Recognizing the 50 top tech leaders transforming their companies for a new era of AI.
Edited By Alex Knapp and Richard Nieva, Editorial Operations: Elisabeth Brier
Reported By Emma Kinery and Bella Sayegh
If the future of business is AI, then these are the people leading the charge.
As artificial intelligence continues its march into the mainstream — generating billions in investment and research — it has gained particular traction in enterprise. Almost two-thirds of organizations say they’re now using AI in at least one business function, up from a third last year, according to a May report from consulting giant McKinsey. And 67% expect their companies to invest even more in AI over the next three years.
The executives in charge of making those deployments are often Chief Information Officers, navigating new terrain with a fast evolving technology full of possibility. These new opportunities mean there may be no job in the corporate C-suite that has changed more in recent years than the CIO. This list honors them and those beyond that title: Chief Information Security Officers, Chief Digital Officers, Chief Technology Officers, and the like.
Now in its fifth year, the Forbes CIO Next list recognizes executives in the U.S. across a wide array of sectors: trillion-dollar tech giants like Google and Microsoft, banks and financial services firms like Visa and Capital One, household brands like Coca-Cola and United Airlines, and even government officials from NASA and the city of San Francisco.
In 2024, generative AI was a unifying trend for many of the organizations honored. Some are using chatbots to help employees conjure up answers for their armies of customer service representatives. Others are using AI models to help train employees internally on company policies, or mitigate cybersecurity threats. Still others are using AI to manage supply chains and handle logistics. For many, the deployments have resulted in tangible gains, like revenue growth, time saved and operations scaled. Not every CIO on the list is pushing their company heavily into AI, but it’s a persistent driving force as workplaces look to adapt for the future.
To compile this list, Forbes sent out a call for nominations and consulted with experts and trade organizations to find worthy candidates. After reviewing hundreds of names, Forbes staffers poured through applications to find 50 standouts that exemplify excellence in the role. Of note, this list isn’t ranked; instead, it’s meant to be a spotlight on the best and brightest in the field. We prioritized candidates who are making big impacts at their companies, with recent accomplishments and tangible successes.
The Forbes CIO Next List 2024
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Michael Adams
Title: CISO
Company: Zoom
The pandemic transformed Zoom into one of the most popular video conferencing tools, largely because of its reliability, security and other easy-to-use features. That’s in no small part due to the work of Michael Adams, Zoom’s chief information security officer, who is spearheading the company’s product development and cybersecurity. Adams, who joined the company four years ago as Counsel to the COO and CISO, and his team have overhauled Zoom’s approach to security tools internally and externally, enhanced security and privacy settings for the software, and restructured the company’s security data pipeline to result in over $1 million in savings a year. He also played a key role in creating Zoom’s Bug Bounty Program to incentivize additional security testing for new products. The result? In 2024, Zoom was ranked one of the two top companies under the Build Security In Mature Model (BSIMM) initiative, the leading standard for measuring the maturity of a product security program.
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Anu Bharadwaj
Title: President
Company: Atlassian
Anu Bharadwaj first joined Atlassian a decade ago as Head of Product for Jira, the company’s proprietary bug-tracking software. Under her leadership, Atlassian has expanded into service workflows, knowledge management and cross-functional collaboration, with the aim of becoming a wall-to-wall operating system for teamwork. Using tech to streamline operations is something the company has implemented in its own workforce. In the past four years, Atlassian has doubled its workforce and transitioned to a fully-remote, office-optional company. Today, 40% of employees live more than two hours from the closest office, greatly expanding its talent pool. Bharadwaj also encouraged early adoption of AI. Its first AI product, Rovo, which includes search, chat and automation functions, was released in October.
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Jason Birnbaum
Title: CIO
Company: United Airlines
From powering features like Connection-Saver, which helps passengers make connections between flights, to providing real-time flight updates and automatic rebookings when things don’t go as planned, Jason Birnbaum has his hands full as CIO at United Airlines. Birnbaum has transformed United to be a technological leader in the airline industry, leading United’s transition to the cloud and expanding access to technology jobs through United’s Innovate apprentice program, which recruits individuals from nontraditional backgrounds to join the technology workforce. By equipping frontline workers with digital tools, Birnbaum has prioritized how technology can best support everyone – from customers and gate agents to technicians and pilots.
