four times faster than Moore's Law, yet most organizations are still trying to build "AI infrastructure" instead of resilient infrastructure that can evolve with technology moving faster than human imagination. Shulman breaks down why the Intel-Nvidia partnership represents a seismic shift, why we need HR systems for AI agents, and why Star Trek optimism—not Black Mirror dystopia—should guide our path forward.

Learn more about SHI's AI solutions and how our AI & Cyber Lab can help you prototype and test before you commit at SHI.com/AI

Watch Innovation Heroes on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@SHICorporation

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Before joining Intel in 2017 as Chief Innovation Officer for retail solutions, Shulman held executive roles at Levi Strauss & Co. and American Apparel, where she was named Innovative Industry CIO of the Year for her groundbreaking work in store-focused technology. This is her sixth appearance on Innovation Heroes.

What happens when IT leaders have to choose between safety and innovation? In New Jersey, one teacher proved that the biggest obstacles to transformation often come from inside our own departments. 

Chris Aviles started Garden State eSports during COVID with borrowed laptops and a spreadsheet. Today, it's the largest scholastic eSports league in the country, serving 12,000 students across 400+ schools—and it just became New Jersey's first new varsity activity in 20 years. 

In this episode, you'll discover: 

Chris Aviles, Founder of Garden State eSports, joins host Ed McNamara along with SHI's Jeff Prudente to reveal how this movement is opening doors for students who never participated in school activities before—including 25% with IEPs or autism spectrum diagnoses. 

Guest: Chris Aviles, Founder & Executive Director, Garden State eSports 

Learn more: shi.com/esports

#eSports #EdTech #Innovation #DigitalTransformation #STEMEducation #InclusiveEducation #SchoolTechnology #GamingForGood 

Show Notes & Resources 

Organizations & Programs: 

Resources for Schools: 

Timeline: 

Guest Bios: Chris Aviles is a 17-year teaching veteran and founder of Garden State eSports, which has grown from 100 schools during COVID to become the largest scholastic eSports league in the United States. Under his leadership, New Jersey became the first state to recognize eSports as an official varsity activity. 

Jeff Prudente is SHI International's Mobility Manager for Intel and Windows devices. A lifelong gamer and former competitive Halo player, Jeff helped pioneer SHI's eSports education initiative and has been instrumental in bringing programs to school districts nationwide—from 5-computer setups to hundred-workstation arenas. 

A Hong Kong employee sits through what seems like a routine video call with colleagues and the CFO. Everything looks normal. Then comes the urgent wire transfer request. $25 million later, the horrifying truth emerges: every face on that call was fake, generated by AI.

This Cybersecurity Awareness Month, host Ed McNamara sits down with Erich Kron, Security Awareness Advocate at KnowBe4, to unpack one of the most sophisticated cyber heists in history. We'll explore how cybercriminals have industrialized deception, the psychology behind why we fall for these scams, and what organizations can do to fight back against the rise of "Cybercrime Inc."

Key Takeaways:

Guest: Erich Kron, Security Awareness Advocate, KnowBe4

This episode is brought to you by KnowBe4. Ready to move beyond cybersecurity awareness to actually reducing human risk? Visit shi.com/partners/knowbe4 to learn how AI is transforming human risk management.

#Cybersecurity #Deepfakes #HumanRisk #AI #SocialEngineering #InnovationHeroes

Show Notes & Resources

Learn More About Erich Kron

$25 Million Deepfake Zoom Scam - News Coverage

Additional Context