Podcast
CIO Classified
Hosted by Caspian Studios · EN
Candid conversations with leading CIOs.
12episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
How to Close the Machine-Speed Gap in Cyber Defense with Nik Seetharaman of Wraithwatch
4w ago00:29:39Tap to summarizeNik Seetharaman has watched the offensive side of cybersecurity adopt AI tools at a pace defenders can't match. So, he built a company to close that gap. Before founding Wraithwatch, he was the first CIO of Anduril, a defense tech company he joined when it was 100 people and helped scale through hypergrowth. His path (Palantir to SpaceX to building AI-native cyber defense platforms for over a dozen federal agencies) gives him a view most CIOs and CISOs don't have. In this episode, Nik makes the case that AI has created a forcing function for CIOs and CISOs to finally work together, plus, shares how to run a pilot that actually moves the needle, why blocking AI tools backfires, and what the OpenClaw security drama gets right and wrong. 3 Takeaways: The CIO-CISO turf war is now a competitive disadvantage. Whoever figures out AI collaboration first wins. Treat every internal AI rollout like a startup: small cohort, parallel security review, measure the outcome in revenue. The best investment a new CIO can make isn't a security stack—it's coffee with people. Chapters: [01:46] What Wraithwatch Builds [05:25] AI Forces CIO / CISO Alignment [07:55] OpenClaw Security Tradeoffs [09:21] SecOps at Developer Speed [12:49] Rolling Out Risky Tools [14:44] Why Leaders Must Use AI [19:01] How to Reorg for the AI Era [22:30] Vendor Hunting for Grand Slams [25:49] $30M Contract and What's Next About Nik: Nik Seetharaman is the Founder and CEO of Wraithwatch, a next-generation cyber defense company building AI-native command-and-control platforms for the United States and its allies. He co-founded the company alongside fellow SpaceX alumni Grace Clemente and Carlos Moss. Before starting Wraithwatch, Nik served as the first CIO of Anduril, a defense technology company he joined when it was approximately 100 people, where he built the cybersecurity function from the ground up and saw the company through hypergrowth. His career spans cybersecurity leadership roles at Palantir, SpaceX, and Andel, giving him a rare vantage point across the offense-defense asymmetry that defines today's threat landscape. Guest Highlights:"You can't have the attackers operating at the speed of a machine out here, and the defenders operating at the speed of a human in here." "Any business that's able to figure out this equation and execute it successfully is going to just crush their competition—because they're gonna move at warp speed and their competition will still be moving at human speed." "If I could rewind my first days at Andel, it's not to deploy more controls, it's not to learn about some new security stack or software—I would've just had more coffee with people. The human capital you build doing that pays off in spades. Because that's the thing that's rare in an age where the machines are taking over." Get Connected: Ian Faison: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ianfaison Nik Seetharaman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikseetharaman/ Resources: OpenClaw: https://openclaw.ai LangChain: https://www.langchain.com Cursor: https://cursor.com Our Sponsor: Want to accelerate software development by 500%? Meet Blitzy, the only autonomous code generation platform with infinite code context, purpose-built for large, complex enterprise-scale codebases. While other AI coding tools provide snippets of code and struggle with context, Blitzy ingests millions of lines of code and orchestrates thousands of agents that reason for hours to map every line-level dependency. With a complete contextual understanding of your codebase, Blitzy is ready to be deployed at the beginning of every sprint. Blitzy handles the heavy lifting, delivering over 80% of the work autonomously. The platform plans, builds, and validates premium-quality code at the speed of compute, turning months of engineering into a matter of days. It’s the secret weapon for Fortune 500 companies globally. To hear how engineering leaders are transforming the way they deliver software, visit blitzy.com. Schedule a meeting with their consultants to enable an AI-Native SDLC in your organization today. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Transcribe →Leading IT Across Vertical Businesses with Ellora Sengupta of EverCommerce
