Executive Summit

Semi-formal attire. Experience an evening of connection, celebration and the relaxed charm of coastal Southern California at the Gala Reception with the Global CIO and CISO Communities. Enjoy drinks, light bites and conversation as we come together to reflect and recharge.

Keynote seating will begin at 5:00PM PT.

Experience an exclusive fireside chat with legendary athlete, entrepreneur and advocate Venus Williams at the Global CIO & CISO Gala. A Grand Slam champion, four-time Olympic gold medalist and visionary business leader, Venus will focus on: 

• Driving innovation and unlocking proven strategies to fuel business growth
• Building resilience, mental toughness and a winning mindset
• Leading with purpose, authenticity and individuality to shape your leadership legacy

The most successful technology transformations don't start with technology. They start with trust and transparency. Today, the challenge is no longer convincing leaders why technology matters but building alignment around how the business and technology collectively drive meaningful results. At Cardinal Health, CIO Michelle Greene is cultivating a culture of collaboration, curiosity and confidence - connecting business strategy with technology capabilities.

Join this keynote session to explore:

• How leading beyond IT helps CIOs drive broader business impact
• How talent development and peer collaboration strengthen leadership
• How trust and transparency enable stronger C-level decision-making and execution

Downtime is no longer just an IT problem — it's a brand event. When disruption hits, your response time, your recovery architecture and your communication strategy are all under scrutiny from customers, regulators and the board simultaneously. The focus must now shift to what actually matters — how to restore a minimum viable business fast, stay compliant across conflicting global regulations and demonstrate readiness before you're forced to prove it under pressure.

Join this session to walk away with:

• A measurable framework for minimum viable business recovery that speaks the board's language
• Tactics for maintaining continuity across jurisdictions with divergent sovereignty and compliance demands
• An executive communication playbook for before, during and after an incident

Frontier AI models are redefining the risk landscape, enabling adversaries to weaponize vulnerabilities at machine speed. There is a shift toward autonomous exploitation and new strategies for protecting the modern enterprise, including data protection for high-reasoning agents.

Join this boardroom to discuss:

• Balancing data access and control to counter autonomous exploit chaining
• Implementing data protection for high-reasoning agents
• Defending against AI-enabled social engineering as data access expands

Capturing scalable ROI from AI requires shifting from basic AI literacy to true organizational AI fluency. Global CIOs must orchestrate a holistic workforce transformation, empowering employees to confidently partner with AI agents.

Join this session to discuss: 

• Redesigning roles and workflows for a hybrid "Human + Agent" workforce
• Providing vetted, safe tools directly where daily work gets done
• Nurturing psychological safety and continuous experimentation modeled by leadership

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

Traditional ERP is a stable system of record, but not a driver of speed, intelligence or innovation. As agentic AI transforms the technology landscape, global CIOs are facing pressure to innovate in complex and fragmented environments with constrained budgets.

Join this session to learn about:

• Orchestrating innovation across fragmented environments
• Delivering outcomes without disruption
• Leveraging existing ERP investment as a data foundation for Agentic AI innovation

Effective AI governance today is about enabling confident innovation, not just control. Global CIOs must navigate the growing complexity of scaling AI while protecting data, managing risk and achieving business goals across diverse regions.

In this session, you’ll explore:

• Designing AI governance that balances innovation and risk
• Scaling AI beyond IT for cross-functional results
• Strengthening data, governance and operating models for AI

AI identities are rapidly multiplying and reshaping organizational risk. A clear, actionable identity security strategy — with governance at machine speed — is essential for cyber resiliency.

Join this session to discuss how to:

• Enable AI-powered innovation without opening the organization up to risk
• Build a scalable identity foundation that emphasizes productivity and security
• Centralize and streamline processes across the organization

AI investments are outpacing workforce readiness. Skills gaps stall adoption and stifle collaboration between humans and agents. Global CIOs must collaborate across the organization to align workforce, technology and business strategy to maximize impact. 

Join this session to discuss:

• Scaling AI responsibly — balancing adoption, data governance and workforce readiness to drive real business value.
• Best practices for aligning business units around a unified AI and workforce strategy
• Approaches to redesigning operating models, roles and structures for human-AI collaboration

As AI is embedded in core workflows, CIOs are accountable for performance, reliability and user experience — not just access. High latency and poor visibility into the end-to-end AI experience can overwhelm help desks, slow incident resolution and reduce confidence when making infrastructure or policy changes. CIOs need proactive telemetry and a consistent access model that keeps AI fast, measurable and supportable at scale. A Zero Trust approach across internet access, AI applications, SaaS and private applications can improve the AI user experience while enabling secure adoption through continuous validation and production guardrails.

Join this session to learn how to:

• Reduce latency and performance degradation by modernizing access paths and eliminating unnecessary network complexity
• Establish proactive experience monitoring and telemetry to detect degradation early and mitigate help-desk impact
• Accelerate troubleshooting with end-to-end visibility, improving confidence and speed when implementing infrastructure and policy changes

Agentic AI is approaching an inflection point for Global CIOs as organizations move swiftly from experimentation to operationalization. As agents shift quietly from “assist” to “execute,” often outside formal governance and executive review, a new, inherently scalable category of insider risk emerges.