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Bradley Bolivar
Title: CIO and SVP
Company: Fannie Mae
In Bradley Bolivar’s four years at Fannie Mae, he has rapidly risen to the role of CIO and changed the way the organization utilizes technology. The tech division composes 40% of Fannie Mae employees and is key to the company’s mission of increasing access to affordable homeownership and rental housing. In 2023, the enterprise provided assistance to more than half a million very low and low income renters and homebuyers. As CIO, Bolivar led the push over the last year to move the majority of Fannie Mae’s operations to the cloud and create an automated backup and recovery system for cloud assets. For 2025, he is focused on expanding risk management tools, completing the cloud migration and increasing Fannie Mae’s use of automation.
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Joy Chik
Title: President, Identity and Access Management, and Executive Sponsor, Secure Future Initiative
Company: Microsoft
Joy Chik leads the engineering side of the Microsoft Secure Future Initiative – a task the CEO named the company’s top priority. It is the largest cybersecurity operation in Microsoft’s history with 34,000 engineers working on the project. In addition, Chik is the president of the company’s multi-billion dollar Identity and Network Access security business, safeguarding customers across all their devices. Since she began, that organization has grown its revenue more than 200% and expanded to include eight products. Her work has been essential in helping Microsoft prevent identity theft, the top driver of cyberattacks, through the creation of the Zero Trust identity and access controls for its software products.
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Debra Chrapaty
Title: CTO
Company: Toast
Growing up above her family’s restaurant in Philadelphia, Debra Chrapaty knows firsthand how important reliable technology is to running a successful business. As CTO at Toast, a point of sale and management software made for restaurants, Chrapaty is focused on improving customer experiences and restaurant efficiency. Last year, Chrapaty and her team led the launch of the Toast mobile app, which allows restaurant managers to access key metrics and reporting features on the go. She was also integral to creating Toast’s improved point of sale system that streamlines restaurant workflows and speeds up service, crucial on a busy Saturday night. Plus, she’s the executive sponsor of Toast’s LGTBQIA+ community, Multigrain.
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Alan Davidson
Title: CIO
Company: Broadcom
Broadcom acquired VMware in November of last year and as CIO in charge of the Global Technology Organization, Alan Davidson was key to the integration of the two companies. Within three days after the acquisition closed, Davidson’s team completed the onboarding of thousands of new employees. In just over five months, his team had consolidated applications, eliminating 1,800 redundancies and improving efficiency.His team is on track to complete the infrastructure consolidation by January, just 14 months after the acquisition. The end result will be a 65% reduction in legacy VMware infrastructure and an estimated 90% increase in efficiency and utilization.
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Ann Dunkin
Title: CIO
Company: Department of Energy
As CIO of the Department of Energy, Ann Dunkin is responsible for a $6 billion budget that tackles not only technological innovation but also cybersecurity for the nation’s nuclear stockpile, power grid and national labs. Prior to her current job, Dunkin served as CIO of the Environmental Protection Agency, city of Santa Clara and CTO of Dell, giving her a long history of leveraging strategic partnerships to usher in digital transformation and growth. At the DOE, Dunkin has published department-wide guidance for responsible AI usage, developed a supply-chain risk management program, created a playbook for scaling IT modernization and developed organizational digital strategies.
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Sastry Durvasula
Title: Chief Operating, Information and Digital Officer
Company: TIAA
Sastry Durvasula heads up technology at the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America (TIAA), a private financial retirement services company for those in government, academic or research fields. In 2024, Durvasula launched the company’s generative AI platform, called TIAA gAIt, which helps associates answer complex customer questions and improves customers’ search experiences on the TIAA website. AI tools have put the company is on track to reduce its call center operating budget by 30% over the next five years.
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Motti Finkelstein
Title: CIO and Corporate VP
Company: Intel
At Intel, Motti Finkelstein leads digital innovation for the chipmaking giant. Finkelstein’s crowning achievement has been helping to establish Intel’s IDM 2.0 Acceleration Office, which will allow Intel to standardize processes across its design, manufacturing and business teams; he has also mobilized IT support to improve supply chain management and decrease costs. Finkelstein leads his team with a “think like business owners” mindset, which has allowed the IT department to focus on restructuring its operations and deliver more than $1.5 billion in business impact through increased cash flows and quicker time-to-market for new technologies. Finkelstein has also played a key role in the company’s AI strategy, spearheading the launch of “AI Inside,” to improve productivity.