Mar 1900:26:38Tap to summarizeWhen Ellora Sengupta joined EverCommerce as CIO, she inherited the IT of over 50 acquisitions — multiple operating models, fragmented tech stacks, and business units that had zero reason to trust a central IT function. Most CIOs would have reached for a consolidation roadmap. Ellora reached for something better: earning the right to be plugged into, instead of just mandating it. In this episode, Ellora tells Yousuf how she's drawn the line between what actually needs to be standardized and what should be left alone so acquired businesses keep their edge. Key Moments: [00:01:00] What Is EverCommerce — and What Makes 50+ Acquisitions So Unusual [00:03:00] The CIO's Real Job: Standardize Some Things, Protect Others [00:04:30] What Multi-Acquisition IT Looks Like vs. Organic Growth [00:05:00] How Ellora Built Trust with Business Units That Didn't Ask for IT [00:07:30] High-Growth SaaS DNA: Customer Obsession, Speed with Discipline, and AI [00:09:30] Why AI Doesn't Get Its Own Budget at EverCommerce [00:11:00] The Personal Story: Starting Over as an Immigrant with Zero Network [00:15:30] How Her Leadership Philosophy Evolved — and the Family Myth She Unlearned [00:17:30] Running the SVASE CIO Educational Fund and Giving Back [00:21:00] The Skills That Actually Matter for Future IT Leaders [00:22:00] Lightning Round About Ellora: Ellora Sengupta is the CIO of EverCommerce, where she oversees enterprise applications, data and analytics, security, corporate IT, infrastructure, and enterprise PMO across a portfolio built through 50+ acquisitions. She brings a "General Manager" mindset to IT leadership, having scaled technology functions at high-growth pre-IPO companies and $50B+ enterprises alike — including stints at Procore, Samsara, Cisco, and Workday. Ellora was named Bay Area CIO of the Year in the 2022 ORBIE Awards (Large Corporate category). She currently serves as president of the SVASE CIO Educational Fund, raising scholarships and providing mentorship for underprivileged students pursuing careers in technology. Guest Highlights: "My success is not how fast can I standardize or make things consistent. My success is — are those vertical businesses ready to plug into the shared services that my team is creating because it makes them better." "Your team is not your family. In a family, it's unconditional. But in a team you need everybody to perform. It doesn't help anyone if you are carrying along a non-performer — the rest of the team has to carry that slack." "I don't have a separate budget for AI. I have a budget and I need to make sure that my tools are AI enabled." - Visit ciopod.com for more episodes. Check out our new YouTube channel and subscribe to never miss an episode. Our Sponsor: Want to accelerate software development by 500%? Meet Blitzy, the only autonomous code generation platform with infinite code context, purpose-built for large, complex enterprise-scale codebases. While other AI coding tools provide snippets of code and struggle with context, Blitzy ingests millions of lines of code and orchestrates thousands of agents that reason for hours to map every line-level dependency. With a complete contextual understanding of your codebase, Blitzy is ready to be deployed at the beginning of every sprint. Blitzy handles the heavy lifting, delivering over 80% of the work autonomously. The platform plans, builds, and validates premium-quality code at the speed of compute, turning months of engineering into a matter of days. It’s the secret weapon for Fortune 500 companies globally. To hear how engineering leaders are transforming the way they deliver software, visit blitzy.com. Schedule a meeting with their consultants to enable an AI-Native SDLC in your organization today. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Transcribe →From Technical Debt to 4x Engineering Velocity with Gayatri Narayan of Builders FirstSource
Feb 2600:22:53Tap to summarizeTwo words that make most engineers shudder: code refactoring. Now raise the stakes — refactoring decades of legacy systems inside a large enterprise. A tech debt-heavy project of this scale needs a leader who has driven complex digital transformations, like Gayatri Narayan (formerly PepsiCo, Microsoft, Amazon). Now, as President of Technology at Builders FirstSource, Gayatri Narayan is achieving a 3–4x increase in engineering velocity since joining less than a year ago. Gayatri joins host Yousuf Khan to unpack the strategy behind those results, including how to deploy AI across the SDLC, how to rigorously evaluate ROI on AI investments, and how to lead change across complex enterprise tech stacks.Key Moments: 01:30 – Why Construction Technology Is Ready for Transformation 04:05 – AI Strategy: Elevating UX and Customer Experience 08:20 – Evaluating AI Investments: ROI, NPV, and Operating Costs 12:45 – Achieving 3–4x Engineering Velocity 16:05 – Humans in the Loop: Craft, Code Review, and AI Amplification 18:35 – Where the Industry Gets AI