This week, Jack Sharry talks with Sneha Shah, Executive Vice President and Head of New Business Ventures at SEI. Sneha brings more than 25 years of global leadership experience across data, technology, and human-centered innovation.

Jack and Sneha explore how innovation actually takes root inside large financial services organizations. Sneha shares how SEI is incubating new ideas, empowering employees, and turning emerging technologies like AI and tokenization into real-world impact. The conversation spans mindset shifts, the role of community, generational and gender-based wealth transfer, and why partnerships—not ownership—will determine who wins in the next era of wealth management.

In this episode:

(00:00) - Intro
(01:35) - Sneha's global career journey and her role at SEI
(04:47) - How SEI sources ideas and turns them into new ventures
(07:39) - From idea to impact: real examples of innovation getting funded
(09:45) - How employees are responding to SEI’s innovation culture
(10:40) - Why personalized communication is key to leading organizational change
(14:46) - Sneha's outlook on the future of the financial services industry
(19:18) - Why partnerships matter more than ever in times of rapid change
(21:05) - Sneha's key takeaways
(22:08) - Sneha's interests outside of work

Quotes

"The largest obstacle to the emerging technologies is not the technology itself—it's often the mindset that will allow that technology to take root." ~ Sneha Shah

"Innovation cannot be impactful unless you actually bring people along. And I see that with AI and tokenization. The use, adoption, and scaling of it really depend on the human being feeling like it's something that's going to help transform that job." ~ Sneha Shah

"The failure of our ability to take advantage of technology is not going to be technology. It's going to be our lack of imagination. And so the more that you can excite people's imagination and get them to engage, the further you can really take these technologies." ~ Sneha Shah

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