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Technology

The Data & AI Chief

ThoughtSpot

Meet the world’s top data and AI leaders transforming how we do business. Hear case studies, industry insights, and personal lessons from the executives leading the data and AI revolution.

Join host Cindi Howson, Chief Data & AI Strategy Officer at ThoughtSpot, every other Wednesday to meet the leaders and teams at the cutting edge.

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  • 142 episodes
  • Updated July 22

Episodes142

Newest first
  • July 22 · 38 min

    How Google Is Building Enterprise Trust in Agentic AI

    For most enterprises, autonomous AI agents still feel like a risk waiting to happen. Andi Gutmans, Vice President and General Manager for Data Cloud at Google, joins Cindi Howson to explain what it takes to build the data foundation that trustworthy agentic AI depends on. He breaks down how organizations can finally activate the 90 percent of enterprise data that's unstructured, why tokenmaxxing is the wrong way to measure AI value, and how open standards like Apache Iceberg are helping leaders

  • July 8 · 24 min

    How Swire Coca-Cola Turned Governance Into an AI Growth Engine

    For most data leaders, governance feels like the thing standing between them and progress. Bharathi Rajan, Vice President of Digital, AI, and Data at Swire Coca-Cola, joins Cindi Howson to share how she built the data foundation powering a $3 billion supply chain operation. She breaks down how to turn data quality into a business accelerator, get ahead of demand signals, and build the foundation every AI initiative actually depends on.

  • June 24 · 35 min

    How to Transform a SaaS Company with AI from ELMO CTO

    What happens when a software company building AI tools for HR teams uses those same tools to transform itself? Josh McKenzie, Chief Technology Officer at ELMO Software Group, shares how his team rebuilt their entire software development lifecycle around AI agents and redrew the boundaries of every engineering role. He breaks down how to lead that shift without losing people's trust, why domain expertise is the real SaaS moat, and how the right analytics partner unlocks decisions HR teams have ne

  • June 10 · 31 min

    How AI is Scaled Across Global Supply Chains with Ligentia

    Explore how a global supply chain company turned its data platform into a customer-facing product designed to operate at the speed of disruption. Boris Rabkin, Chief Information Officer at Ligentia, shares how the company executed that shift through a deliberate phased approach and a partnership with ThoughtSpot. He breaks down how to build a data foundation that scales, what it takes to embed analytics where decisions happen, and how to structure AI ownership and governance across a global regu

  • May 27 · 37 min

    Why Most Enterprise AI Pilots Fail: Lessons on Trust and Deployment

    Understand how to close the gap between AI experimentation and enterprise production. Shub Agarwal, Founder of the AI Trust Lab at USC and author of Successful AI Product Creation: A Nine-Step Framework, shares his AI product management framework for taking enterprise AI strategy from demo to production, drawing on two decades of product leadership at Amazon and Fortune 50 firms. He breaks down why experimentation must tie directly to business OKRs, the four mindset shifts leaders need to scale

  • May 13 · 41 min

    S&P Global’s Chief Data Officer on Turning Data into Business Outcomes

    Learn what happens when the executive accountable for data strategy is also the executive accountable for the business results that depend on it. Saugata Saha, President of S&P Global Market Intelligence and Chief Enterprise Data Officer at S&P Global, shares how he manages one of the world's largest financial data estates while driving business outcomes across public and private markets. He breaks down the four pillars of S&P Global's data strategy, the federated organizational model that conne

  • April 22 · 53 min

    How Semantic Layers and Ontologies Create Trusted AI

    Learn why an organization’s ontology, a structured framework for how a business defines, connects, and makes sense of its data and knowledge, is the most valuable and most overlooked asset in any AI strategy. Jessica Talisman, CEO and Founder of The Ontology Pipeline, and Tony Seale, Founder of The Knowledge Graph Guys, break down what it actually takes to build trusted AI, covering everything from semantic layers and knowledge graphs to why provenance is non-negotiable. They explain how organiz

  • April 8 · 40 min

    Inside WHOOP's Wearables AI Engine for Predictive Health

    Discover how WHOOP is building an AI-powered health data infrastructure that is redefining how we understand human health. Emily Capodilupo, Senior Vice President of Research, Algorithms, and Data at WHOOP, explains how continuous physiological data is uncovering new opportunities in predictive health through AI, from presymptomatic disease detection to biological age scoring. She examines the governance challenges of deploying AI in a regulated environment and what it takes to build the data tr

  • March 25 · 42 min

    A Wharton AI Research Leader's Formula for Responsible AI

    Learn why scaling AI is as much a human challenge as it is a technological one. Stefano Puntoni, Co-Director of Wharton Human-AI Research and Professor at The Wharton School, examines the limits of data-driven decision-making in the age of AI and why insights so often fail to translate into action. He breaks down the psychology behind AI resistance and outlines the leadership and change management strategies needed to turn AI potential into real organizational impact.

