Executive Summit

In the world of iconic architecture, only a few images are so instantly recognized they need no subtitle –and the unmistakable skyline of Chicago is certainly amongst them. Delivering amazing skyline views and panoramic vistas along the water, your guests will embark on a world-class private cruise aboard Chicago’s First Lady! Following the cruise, guests will enjoy lunch at the famous Labriola.

Please meet in the lobby at 9:45am, and plan to return to the hotel at 2:30pm.   Limited seating available, pre-registration is required.

Please meet in the Waldorf Astoria Lobby for transportation to the Welcome Reception at City Hall. 

City Hall: 838 W. Kinzie, Chicago, IL

Welcome to the beginning of an incredible gathering with your Global CIO peers!  Come enjoy the first evening on the Executive Summit with dinner and good conversation.  

To kick off our Executive Summit, Keith Ferrazzi, #1 New York Times bestselling author and founder of Ferrazzi Greenlight, will provide the blueprint for going forward to work so we can stay competitive in the future.

Using insights from his new book, Competing in the New World of Work, Keith will dive into:

• How "radical adaptability" separates the best from the rest
• Co-elevating team interdependence
• Sharing accountability for team resilience

Keith Ferrazzi is a bestselling author, speaker, entrepreneur, investor, philanthropist, and an enthusiastic team transformation coach committed to helping teams harness Radical Adaptability and Co-Elevation® to positively transform organizations in an unpredictable work world.  Ferrazzi is unparalleled in his mastery of shifting behaviors at scale. He is known for activating and challenging an audience to achieve lasting impact for their organization or association. He was recognized for his place in the world as a thought leader and speaker with the coveted Golden Gavel Award.

Attire is business casual.

Please meet out front of The City Hall for transportation back to the Waldorf Astoria Chicago.

Weaving data into the conversation of a digitally-enabled organization can take innovation to the next level. Walgreens Boots Alliance is using analytics as a driver for bigger business and stronger customer value by bringing experience-based technology into game.

Join this session to discuss:

• Leveraging the value of data to the business
• Creating a layer of machine learning and artificial intelligence to build on a digital model
• Implementing experience-based technology to enhance the customer-experience

The most successful organizations drive value from their technology investment by considering a people-first approach to implementation.  When your people and technologies are spread across many time zones and countries, what are some best practices to accelerate global digital innovation and transformation across user experience, employee and customer engagement, product adoption and beyond?

Join this boardroom to explore:

• Leveraging emerging technologies to accelerate innovation on a global scale
• Breaking down silos across a dispersed and diverse business while enhancing the employee and customer journey
• Technology enablement to drive IT as a strategic partner and revenue generator

In today's world of borderless work, global enterprises can expand their talent footprint through hybrid work. But hybrid work does not come without its challenges. Organizations must empower their teams to work effectively from anywhere and influence a collaborative environment.

Join this session to discuss:

• Expanding and maintaining talent search through current technology
• Implementing tools and policies to empower collaboration
• Building high-performing teams that work together across cultures

Achieving expected business outcomes of cloud computing takes more than desire – it requires a strategy – selecting the right cloud for the right needs. If not done deliberately, an organization can end up with too many solutions. So how can a CIO simplify and standardize in a sustainable way?

Join this session to discuss:

• Simplification – selecting the right cloud, technology, and partner(s)
• Standardization – optimizing the skills of your organization against the right tools
• Sustainability – using less to achieve more; driving down costs and focusing on core competencies

Today’s much-hyped “digital transformation” has promised to change everything. But the more important implication of connecting data, exponential technologies, products, processes, and people is the democratization of opportunity. Companies will need to re-envision themselves as entities without walls as part of a broader ecosystem that includes the communities in which they operate.  Now is the time to embrace a key differentiator in this new era of opportunity: to be avid for adventure.

Join this session to learn about:

• How adventure cultivates resilience, simplicity, and focus
• Creating inclusivity with technology
• Defining your company by more than what you sell

The scope of the global CIO responsibilities expands beyond borders and beyond managing the IT of an organization.  They must be business leaders looking to add value to a company, talent leaders finding the right employees and adaptive leaders who first need to identify the problem before they can solve it.  So, what’s in the job description for tomorrow's CIO?