Adoption Wrong 20:30 – Leadership Advice: Start with the Customer About Gayatri: Gayatri Narayan is a general management executive with more than 15 years of experience leading product, engineering, data science, and operations across global enterprises, with full P&L responsibility and a track record of driving profitable growth through digital transformation. She currently serves as President of Technology at Builders FirstSource, where she leads enterprise technology strategy, modernizes legacy systems, and embeds AI into the software development lifecycle to accelerate innovation across the residential construction value chain. Previously, she served as Senior Vice President of Digital Products and Services at PepsiCo and held multiple general management roles at Microsoft, including leading Product and Engineering for Intelligent Communications across Teams and Skype as well as Enterprise PaaS and SaaS businesses; she also held leadership roles at Amazon spanning Marketplace Transportation and Logistics and several major retail categories. Guest Highlights: “We’ve seen a three to four times increase in engineering velocity — especially in refactoring legacy systems where historically there was very little knowledge of how the system actually worked.” “With generative AI, companies that have existed for 20 or 30 years don’t have to get bogged down by legacy stacks. They can embrace emerging technologies without spending 18 to 24 months just refactoring.” “It really comes down to efficiency of time. The developer’s surface area of impact expands dramatically — it’s not just about writing code anymore, it’s about delivering business value faster.” Visit ciopod.com for more episodes. Check out our new YouTube channel and subscribe to never miss an episode. Our Sponsor: Want to accelerate software development by 500%? Meet Blitzy, the only autonomous code generation platform with infinite code context, purpose-built for large, complex enterprise-scale codebases. While other AI coding tools provide snippets of code and struggle with context, Blitzy ingests millions of lines of code and orchestrates thousands of agents that reason for hours to map every line-level dependency. With a complete contextual understanding of your codebase, Blitzy is ready to be deployed at the beginning of every sprint. Blitzy handles the heavy lifting, delivering over 80% of the work autonomously. The platform plans, builds, and validates premium-quality code at the speed of compute, turning months of engineering into a matter of days. It’s the secret weapon for Fortune 500 companies globally. To hear how engineering leaders are transforming the way they deliver software, visit blitzy.com. Schedule a meeting with their consultants to enable an AI-Native SDLC in your organization today. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Transcribe →Scaling IT for Millions: How to Lead When Every Device Talks Back with Ravi Thadani of Enphase Energy
Feb 1200:39:29Tap to summarizeOn this episode of CIO Classified, host Yousuf Khan sits down with Ravi Thadani, Global Head of IT at Enphase Energy, a company powering over 5 million homes across 160 countries with clean, solar-driven energy. With 85 million microinverters producing 30 gigawatts of power, Ravi’s team is at the epicenter of a massive, real-time data operation—and every IT decision directly impacts the customer experience.About Ravi: Ravi Thadani is a seasoned IT executive with extensive experience leading large-scale digital transformations across Fortune 500 companies. He has driven strategic initiatives across ERP, CRM, PLM, HCM, SCM, analytics, AI/ML, network architecture, cloud infrastructure, and M&A integration. With oversight of multi-$10M budgets and teams of over 300, Ravi has supported business units ranging from $2B to $70B in revenue.Known for his strategic vision and execution, Ravi is recognized for fostering cross-functional alignment, driving agile transformation, and cultivating high-performing teams. His leadership approach is grounded in strong business partnerships, stakeholder governance, innovation, and a relentless focus on outcomes.Timestamps:01:50 – Enphase Energy's Global Operations03:40 – Ravi's Role and Responsibilities06:00 – Managing Customer Data and CRM16:45 – Driving Change as a CIO19:50 – The Role of Data in AI20:55 – The Importance of Data Cleaning21:20 – Effective Data Governance Strategies23:45 – Architecting for Scalability27:30 – Challenges in Hardware and Software IntegrationGuest Highlights:"AI isn’t replacing you—people using AI are. The adoption curve is about enabling people to do more, not just reducing headcount.""The biggest failure point in IT projects? Treating them like IT projects. Every transformation has