  • March 11 · 46 min

    How a Serial CDAO Scales AI in Insurance with Verisk

    Discover how enterprise AI and data strategy are operationalized at scale in one of the most highly regulated industries in the world. Louis DiModugno, Global Chief Data Officer at Verisk, shares how he builds AI-ready data foundations across 40+ petabytes of insurance and risk data, and the best practices behind embedding AI into enterprise products. He discusses unstructured data, deepfakes, and the shift from governance to observability, offering practical insights for data leaders scaling AI

  • February 25 · 41 min

    How AI Augments Human Creativity at Scale: The WPP Blueprint

    Learn how AI agents are reshaping enterprise decision-making, AI governance, and brand creativity. Daniel Hulme, Chief AI Officer at WPP & CEO of Satalia/Conscium, explains how AI agents, decision intelligence, and his concept of “brand brains” (AI systems designed to create brand-specific, production-grade content) are changing how organizations operate. He shares why companies don’t have data problems but decision-making problems, and how AI can augment human creativity at scale.

  • February 11 · 43 min

    How Nasdaq Architected a $90 Trillion Data Ecosystem

    Discover how Nasdaq uses data platforms at a massive scale to power markets and prepare for AI. Angie Ruan, Nasdaq’s CTO of Capital Access Platforms, explains how large-scale data systems support market integrity, transparency, and decision-making across public and private markets. She defines what it really means to be AI-ready, how leaders should modernize data platforms, and how market fundamentals help separate real AI value from hype.

  • January 28 · 48 min

    How OneDigital Is Reframing AI Agents as Coworkers

    Discover why the future of AI at work is more human than you think. Vinay Gidwaney, Chief Product Officer at OneDigital, shares how treating AI agents as talent rather than technology is changing AI adoption at work. He explains people-first change management, managing AI coworkers, building trust in human AI teams, and why real transformation depends on equity, access, and better decision-making.

  • Dec 17, 2025 · 45 min

    GenAI Best Practices: What Early Adopters Have Learned

    In this special episode, host Cindi Howson pulls together the most useful, and hard-won, lessons from a year of conversations with Data Chiefs leading the GenAI charge. With generative and agentic AI no longer a side experiment, this episode spotlights five practices early adopters can rely on to move from pilots to profit. Expect straight talk on what to prioritize, how to bring people with you, and how to scale AI with the trust, literacy, and guardrails that make impact stick.

  • Dec 3, 2025 · 40 min

    How Yum! Brands is Using Data & AI as a Recipe for Innovation with CDO Cameron Davies

    Learn how one of the world’s biggest restaurant companies is turning data and AI into a recipe for global innovation. Cameron Davies, Chief Data Officer at Yum! Brands, shares how he’s combining strategy, technology, and change management to drive global growth. He explains how Yum! is building AI literacy from the top down, reimagining operations with generative AI, and partnering with NVIDIA to scale innovation. Cameron reveals what true data leadership looks like, balancing bold ideas with bu

  • Nov 19, 2025 · 44 min

    Alghanim Industries on Why the Middle East Is the New Frontier for Data-Driven Innovation

    Step inside a conversation on the art and architecture of AI transformation. Vedran Karamani, Group Data Analytics & Agentic AI – CDAIO at Alghanim Industries, shares how he’s embedding intelligence across one of the Middle East’s largest conglomerates. He breaks down what it takes to make AI approachable in the boardroom, why data literacy is now a business imperative, and how to balance innovation with operational reality. Discover how Vedran is redefining the role of data, technology, and hum

  • Nov 5, 2025 · 48 min

    When Navan Chose to Build, Not Buy: The AI Decision That Changed Everything

    In this episode of The Data Chief, Ilan Twig, co-founder and CTO of Navan, shares why large language models will revolutionize our relationship with technology—just like the mouse did for the keyboard. From pushing AI to its limits to launching Navan Cognition, built for zero critical hallucination, Ilan reveals what it really takes to lead through change and build AI that people can trust. He also dives into a critical question every company must face: Will you build AI from scratch, or build w