Join this session to discuss:

• Preparing for what the global CIO leadership role will entail in the coming years
• Delivering at the bottom line while juggling other responsibilities worldwide
• Strategizing how to be an agile leader who enables others to make quick-decisions

While Global CIOs are business game-changers, they also know that there is more to life than the day-to-day job.  Global business leaders have a responsibility to use their influence to make the world a better place.  Finding a passion that truly makes a difference can create positive changes for others and real fulfilment in life.  

Join this interactive session with panelists discussing:

• Using your influence as a global leader to make a mark on the world
• Finding your passion that will fulfill you beyond the job
• Keeping inspired to go after with your passions even life seems too busy

According to Gartner research, loss of data or devices cost organizations an average of $4.11 million worldwide in 2021. You hope it never happens, but if your global organization is targeted, it’s critical to already have a plan in place to avoid as many business disruptions as possible and have a faster recovery.

In this session, you and your peers will discuss:

• Proactive protocols to ensure a quick response
• Tools to identify gaps such as IT disaster recovery exercise
• Building confidence in disaster recovery plans and personnel

Transformation may be the most overused term in IT. In this age, survival depends on an organization’s ability to quickly deliver outcomes and bridge the divide between IT and the business by moving away from a “project mentality.” Now is the time for CIOs to consolidate data from end-to-end tools and create a common language of measuring flow and driving on-strategy delivery.

In this session, join your Global CIO peers to discuss:

• Overcoming challenges enterprises are facing, with dated methods of measuring delivery and misalignment with business results
• Making better prioritization decisions to effectively allocate resources and capital
• Aligning OKRs to strategic priorities and outcomes with what teams are working on

In today’s globally distributed and dynamic environment, legacy hub-and-spoke networks are insufficient and progressive leaders must shift to a modern zero trust architecture to accelerate the business forward. Join this conversation on what a zero trust architecture is and how to deploy it across your organization.

Join this keynote to:

• Understand the difference between traditional on-premises network security controls and a zero trust architecture
• Discover detailed C-level strategies for deploying zero trust across people, processes, and technology platforms
• Learn how to enable a culture and mindset change across your organization for a successful, scalable implementation

These days more than ever, Global CIOs are charged with cutting costs and are asked to deliver more with less. To future proof their organizations, CIOs are looking at AI and automation innovation to play a key role in the transformation of digital experiences for employees. If done right, global leaders can supercharge productivity and boost employee satisfaction, improve auto-resolution rates exponentially and achieve major cost savings.

Join your peer global business leaders to discuss:

• Key challenges that leaders are facing in the current talent environment
• Using AI & automation to drive worldwide user engagement and productivity
• Scaling employee self-service experience while reducing costs to support business growth

Navigating the tough talent pool has CIOs seeking out solutions to build up their global teams. With employee expectations at an all-time high, now is the time to get creative.  Collaborate and debate with peers about talent solutions.

Join this interactive workshop to solve scenarios about talent: 

• Mentoring a multigenerational workforce – creating operational excellence
• Exploring employee potential – diversifying skill sets
• Keeping the right people – thinking beyond just retention

To create a positive and lasting relationship with customers around the world, global organizations must provide an exceptional, consistent, and personalized experience at all points of engagement. Conversational AI is bringing natural conversational interfaces to a growing number of these engagement points.

Join this interactive roundtable to discuss:

• A holistic view of customers from different countries to empower consistent experiences
• Advanced AI strategies to solve customer problems faster
• Using data to personalize each customer interaction no matter location

The Global CIO is a master strategist and business leader striving to ignite innovation at the right time. Balancing the complexities of a global architecture and the enterprise’s appetite for change, a CIO must be strategic about how and when to push for ingenuity. Innovation and continuous improvement remain top of mind for business leaders to drive business growth.

Join this session to discuss:

• Planning for and weaving innovation into business processes
• Methods for fostering and encouraging innovation and setting priorities
• Examples of innovative business outcomes from game-changing technologies (metaverse, digital twins, blockchain, AI, etc.)

Connect with like-minded peers in a one-on-one setting through Evanta’s Peer-to-Peer Meetings. You will be matched with peers in your community based on your shared interests and priorities.

Connect with like-minded, Global peers in a one-on-one setting through Evanta’s Peer-to-Peer Meetings. You will be matched with peers in your community based on your shared interests and priorities.