to be owned by the business.""Your architecture should always assume 10x growth. Even if you’re not scaling today, you need a conscious plan for when you do."Get Connected:Yousuf Kahn on LinkedInRavi Thadani on LinkedInHungry for more tech talk? Check out latest episodes at ciopod.com: Ep 65 - Accelerating Software Development at Enterprise ScaleEp 64 - How Autonomous AI is Solving the Enterprise Modernization ChallengeEp 63 - How AI is Expanding the CIO RoleLearn more about Caspian Studios: caspianstudios.comOur Sponsor: Want to accelerate software development by 500%? Meet Blitzy, the only autonomous code generation platform with infinite code context, purpose-built for large, complex enterprise-scale codebases.While other AI coding tools provide snippets of code and struggle with context, Blitzy ingests millions of lines of code and orchestrates thousands of agents that reason for hours to map every line-level dependency.With a complete contextual understanding of your codebase, Blitzy is ready to be deployed at the beginning of every sprint. Blitzy handles the heavy lifting, delivering over 80% of the work autonomously. The platform plans, builds, and validates premium-quality code at the speed of compute, turning months of engineering into a matter of days.It’s the secret weapon for Fortune 500 companies globally. To hear how engineering leaders are transforming the way they deliver software, visit blitzy.com. Schedule a meeting with their consultants to enable an AI-Native SDLC in your organization today. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Transcribe →AI-Augmented SDLC with Jason Adams of State Street Alpha & Charles River Development; Accelerating Software Development at Enterprise Scale
Jan 600:52:23Tap to summarizeWhen you’re managing $60 trillion in assets across dozens of products and 30 global jurisdictions, technical debt isn’t just an inconvenience—it’s an existential risk.Jason Adams, Interim CTO of Charles River, a State Street Company, leads 800 engineers building mission-critical trading platforms for the world’s largest asset managers. Joined by Sid Pardeshi, Co-Founder and CTO of Blitzy, he explains how State Street is using an AI-augmented SDLC to modernize decades-old systems, refactor legacy code, and dramatically increase developer productivity—without compromising the rigor required in financial services.Jason frames the strategy around three pillars: AI for engineering (copilots and polyglot support),AI for operations (APM, observability, and proactive monitoring), andAI embedded in products (LLM-powered explainers).Using Blitzy’s agentic approach—iterative context building, dependency mapping, and targeted code generation—State Street compressed months of work into weeks while maintaining strict quality gates.About the Guests:Jason AdamsJason Adams is the Interim CTO of Charles River, a State Street Company. He brings deep expertise in modernizing legacy fintech infrastructure into scalable, cloud-native systems that support mission-critical financial services at global scale.Previously, Jason was Head of Platform Product and Strategy at Charles River Development and CTO of Mercatus (acquired by State Street and now part of Charles River for Private Markets). He has led high-impact initiatives across engineering, product, and cloud infrastructure, with extensive experience guiding end-to-end delivery teams.Today, Jason is driving a comprehensive SaaS transformation at CRD, focused on building resilient, future-ready architectures. From scaling global engineering organizations to delivering secure, high-performance platforms, he is committed to advancing innovation, agility, and long-term growth across Charles River, State Street Alpha, and State Street.Sid PardeshiSid Pardeshi is a technology leader and entrepreneur, currently Co-Founder and CTO of Blitzy. He holds a Harvard MS/MBA and previously served as a Software Architect at NVIDIA, where he built deep expertise at the intersection of AI, large-scale software systems, and product innovation.At NVIDIA, Sid was recognized as a Master Inventor, earning the Inventor’s Jacket for driving AI-powered product innovation, with more than 25 U.S. patents filed across gaming, augmented reality, and virtual reality. He is also a seasoned software engineer with a strong track record in application performance optimization, delivering native client load-time improvements of up to 90%.Beyond hands-on engineering, Sid has led and coordinated software design, framework requirements, and application architecture across global teams of 500+ engineers. Today, he applies this blend of innovation, technical depth, and organizational leadership to building autonomous software development platforms that help enterprises