Join this session to explore:

• Institutionalizing governance at the pace of experimentation
• Addressing agentic supply chain risk and unintended enterprise exposure
• Enabling a global organization to innovate and move quickly with confidence

When AI can exploit vulnerabilities within minutes, traditional patching cycles are obsolete. Gartner reports 93% of boards see cybersecurity as a threat to shareholder value. Global CIOs must elevate autonomous protection from an IT function to a global business strategy.

Join this session to explore:

• Unified intelligence for next-gen cyber threats
• Autonomous patch management for autonomous threats
• Impacts of changing threat dynamics on enterprise value

Agentic AI is reshaping organizations worldwide, fueling efficiency, breakthrough innovation and sustainable growth. However, the true global impact of these advancements depends on a CIO’s ability to deliver trusted, real-time context at scale. By uniting high-quality data, relationships, and business meaning, context intelligence enables enterprises to accelerate digital transformation, reduce risk, and drive measurable outcomes across diverse markets.

Join this roundtable to explore:

• Building globally scalable data platforms
• Balancing AI innovation with governance
• Setting global metrics for AI-ready data

Restoring trust and transparency at global scale is vital as autonomous systems reshape enterprise decision-making. CIOs must harness technology to deliver clear oversight, ensuring consistent, trusted business outcomes and proactive risk management across complex, distributed environments.

Join this session to discuss:

• Navigating the CIO’s evolving role in driving transparency and trust at scale
• Defining what trusted autonomy looks like in large-scale, global enterprise environments
• Aligning investments, metrics and outcomes to ensure top-down confidence in automation

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

CIOs face pressure to realize generative AI’s benefits while maintaining governance, compliance, and visibility across the enterprise. As employees globally use browser-based AI tools to boost productivity, organizations encounter challenges from unapproved applications that may cause data leakage, security threats and regulatory risks. Responsible AI adoption requires balancing innovation and control. Operational, security and compliance implications of shadow AI demand strategies for implementing policies that safely unlock AI’s potential in a global context. By proactively strengthening governance and security measures, organizations can drive effective AI adoption and maximize business value.

Join this session to discover:

• Identifying risks from unauthorized AI tools
• Establishing internationally compliant governance policies
• Empowering productivity with secure AI adoption

Finish the day sharing lessons learned with your peers over light fare and drinks at this closing reception hosted by the Global CIO Community Governing Body.

An exclusive evening in private wine cave. Connect with fellow attendees in an intimate, elegant setting at the Waldorf Astoria, featuring 100-year-old French flooring, stone walls, and a 10,000-bottle wine collection. Enjoy a Sommelier-led wine experience from the Reserve List, followed by a gourmet three-course dinner and hosted bar, providing the perfect opportunity for mingling and networking.

The widespread race to embrace AI across complex global organizations is revealing cross-functional tensions around ownership, governance and visibility. The spotlight is on the CIO to enable innovation, foster collaboration and ensure results. This growing pressure requires CIOs to master organizational politics and cultivate the leadership skills necessary to influence and drive alignment across every layer of the business.

Join Tina Nunno, Distinguished VP Gartner Fellow, to explore:

• Navigating the politics of AI in a complex organizational environment
• Refining strategies to drive alignment within IT and across business units
• Knowing when to partner, democratize ownership or say no on AI initiatives

What happens when technology is used to elevate, not replace, the human touch? At Aramark, CIO Baker Smith believes real transformation happens when innovation empowers people and creates memorable experiences. Learn how his team aligns IT with business goals, fosters a culture of change and ensures technology enhances the human touch. 

Join this session to explore:

• Strategies for balancing innovation with human experience
• Approaches for aligning IT and business objectives
• Methods for building a culture of empowerment and change

The promise of agentic AI depends on more than model capability—it depends on context that aligns people, processes, and information around innovation. Data governance is not a brake on innovation, but the prerequisite that enable agents to act at machine speed safely.

Join this session to discuss:

• Prerequisites: Data labeling, classification and governance foundations required for agent scale
• Context Layer: Connecting data, permissions and workflows for business-aware agents
• Pragmatic Governance: Balancing legacy complexity with agent speed and autonomy

As technology advances and global uncertainty grows, cyber risk has become inseparable from business risk. Global CIOs must lead the charge in building resilient organizations by leveraging AI, preparing for disruptions and ensuring that security is woven into every business decision.

Join this session to discuss:

• Approaches for building cyber resilience in the face of sophisticated threats and geopolitical disruptions
• Strategies for integrating cyber risk management into digital transformation initiatives
• Best practices for using AI in risk monitoring, breach detection and minimizing exposure

As AI adoption is accelerating, CIOs are asking how they can move beyond isolated use cases to create sustainable business value at enterprise scale. Autonomous IT offers a path forward, enabling systems to intelligently sense, decide, and act across IT operations while enhancing agility, resilience, and productivity.

Join this boardroom to discuss: 

• Prioritizing business outcomes from AI investments 
• Building trusted data foundations for autonomous operations
• Creating a practical 12-18 month roadmap for transformation

Governance, control and trust take center-stage as agentic AI reshapes risk and introduces new challenges for global organizations including authority drift, misconfiguration and behavioral deviation. How can CIOs optimize global frameworks to manage and govern a new class of autonomous digital actors?

Join this keynote to uncover: 

• How agentic AI changes enterprise risk and governance models
• The core pillars for governing users, AI systems and data
• Key architectural components to enforce real-time AI control and accountability