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Lidia Fonseca
Title: CIO
Company: Pfizer
Fonseca leads all the data solutions and products across Pfizer, and has spearheaded digitizing processes such as drug discovery and clinical development. To that end, Pfizer launched a suite of digital products to connect patents and physicians. She’s also been working to streamline digital processes in manufacturing and distribution. Since she took the charge as CIO, her teams have automated over 90% of 100 million transactional processes across the company.
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Kelle Fontenot
Title: Chief Digital Officer
Company: KPMG
Kelle Fontenot is responsible for executing KPMG’s digital strategy, with a unique blend of visionary thinking, strategic acumen and business savvy. At the onset of the generative AI boom in early 2023, Fontenot and her team sprang into action to launch KPMG GenAI, an internal, secure AI platform helping employees deliver results to the firm’s clients by speeding up workflows, within just a few months. Now, her team is focused on integrating Microsoft Copilot into KPMG’s workflows to streamline workers’ efficiency and deliver more value to the firm’s partners and clients.
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Bridget Frey
Title: CTO
Company: RedFin
Redfin’s goal is to make buying and selling a home easier, and technology is key to that. Under Bridget Frey’s watch, Redfin’s mobile apps and website reached 52 million average monthly users in the second quarter, making it one of the top three real estate sites in the U.S. After reworking its automated tour scheduling tool, its use tripled, increasing traffic to agents and generating an additional $30 million in revenue over 18 months. Her team also created Agent Tools, an internal software streamlining tasks. As a result, Redfin agents now close three times as many deals as traditional agents. Frey was the only woman on the Seattle-based engineering team when she joined in 2011, but after her overhaul of recruiting practices, a third of the team are women and 9% are Black or Latino.
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Vivek Gurumurthy
Title: CIO and SVP Consumer and Business Group
Company: Verizon Consumer Group
Vivek Gurumurthy has been focused on making Verizon’s app more than a place where customers pay their phone bills. As CIO of the Verizon Consumer Group, which was created in 2019 to carve out the wireless giant’s consumer products from business and core technology, he has championed making the Verizon app a place where customers can do things like shop for devices or tickets to concerts or sporting events. As a result, digital and app orders now make up around 30% of revenue for the division, up from 10% before the pandemic. Gurumurthy’s team also implemented generative AI tools for Verizon’s teams to help with customer service, allowing them to answer questions and look up information with a 95% accuracy rate.
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Yvonne Hodge
Title: CIO and Senior Vice President, Enterprise Business and Digital Transformation
Company: Lockheed Martin
A 22-year veteran of the company, Yvonne Hodge and her team of 5,000 employees at Lockheed Martin manage all of the multi-billion dollar aerospace and defense giant’s internal tech infrastructure. Lockheed Martin announced its OneLM Transformation program, led by Hodge to streamline and modernize the company’s business processes and systems using digital technologies to enhance efficiency, team collaboration and standardize processes. Hodge was also instrumental to a strategic agreement between Lockheed Martin and Microsoft to power classified cloud innovations and artificial intelligence for the Department of Defense.
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Shanthi Iyer
Title: CIO
Company: Docusign
Since joining Docusign three years ago, CIO Shanthi Iyer has focused on centralizing Docusign’s data platforms and the governance that goes along with them, helping teams make more informed decisions. Iyer helped Docusign implement its own product, the Intelligent Agreement Management system, for all of its own legal and internal documents, enabling its staff to act as “customer zero” and learn firsthand how to make the tool better. The software allows companies to access all documents, contracts and agreements on a single platform, and provides data analytics and insights as well. This has enabled Iyer to help increase productivity by 30% across HR, legal and procurement teams, and consolidated 100% of the company’s legal agreements into a single repository.
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Zulfikar Jeevanjee
Title: CIO and EVP
Company: Allstate
Zulfikar Jeevanjee joined Allstate in late 2022 after holding senior leadership roles at Wells Fargo and CVS Health. Since stepping into the CIO role, Jeevanjee and his team have created a new operating model that divided over 7,000 employees into teams of 8-12 people for Allstate’s technology organization. To help teams settle into the organizational changes, Jeevanjee launched a peer-to-peer certification program to measure how well teams are operating and identify areas for improvement.The shift, which had the goal of making teams more efficient and customer-centric, has accelerated the development and product rollout for the company’s property-liability business.
