Executive Summit

Open Data Infrastructure is essential for organizations in the AI era, helping leaders scale analytics and AI while maintaining control. CDAOs must balance innovation, flexibility and cost as data platforms expand.

Join this session to learn about:

• Designing interoperable architectures to avoid lock-in
• Applying openness to semantics, metadata and governance
• Enabling AI and operations with flexibility and cost transparency

AI adoption hinges on effective change management, not just technology. Explore how CDAOs can guide their organizations through cultural shifts, empower teams to adapt, and foster buy-in at every level. Gain practical approaches for navigating resistance, building momentum, and ensuring long-term success in an AI-driven world.

Join this boardroom session to discuss:

• Strategies for leading organizational change and building AI-ready teams
• Approaches to overcoming resistance and driving cultural transformation
• Best practices for sustaining momentum and engagement during AI adoption
  

For Chief Data and Analytics Officers, the goal is no longer just data and AI fluency; it’s building true mastery across the organization to generate ROI. As AI transforms access to information the most effective CDAOs foster environments where everyone, from leadership to the front lines, enables and accelerates the time from data to actionable insights.

In this keynote, Kaiser Permanente’s CDAO shares lessons learned on:

• Identifying where our teams can drive the greatest business impact and scaling across a broad and diverse workforce
• Measuring and communicating that impact to c-level leaders
• Establishing robust "human-at-the-center" governance to ensure responsible, secure and compliant use

As Chief Data and Analytics Officers, the pressure to deliver transformative value with AI grows by the quarter. Yet disconnected tools, fragmented data foundations and slow internal adoption continue to stall long-term impact. CDAO Xingchu Liu has led the development and execution to meet this moment, implementing a pragmatic framework for moving from tactical AI experimentation toward a sustainable, enterprise-wide AI strategy.

The session will focus on:

• Designing a flexible, composable AI ecosystem
• Prioritizing investments for maximum business impact
• Advancing data literacy to support long-term success

Two CDAOs are goinghead-to-head on some of the hottest topics impacting their industry today. Bothprepared to defend their takes in front of peers. Hearing divergent opinionscan expand your viewpoint, but you won't be sitting on the sideline. You willpick the side you favor on each topic through interactive polling. 

This debate showdown will include:

• The future of analyst and engineer positions 
• Build vs buy and the risk aversion conundrum
• Intelligence as the missing ingredient in AI

As organizations move beyond experimentation, the challenge shifts from teaching AI to driving real-world use. Hear how Principal built a foundation of AI literacy across its workforce and is leveraging it to accelerate adoption, support responsible use and create value. This session explores what it takes to turn AI awareness into meaningful adoption at scale. Lessons learned, challenges encountered and strategies for embedding AI into everyday work.

This session will focus on:

• Building a foundation of AI literacy across the workforce
• Accelerating adoption through everyday AI use
• Sustaining momentum through continuous learning and capability building