Conversational AI continues to grow in sophistication. Automation can drive customer experiences from start to finish, but it must be done the right way and take into account shifting customer behavior. The time is now to leverage AI as tool to support outcomes such as increasing the speed of business, allowing for flexibility and engaging with customers around the world on their schedule.

Join this session to discuss:

• Integrating knowledge-structuring automation with human-in-the-loop (HITL) interfaces
• Narrowing attention to relevant data that can be converted to usable knowledge
• Figuring out conversational AI’s role in the future of the metaverse

It’s time to get brutally honest with your global peers.  Not every venture is a success, but let’s make mistakes count.  Come to this session to reflect on some of the biggest lessons you’ve learned from cloud strategies, security breaches and everything in between. Nothing is off limits as it’s time to learn from others.

Join this interactive session to:

• Explore some of the pivotal failures and lessons that others have experienced
• Benchmark your current challenges against those who have gone through it
• Discover opportunities to avoid making the same mistakes peers have already done

From the pandemic to the geopolitical climate, the global CIO must take into account current events from around the world as they build up the organization.  From supply chain issues to moral stances by organizations, how are business leaders navigating this turbulent time?

Join this session to discuss:

• Impact of current events on the stability of business practices
• The push for globalization with threats of sanctions or other disruptions
• Global supply chain problems and the work arounds being made

As the global economy is continuously disrupted by socio and political conflicts, many organizations have looked to grow or pivot to keep up with the ever-changing world. Whether these changes come from external factors, mergers and acquisitions, divestitures, organizational shifts or new leadership structures, CIOs are continuously driving business change and leading the organization to greater levels.

Join this session to discuss:

• Leveraging IT’s leadership and insights when evaluating and executing change
• Anticipating potential challenges and agility needs while growing and/or transforming
• Championing a value-driven, experience-led approach across people and technology

Global CIOs need to be strategists who create sustainable enterprises not just for social responsibility but also to provide business value, especially as technology waste becomes more prevalent. How are CIOs developing a sustainability strategy, and how are companies using sustainable technology to drive growth while also delivering environmental and social progress?

Join this keynote to discuss:

• Using the power of technology to enable and accelerate sustainability efforts across the organization
• Protecting people and the planet by making technology itself progressively more sustainable
• Pursuing breakthrough innovation with ecosystem partners to develop radically different and more sustainable ways of doing business in the future

Please meet in the Waldorf Astoria Lobby for transportation to the Gala Dinner at The Exchange

The Exchange: 224 S Michigan Ave, Chicago, IL 60604

Come join your peers for a night of collaboration and celebration! Network with your peers and enjoy a dinner with friends new and old.  

Join in welcoming an innovator and leader in space exploration, Dr. Moogega Cooper.

Human Curiosity- A Passion for Limitless Innovation

Award-winning engineer Dr. Moogega Cooper earned her nickname "The Real Life Guardian of the Galaxy" from her work at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and as the planetary protection lead of the famed NASA 2020 Mars Rover "Perseverance" mission. She's an integral part of the ongoing mission to discern if Mars could be habitable for humans while making sure we don't harm the red planet. A high school graduate at 16 and Ph.D. at 24, her passion for empowering others to achieve their dreams has been featured on shows including "Bill Nye Saves the World."

Join this talk to:

• Reinfuse passion into your work and leadership abilities
• Be inspired to follow your human curiosity
• Gain insights about overcoming obstacles through Dr. Cooper's rise in the male-dominated field of space exploration

Attire is semi-formal.

Please meet out front of The Exchange for transportation back to the Waldorf Astoria Chicago.

After days of connecting with Global CIO peers, please join us for a networking breakfast and facilitated discussion on key business challenges to wrap up the Executive Summit. Join your peers to reflect on lessons learned from the conference, how you're going to lead as a Global CIO in the future, and what you can be doing now to support and ensure the wellbeing of your people and yourself.

Topic 1:  Ensuring the Wellbeing of Your Global Team and Yourself

As societal changes bring to light mental health struggles, burnout, and workforce demands, global business leaders are working to address the well-being of employees worldwide as well as themselves.

Topic 2: A Global Leader’s Development Plan

As a global leader it’s never too early to start planning for your future and your own personal growth. As a c-level executive, it’s often hard to get the feedback you need to continue to get better, so how do you set your own development goals?

Topic 3: Key takeaways from the Summit

Share your thoughts on memorable moments during the Executive Summit.