The GuideLine

Healthcare’s digital transformation has opened the door to a new wave of innovation, and the possibilities are only expanding. In this episode of The GuideLine, host Stuart Brown sits down with Cris Ross, former CIO at Mayo Clinic and healthcare advisor, investor, and author, to explore exciting ways that health systems are using AI to deliver higher-quality care, more efficiently.

From Mayo Clinic’s massive pre-COVID EHR transformation to opportunities emerging around platforms like Epic, Cris offers an insider’s view of where healthcare technology has been and where it could go next. Cris and Stuart dig into AI’s potential to make the patient experience more human, the role of governance as innovation accelerates, and one critical question every healthcare startup should ask before betting on the next big idea.

What does it take to turn AI enthusiasm into lasting organizational change? In this episode of The GuideLine, Jessica Baker, Chief Data Officer at the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), joins Stuart Brown to share how one of the nation’s largest public utilities is approaching AI transformation with people at the center.  

Jessica walks through TVA's journey from a grassroots network of AI advocates to a structured 12-week learning program that equips employees to design, build, and deploy AI solutions of their own. Along the way, she shares TVA’s framework for measuring AI success and discusses why the next generation of tech talent is increasingly drawn to the utilities sector. The result is a practical roadmap for leaders looking to make AI transformation stick.    

Many organizations are waiting for their data to be perfect before making meaningful progress with AI. John Young’s message: Start moving. 

In this episode of The GuideLine, the Global Managing Director at Databricks joins Stuart Brown to explain how leaders can put existing data to work while continuing to strengthen the foundation beneath it. 

Their conversation explores the evolution of the data lakehouse, the growing importance of data sovereignty, and emerging approaches to AI-driven decision-making, from operational twins to personalized AI agents. John also shares how organizations that feel left behind in the AI race can “skip the line,” plus why the accelerating pace of technical debt makes waiting its own risk. It’s a practical look at how to move beyond perpetual preparation for AI and begin creating value now.  

For federal chief information officers, this is a moment of pressure, but also possibility. Today’s government tech leaders are being asked to move faster, deliver better services, and roll out AI responsibly, all at once. In this episode of The GuideLine, Stuart Brown talks with Nancy Sieger, former Chief Information Officer of the IRS and former Chief Technology Officer at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, about what this triple mandate means for CIOs working within U.S. federal agencies. 

Agentic AI is rewriting the rules of work—and not in the way most organizations are talking about it. In this inaugural episode of The GuideLine, Stuart Brown (Stu) speaks with Microsoft Corporate Vice President Ulrich Homann (Uli) about why the agentic shift is bigger than a technology upgrade or even a change-management effort. At its core, Uli argues, it reshapes how decisions get made, how work gets done, and what an enterprise really is. 

Stu and Uli map the foundations behind AI, share a three part framework for understanding agentic systems, and explain what Microsoft calls the “frontier firm.” Along the way, they dig into the practical realities that leaders can’t ignore: data sovereignty, the enterprise memory layer, and the line between automating tasks and building truly intelligent workflows. They wrap with a candid look at what’s next for organizations, and for a workforce stepping into a world where AI agents are part of the team. 

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