modernize at scale.Timestamps:00:30 – Jason on Managing $60 Trillion in Assets01:55 – Challenges and Strategies in Financial Services07:00 – Embracing AI for Modernization09:10 – AI in Software Development Lifecycle15:55 – Ensuring Quality and Compliance with AI23:55 – AI in Operations and Incident Response26:00 – Proactive Workflow Monitoring26:20 – AI in SDLC: Creation to Operations30:00 – Challenges in AI Recommendations33:20 – Iterative Context Building with AI36:00 – Human Side of AI Transformation42:30 – Adopting AI Tools in Financial ServicesGuest Highlights:"One of the things that excites me the most right now is the ability to use an AI-augmented SDLC to drive modernization. Otherwise, with this many systems, it's too hard." — Jason "You have to invest in the non-attractive parts first. You have to build a foundation that's gonna support being able to bring on solutions and tools that could change your overall enterprise SDLC. That's a lot of work and that's a major investment." — Jason "We are unlocking by adding these additional capabilities and additional assurance that improves quality exponentially more than we could have in the past. Now I can have an agent swarm check itself—multiple agents doing code review at a level of depth we just don't have time to get to." — JasonGet Connected:Jason Adams on LinkedInSid Pardeshi on LinkedInYousuf Kahn on LinkedInIan Faison on LinkedInHungry for more tech talk? Check out latest episodes at ciopod.com: Ep 63 - How Autonomous AI is Solving the Enterprise Modernization ChallengeEp 62 - Running IT Like a Growth EngineEp 61 - What Manufacturing Can Teach You About Scaling Enterprise AILearn more about Caspian Studios: caspianstudios.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Transcribe →How Autonomous AI is Solving the Enterprise Modernization Challenge with Brian Elliot of Blitzy
Dec 1600:39:34Tap to summarizeMost enterprises have roadmaps stretching 3-5 years out. What if you could compress that to 1-2 years? Brian Elliot is the Co-Founder and CEO of Blitzy, an enterprise-focused autonomous software development platform tackling one of technology's toughest problems: how do you modernize 20-100 million lines of legacy code when the developers who wrote it retired 15 years ago?In this episode, Brian explores:Why orchestrated AI agents can handle 80% of transformation work autonomously (and why humans still matter for the other 20%)The realities of enterprise buying cycles and why embedded on-site teams accelerate change managementWhy documentation and test coverage are the unsexy first steps that make everything else possibleAbout the Guest: Brian Elliott is CEO and Co-founder of Blitzy. A serial entrepreneur, former Infantry Officer with the 1st Ranger Battalion, and West Point graduate in Systems Engineering with a Harvard MBA, Brian brings a unique blend of military precision, engineering expertise, and entrepreneurial vision to transforming enterprise software development.As CEO, Brian leads Blitzy's mission to empower systematic AI adoption across enterprises, transforming traditional development lifecycles into AI-native workflows. Under his leadership, Blitzy has developed an agentic platform where thousands of specialized AI Agents cooperate at inference to autonomously deliver enterprise-scale code that is tested, validated, and compiled.Focused on operational deployment at scale, Brian architected the company's proven Agentic SDLC Accelerator—a structured methodology that systematically guides engineering organizations from technical validation to full-scale enterprise adoption. This framework unlocks autonomous capabilities across the complete software development lifecycle.Timestamps:01:25 – Understanding Blitzy's AI Capabilities03:25 – Challenges and Solutions in Enterprise Software06:00 – The Genesis of Blitzy07:30 – Insights from Nvidia and AI Development11:00 – Implementing AI in Enterprise Systems18:00 – Change Management and Customer Collaboration20:30 – Understanding Enterprise Security Needs25:10 – Improving Code Quality and Test Coverage28:15 – Blitzy's Mission and Market Direction30:10 – Challenges and Opportunities in Enterprise SoftwareGuest Highlight:"Code is beautiful in that it's verifiable. We're following enterprise best practices—everything goes to a dev branch where a human can look at it, review it, go through a typical QA process. The first thing we're gonna do is document their code so they know what's going on, then add test cases, then develop software at scale that's highly verifiable."Get Connected:Brian Elliot on LinkedInYousuf Kahn on LinkedInIan Faison on LinkedInHungry for more tech talk? Check out past episodes at ciopod.com: Ep 62 - Running IT Like a Growth EngineEp 61 - What