536: Maryfran Johnson, the host of CIO Leadership Live on CIO.com has had a non-traditional pathway to covering chief information officers. In this interview, we discuss why technology leaders should not look to align with the business but instead look to accelerate it and how CIOs are no longer fighting for a seat at the leadership table, but working towards keeping that seat. We also discuss Maryfran’s take on CIO board leadership, including some common factors of CIOs who make it onto boards. She also covers the benefits to companies who have CIOs on their boards, lessons CIOs can take from a board back into their home organization, her advice for CIOs looking to join boards, among a variety of other topics.

535: S&P Global EVP & Global CIO Swamy Kocherlakota discusses 

Some of the foundational elements of the company's strategic roadmap

How the company is increasing the technology IQ of its employees

The company's multi-pronged approach to innovation 

The venture capital fund inside the company

Steps the company has taken over the past few years that helped prepare it for the pandemic

How the company has been able to serve its customers better during the pandemic

Among a variety of other topics.

534: National Grid Group Chief Information & Digital Officer Andi Karaboutis discusses 

The near- and long-term considerations when hiring new talent

National Grid’s omnichannel approach to training

The importance of being agile and focusing on consumer needs rather than product life cycles

The ways the company has utilized their external partnerships to create better energy solutions

Among a variety of other topics.

Watch on YouTube:

https://youtu.be/GSS06u4KP2M

533: GAP chief information officer and head of strategy Sally Gilligan discusses 

The modernization journey Gap's technology team has been on

How Sally leverages her strategy, finance, and supply chain backgrounds in her role

The interplay between the company's enterprise, digital, and data strategies

Several aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic, such as how it forced agile and innovative thinking, how it accelerated several trends that were on the roadmap, some of the transformations the company made that helped prepare it for the pandemic, and some of the indelible marks of the pandemic that Sally believes will remain once we return to a new normal. 

The benefits of having a diversity of talent in technology

The state of the union of women in technology

The importance of having a pipeline and role models for under-represented groups in technology

Among a variety of other topics.

532: In this interview, we dive into several of the book’s themes, including People and Technology. Cynthia shares insight into how she motivates her team, and how robotic process automation can boost morale by automating repetitive tasks. We also discuss Adobe’s journey to become a cloud-native company, the ways in which enterprise architecture can impact culture, and a variety of other topics. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mioJeEJbjNs&feature=youtu.be

 

531: SYKES chief strategy & marketing officer Ian Barkin discusses

How SYKES leverages technology inside the company

How SYKES uses data to deeply understand the buyer and design the best solutions for them

Some of the ways in which companies are mismanaging customer experience management

Why Ian believes RPA will be a foundation to organizational transformation for years to come

The major differences between RPA and AI/ML

The dangers of using intelligent automation capabilities, such as AI, too soon

Ian's career path from strategy consulting, to business process outsourcing, to founding Symphony Ventures, to the C-suite of SYKES

530: Northwestern Mutual CIO Neal Sample discusses

How being a mutual company, as opposed to a public company, allows IT and the broader organization to think with a longer-term perspective in mind and how that impacted the firm’s actions during the pandemic

The difference the company is making in local communities through initiatives such as Outsource to America and Hi, Tech

Why Neal decided to join Northwestern Mutual as CIO after having been promoted out of that role to the COO post at Express Scripts

How the CIO role has evolved to become an immensely influential role

How being a former national champion debater has served him well in business

How COVID and changing consumer expectations have massively accelerated the pace of business change

Why talent mobility is going to have a significant impact going forward

529: FINRA SVP & CIO Steve Randich dives into several of the book’s themes, including Process, Technology, and Ecosystems. Steve discusses some of the sweeping changes he has made across his career, such as how he has inverted FINRA's entire IT organization to be platform-oriented. Steve also shares best practices related to cloud computing based on the journeys he has led at NASDAQ and FINRA, his perspective on IT’s role in the business, among a variety of other topics.

 

https://youtu.be/gQaCSQWp_Us

528: Neeva co-founder Sridhar Ramaswamy discusses

Some of the tough questions and interesting business challenges Sridhar faced during his time at Google

The consequences of an all growth at all costs mentality

Sridhar's take on the Justice Department's antitrust lawsuit facing Google

Sridhar's experience at Greylock and why he joined the firm as an investor

The genesis story of Neeva

Why he felt the time was right to leave Google and start Neeva

The importance of having a great co-founder when starting a company

Why a customer first model lends itself much better to monetizing content on the web

Learn more about Neeva at http://neeva.com/

527: Synchrony Financial Chief Information Officer Carol Juel discusses 

Two strategic decisions IT made to rebuild its technology at the outset of Synchrony 

Carol's talent strategy, including why she looked for individuals who wanted to stay beyond the Synchrony’s IPO and were willing to learn

How health and safety has become a requirement of digital transformations

The company's three pronged AI approach around machine learning, intelligent virtual assistants, and RPA

How the company uses machine learning models to better understand and detect fraud sooner

The COVID-19 pandemic, including three steps the company took that helped it move quickly once the pandemic struck

The massive technology transformation the company undertook to get its associates home in March

Steps Carol and the company have taken to support its employees throughout the pandemic, including launching a virtual summer camp and an after school program to help Synchrony parents and kids