AI is transforming the way critical infrastructure organizations approach resilience, disaster recovery, and operational efficiency. In this episode of Stay Cognizant, host Pamela is joined by co-host Gisela Dauer (Associate Director of Corporate Communications at Cognizant) and guest Damian Bunyan (CIO of Uniper) to explore how AI helped a global energy company strengthen its IT foundation and rethink its approach to disaster recovery.

Damian shares how Uniper's cloud-first strategy created the ideal launchpad for AI innovation—including an MVP developed with Cognizant that intelligently assesses and improves disaster recovery plans. He also explains why being “customer zero” for AI initiatives has helped drive broader organizational buy-in and demonstrates how AI can enable people to do their best work.

Discussed in this episode:

• How Uniper replaced Excel-based tracking with an AI agent to evaluate and enhance disaster recovery plans
• Why Damian chose to be a “customer zero” for AI—and how it’s accelerating enterprise-wide adoption
• The impact of simplifying AI implementation with real-time, grounded models
• Expanding the use case: from disaster recovery to procurement, knowledge management, and beyond