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Eric Johnson
Title: CIO
Company: PagerDuty
PagerDuty CIO Eric Johnson is trying to transform its IT operation, moving it from a cost center to one that drives the business: helping clients respond to and prevent server outages. (The name comes from the practice of Amazon engineers being on “pager duty” when they were on call to respond to outages, aptly coined by cofounder and Amazon alum Alex Solomon.) To do that, he created a dedicated automation team whose entire focus is to create more efficient processes, like using generative AI to help teams more quickly convert leads to revenue. The group has delivered more than $1 million in full-time employee savings since its launch in mid-2024. An AI copilot Johnson’s team launched has also saved employees two to three hours of time per week.
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Rani Johnson
Title: CIO
Company: Workday
Rani Johnson has only been in her role as CIO at Workday since 2023 but has already made significant changes to the company with a focus on AI and improving security. She heads the company’s AI Executive Advisory Board and under her leadership, Workday has rolled out 30 AI tools with an additional 20 slated to be released next year. She led a substantial security-first update to the company’s tech infrastructure this year that included a Zero Trust security model and company-wide use of Zscaler. Under her watch, 78 core applications now use Okta automated identity management. Her leadership utilizing the program led to her landing a keynote spot at Oktane 2024, discussing security with Okta’s CEO.
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Arnie Katz
Title: Chief Product & Technology Officer
Company: GoFundMe
GoFundMe’s embrace of artificial intelligence led by Chief Product and Technology Officer Arnie Katz has transformed online fundraising. Organizations and individuals in need of cash can use GoFundMe’s opt-in AI storytelling functions to craft eloquent and compelling asks with suggested titles, social copy and requests. Katz’s team utilized machine learning to create suggested ask amounts based on $30 billion worth of de-identified data transactions. The move increased donations by 11%. With the new unique share links, people can see the direct impact their advocacy has had when they post a Gofundme ask, including the number of donors inspired and amount raised from their post. His team also launched a program called Giving Cart which enables nonprofits to motivate donors to support multiple campaigns in one transaction and encourage increased amounts – in testing, 15% of givers opted to use it to donate to several causes.
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Akash Khurana
Title: Chief Information & Digital Officer
Company: Wesco International
Supply chain management and logistics is Wesco International’s business and as CIO and CDO, Akash Khurana has used AI, cloud computing and data analytics to build comprehensive improvements to its business. Under his watch, system reliability has improved while maintenance costs have fallen by 15%. Khurana’s new digital platform has significantly cut stock shortages and increased customer retention. The real-time data it produces has also improved operations and cut logistics costs. Khurana’s move to digital business models, including subscription services, has contributed to the company’s outsized performance and superior shareholder returns. In addition to his day job, Khurana is on target to earn his doctorate degree in Business Administration, with research in Digital Technologies, AI and Cybersecurity in December.
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Beck Kobberod
Title: Head of Digital Transformation
Company: Smithsonian Institution
As the Smithsonian’s first digital transformation chief, Becky Kobberod is tasked with bringing the world’s largest research, educational and museum complex into the 21st century. Along with advancing the institution’s usage of AI to enhance collections, Kobberod is spearheading the Smithsonian’s implementation of a customer relationship management (CRM) software that would consolidate visitor data across all 21 museums, research centers and the National Zoo. With more information on visitors, the institution hopes to transform how it engages with the public to create personalized learning experiences, by tracking visitors’ ticket and donation history to provide recommendations on what other exhibits to visit. For Kobberod, expanding the Smithsonian’s digital footprint and technological reach means that more people can access its resources, hopefully encouraging lifelong learning beyond the physical bounds of Smithsonian museums.
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Prakash Kota
Title: CIO and SVP
Company: Autodesk
At Autodesk, which provides design and software services, Prakash Kota has run the firm’s information technology division for seven years. A company veteran for two decades, last year, he helped the company launch Autodesk One, used by 97% of employees monthly, which offers workers personalized information, job-specific tools and company news. He also led the team developing AutodeskGPT, an enterprise version of ChatGPT for internal use that’s built using OpenAI models. And over the next few years, he’ll support Autodesk’s work with the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics and Paralympics, as the events’ official platform for sustainable venue design.