Manufacturing Can Teach You About Scaling Enterprise AIEp 60 - Why the Smartest CIOs Are Becoming Business StrategistsLearn more about Caspian Studios: caspianstudios.comOur Sponsor: This episode is brought to you by Blitzy, the Enterprise Autonomous Software Development Platform with Infinite Code Context. Blitzy uses thousands of specialized AI agents that think for hours to understand enterprise scale codebases with millions of lines of code.Enterprise Engineering leaders start every development sprint with the Blitzy platform, bringing in their development requirements. The Blitzy platform provides a plan, then generates and pre-compiles code for each task. Blitzy delivers 80%+ of the development work autonomously, while providing a guide for the final 20% of human development work required to complete the sprint.Public companies are achieving a 5x engineering velocity increase when incorporating Blitzy as their Pre-IDE development tool, pairing it with their coding co-pilot of choice to bring an AI-Native SDLC into their org.Visit Blitzy.com and press book demo to learn how Blitzy transforms your SDLC from AI Assisted to AI Native. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Transcribe →How AI is Expanding the CIO Role with Chetna Mahajan of Webflow
Nov 600:31:30Tap to summarizeIn this episode, Chetna explains how new automation strategies are evolving not only productivity, but the role of the CIO. Chetna emphasizes the importance of data quality and security when scaling a fast-growing company, as well as transparency and partnership in vendor relationships. About the Guest: Chetna is an award winning CIO, board member, and VC advisor with over 25 years of experience working in the Fortune 100 and serving as a 3X CIO for hyper-growth SaaS businesses. Chetna currently serves as CIO of Webflow, a hyper-growth Website Experience Platform SaaS company. Previously, she served as CDIO at Amplitude and ZoomInfo.Chetna is an advisor to prominent VC firms including Sequoia Capital, Accel, Ridge Ventures, and Mayfield and serves on the Customer Advisory Board (CAB) at Veza and, Productiv and was formerly at Snowflake and Google Cloud Platform CAB. She served on the Tech Committee with Carlyle and Thoma Bravo, and on the Advisory Board of Ninja Focus and Women & AI.She was a finalist and nominee for the Bay Area ORBIE, CIO award, a finalist for “2019 Markie’s Cultivator Award for Best Lead Management Program,” a recipient of the Delta Dental Women in Business Stevie Award of Excellence in Healthcare Transformation, and a Boeing Spirit of Excellence Award recipient. Outside of work, she enjoys traveling, hiking, and skiing and has a passion for exploring different cultures.Timestamps:01:41 - About Chetna04:53 - Automation as a starting point07:16 - Employee productivity and the CIO11:25 - Discovering new AI tools13:44 - Evolving revenue systems22:47 - How will the CIO role evolve?28:37 - Lightning roundGuest Highlight:“ AI has really taken productivity at a whole different level now. It has really helped us drive the pace in productivity we couldn't have fathomed before the event of the content generation. It's not just content generation anymore. It's way beyond that. The velocity at which we are innovating on the product is huge.”Get Connected:Chetna Mahajan on LinkedInYousuf Kahn on LinkedInIan Faison on LinkedInHungry for more tech talk? Check out past episodes at ciopod.com: Ep 62 - Running IT Like a Growth EngineEp 61 - What Manufacturing Can Teach You About Scaling Enterprise AIEp 60 - Why the Smartest CIOs Are Becoming Business StrategistsLearn more about Caspian Studios: caspianstudios.comOur Sponsor:This episode was brought to you by Blitzy, the Enterprise Autonomous Software Development Platform with Infinite Code Context.Blitzy uses thousands of specialized AI agents that think for hours to understand enterprise scale codebases with millions of lines of code. Enterprise Engineering leaders start every development sprint with the Blitzy platform, bringing in their development requirements. The Blitzy platform provides a plan, then generates and pre-compiles code for each task. Blitzy delivers 80%+ of the development work autonomously, while providing a guide for the final 20% of human development work required to complete the sprint.Public companies are achieving a 5x engineering velocity increase when incorporating Blitzy as their Pre-IDE development tool, pairing it with their coding co-pilot of choice to bring an AI-Native SDLC into their org.Visit Blitzy.com and press book demo to learn how Blitzy transforms your SDLC from AI Assisted to AI Native. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Transcribe →Running IT Like a Growth Engine with Chidi Alams of Just Born, Inc.
