Minneapolis CDAO Community
Inner Circle
March 25, 2026 | The Beach Club
March 25, 2026
The Beach Club
Collaborate with your peers
Join Minneapolis's top CDAOs for an intimate networking dinner and facilitated discussion on key business challenges. Enjoy a relaxed evening of dinner and drinks with your peers to share best practices, make new connections and build professional relationships.
Join your peers to discuss the most critical issues impacting CDAOs today:
The Importance of Trusted Context for Effective AI Adoption
Strategies for Building and Governing Real-Time Systems of Context
Empowering AI Agents to Act Autonomously and Safely Through Contextual Understanding
Minneapolis CDAO Governing Body
The Governing Body Co-Chairs shape the discussion topics and agenda, ensuring that all content is driven By CDAOs, For CDAOs™.
Governing Body Co-Chairs
Sridher Arumugham
DigiKey
VP & CDAO
Ylan Kazi
Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Dakota
Chief Data & AI Officer
Jeremy Lembeck
Land O'Lakes
Head of Data & Analytics
Stephanie Lenzner
Baptist Health
Vice President, Digital, Data and AI
Thomas Moore
Xcel Energy
Senior Director, Data & Analytics
Keith Narr
Cargill
SVP, Technology & Data
Agenda
March 25, 2026
4:30pm - 5:30pm Executive Networking Reception
5:30pm - 6:30pm Discussion Topics
Context Intelligence— The Foundation for Agentic AI Readiness
Ron Schmitz
Director, Information Services
Great River Energy
Sridher Arumugham
VP & CDAO
DigiKey
Kapil Narang
CDAO
Ameriprise Financial
Erik Erickson
CDO
Hennepin County
Trish Hayward
Chief AI Transformation Officer
Reltio
Today's enterprises must modernize amid AI transformation, rising customer expectations, and economic complexity. Yet, while LLMs know language, they don't know your business. Without trusted context, AI initiatives stall and operational risks grow.
Join fellow CDAOs for an interactive discussion on unlocking the full value of enterprise data by building a real-time system of context. Discover how to equip digital systems and AI agents with operational understanding—enabling them to deliver correct actions, not just fast answers.
1. Building a System of Context that Delivers Outcomes
- How can business outcomes be aligned to a clear system of context strategy, beyond basic data unification?
- What methods preserve business meaning, ownership, and accountability across domains?
- How should governance frameworks be designed to keep context trusted and interpretable?
2. Fueling Agentic AI with Trusted, Activated Context
- What makes "good enough" data insufficient when AI needs to act autonomously?
- What approaches ensure context is available in milliseconds to prevent hallucinations?
- How does governed activation reduce risk and accelerate safe AI adoption?
6:30pm - 7:00pm Networking Break
7:00pm - 8:00pm Summary Discussion & Dinner
8:00pm - 9:00pm Social Hour
Apply to Participate
Apply to participate in the Minneapolis CDAO Community Inner Circle.
Gartner facilitates exclusive, C-level communities by personally qualifying and understanding the priorities, challenges and interests of each member.
Our selective approach maintains the high quality of the network and ensures top-level discussions with peers from the world’s leading organizations.
Each application will be reviewed, and once your participation is confirmed, you will have access to year-round community programs.
Location
Venue
The Beach ClubYour Community Sponsors
CDAO Thought Leader
Community Program Manager
For inquiries related to this community, please reach out to your dedicated contact.