Oct 1600:31:13Tap to summarizeThis episode features Chidi Alams, CIO of Just Born — the company behind candy classics like Peeps, Mike and Ike, and Hot Tamales.Chidi shares how his team is using AI, automation, and smarter data systems to modernize operations, strengthen supply chain resilience, and double the business impact of technology. It’s a conversation about what it really means to run IT like a growth engine — not just keeping the lights on, but driving strategy, efficiency, and innovation.Plus, much more:Chidi’s take on “physical AI” in manufacturingHow the CIO role is evolving into a more strategic leadership positionWhy a values-driven tech culture might be the secret to long-term successWhether you’re a CIO, IT leader, or simply curious about how AI and data are reshaping business, this episode delivers grounded, real-world insights. About the Guest: Chidi Alams, CIO at Just Born, Inc., is a transformation executive with a proven track record of leading strategic initiatives that drive operational excellence, organic growth, and digital innovation. His experience includes both Fortune 500 and private equity-backed companies.Timestamps:02:10 Transitioning Between Industries03:26 Role and Responsibilities of a CIO06:05 Business Transformation and Strategy08:12 Managing Peak Seasons and Supply Chain14:26 Leveraging Data and AI21:20 Talent Acquisition and Company Culture27:51 Future of Technology and CIO RoleGuest Highlights:“ A lot of how we ran the business, even during the peak season, was a tremendous amount of tribal knowledge. We can't scale based on tribal knowledge, right? So having data systems, particularly as we bring in new people into the organization, helps us to be more predictive and meet demand during peak season.”“ CIOs have to become more business centric. When you look at what's happening in large enterprises, you're seeing a fragmentation of technology leadership. I do believe that there will be a convergence at some point.”“ I'm extremely interested and have been tracking what I think is a very important trend, not just in CPG but in retail and any consumer space — even pharma — and that is how can we leverage large language models that are trained for CPG to help drive product innovation. It’s already happening.”Get Connected:Chidi Alams on LinkedInYousuf Kahn on LinkedInIan Faison on LinkedInHungry for more tech talk? Check out past episodes at ciopod.com: Ep 61 - What Manufacturing Can Teach You About Scaling Enterprise AIEp 60 - Why the Smartest CIOs Are Becoming Business StrategistsEp 59 - CIO Leadership in AI Security and InnovationLearn more about Caspian Studios: caspianstudios.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Transcribe →What Manufacturing Can Teach You About Scaling Enterprise AI
Sep 1800:38:29Tap to summarizeCIO Classified is back! More CIO secrets. More battle-tested IT wisdom. Straight from leading CIOs across a wide range of industries. In this episode, host Ian Faison and co-host Yousuf Khan dive into the deep end of technology leadership in manufacturing. Ben Davis, Executive Vice President of IT at Cambria, joins the show to talk about his sweeping digital transformation at the quartz manufacturing leader, and shares how his startup past helped him turn IT from a reactive function to a trusted business advisor. Plus much more:How Cambria is leveraging AI in demand forecastingHow to optimize supply chains and improve customer experience How to do it all while managing a legacy infrastructure and cybersecurityThis episode is a must-listen for the modern CIO looking to bridge the gap between traditional industries and modern technologies without sacrificing security or business continuity. About the Guest: Ben Davis, EVP IT, Cambria, is a technical leader who is passionate about introducing new technology, improved processes and unexplored data sets to businesses in a manner that allows them to achieve scalable revenue growth. He does this by helping business-minded technologists use automation, prioritization and critical thinking to deliver technology, process improvement and data in a high-value, cost-effective way. Timestamps:02:30 – From startups to manufacturing: Applying entrepreneurial DNA07:00 – Communicating tech value across the organization09:30 – Why AI in manufacturing is a game-changer15:00 – Cybersecurity training, scorekeeping, and zero-trust realities17:30 – Modernizing legacy infrastructure in manufacturing23:00 – AI adoption vs. business architecture readiness26:00 – Staying close to the customer experience as CIO28:00 – Building, retaining, and empowering high-impact IT teams31:00 – Governance, shadow IT, and the rise of internal agents35:00 – AI tooling, data gaps, and minimizing technical debt38:00 – Manufacturing success, excitement, and the human side of techGuest Highlights:“ I think everybody under spends on cybersecurity. If I had an unlimited budget, I’d put the money towards that. I would also spend the money on data scientists, data modeling, data governance, mass data management to ensure that our data was ready to really take advantage of AI.”Get Connected:Ben Davis on LinkedInYousuf Kahn on LinkedInIan Faison on LinkedInHungry for more tech talk? Check out past episodes at ciopod.com: Ep 60 - Why the Smartest CIOs Are Becoming Business StrategistsEp 59 - CIO Leadership in AI Security and InnovationEp 58 - AI-Driven Workplace TransformationLearn more about Caspian Studios: caspianstudios.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Transcribe →Why the Smartest CIOs Are Becoming Business Strategists with Eric Johnson of PagerDuty
May 8, 202500:42:18Tap to summarizeEric Johnson, CIO at PagerDuty, shares why today’s most impactful CIOs are evolving into strategic business leaders. He explains how AI is driving a fundamental shift in how IT organizations operate—moving from reactive support functions to proactive, value-creating business enablers.About the Guest: Eric Johnson is the Chief Information Officer at PagerDuty, responsible for PagerDuty’s critical IT infrastructure, data management and enterprise systems. Prior to joining PagerDuty, he was the CIO at SurveyMonkey, DocuSign and Talend. Before that, Eric spent 12 years at Informatica driving the information technology vision and strategy as the company scaled to a modern SaaS architecture. He is an active advisor and board member to several early-stage companies and a regular contributor to IT thought leadership.Timestamps:*(05:20) - Embrace shadow IT and AI tools*(18:40) - Changing role of the CIO*(30:00) - Security and cybersecurity awareness*(33:35) - Future of automation and AIGuest Highlights:“In the CIO org, they need to be business experts as much as the partners that they work with… because AI and the use of it and finding those high value use cases, it's gonna take folks in the CIO org to be a lot more knowledgeable about how the company operates and processes.”“Obviously, certain roles are going to change much more than others, but I think across the board, roles are going to change.”“As these changes come, how do you reorient the organization—the humans in the organization—to be able to find that higher value work?”Get Connected:Eric Johnson on LinkedInIan Faison on LinkedInResources:Learn more about PagerDuty: www.pagerduty.comHungry for more tech talk? Check out these past episodes:Ep 59 - CIO Leadership in AI Security and InnovationEp 58 - AI-Driven Workplace TransformationEp 57 - The CIO Roadmap to Executive LeadershipLearn more about Caspian Studios: caspianstudios.comCan’t get enough AI? Check out The New Automation Mindset Podcast for more in-depth conversations about strategies leadership in AI, automation, and orchestration. Brought to you by the automation experts at Workato. Start Listening: www.workato.com/podcast Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
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