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Suresh Kumar
Title: Global Chief Technology Officer and Chief Development Officer
Company: Walmart
Suresh Kumar created Walmart Global Tech when he first joined the company five years ago, consolidating several tech teams across the business. Lately, his focus has been on refining delivery and distribution. Walmart is building a drone delivery program, currently focused on the Dallas-Fort Worth area, that has so far completed over 60,000 drone deliveries in the last two years. Under Kumar’s leadership, the company recently opened its second of five planned high-tech perishable distribution centers, expanded four traditional perishable distribution centers and is retrofitting other centers for automation. More than a third of Walmart’s regional distribution centers are now automated and many are also using autonomous forklifts. By the end of next year, Walmart expects 65% of stores will rely on high-tech centers to manage more than half of their fulfillment volume and decrease unit costs by an average of 20%. Other innovations spearheaded by Kumar’s team aim to improve shopper experience with AI search, AutoReplenish and other initiatives.
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Jonathan Lofthouse and Shadman Zafar
Title: Co-CIOs
Company: Citigroup
It may be unorthodox to have two CIOs, but Jonathan Lofthouse and Shadman Zafar have been effective when it comes to leading the banking giant’s information technology efforts. Zafar says that he introduced AI and natural language tools that helped reduce fraud alerts by 100 million per year, and launched the Citi Travel Portal, powered by Booking.com, for reserving flights, hotels and rental cars. Lofthouse helped create the company’s Xing Platform for risk analytics, speeding up several processes across the company’s operations. For example, he said the process for stress testing risks in financial contracts went from taking 12 days to one.
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Michael Makstman
Title: CIO and Head of Department of Technology
Company: City of San Francisco
Michael Makstman’s love of local government began early. A refugee from the former USSR, his first job at 14 was through a City of Chicago student work program. There, he learned about municipal service and used his salary to buy his first computer – paving the way to his future career. Under his leadership, as CIO of San Francisco, the city has transformed cybersecurity through the lens of emergency management, emphasizing it as a priority for city leadership–not just the tech staff. Makstman helped to create the Office of Cybersecurity within his department and formulated coordinated response plans in case of emergency, having cyber and emergency management personnel cross-train together and participate in citywide cybersecurity exercises. Makstman also co-founded the Coalition of City CISOs, which shares threat information and best practices across the globe.
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Tim Martin
Title: CTO
Company: Audible
At Audible, chief technology officer Tim Martin is making it easier for customers to find their new favorite audiobook. Under his leadership, the Amazon-owned audio entertainment platform has accelerated audiobook production with AI-generated speech technology that allows authors to produce audiobooks from their already-published ebook catalog. Earlier this fall, Audible also invited audiobook narrators to create and monetize replicas of their own voices, so that narrators can create more high-production audiobooks with increased quality. Beyond audiobook creation, Martin and his team were also responsible for the launch of Maven, an AI-powered search feature that uses everyday language to search the Audible catalog and help readers find audiobook recommendations, as we all as the launch of a kids profile feature so that customers can cultivate a child-friendly listening space for young readers.
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Mark Mathewson
Title: CIO of Bank Technology
Company: Capital One
As Capital One’s CIO of bank technology, Mark Mathewson wants to provide customers with technological bells and whistles they wouldn’t normally get from banks. In April, he helped push out a new feature that lets people tap their phones at ATMs instead of swiping a physical card. Earlier this year, he also helped introduce specialized cashier’s check kiosks where customers can get a check issued via QR code, instead of speaking to a teller. Mathewson also rolled out generative AI tools for customer service, used by more than 200 employees across the business.
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Adhir Mattu
Title: CIO and SVP
Company: NXP Semiconductors
Adhir Mattu is the CIO of NXP Semiconductors, a manufacturing and design company building semiconductors for carmakers, manufacturers and technology companies. At NXP, Mattu’s team has been responsible for the company’s move to the cloud, which has eliminated bottlenecks for product development and created $150 million in savings across the next three years due to increased efficiency. Along with introducing AI pilot programs and cybersecurity initiatives, Mattu is focused on modernizing NXP’s data and applications. Mattu, formerly at Marvell Technology and Varian Medical Systems, was previously the Chair of the Advisory Board At BayAreaCIO, a leadership network for CIOs.
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Laura McCanlies
Title: CIO
Company: International Finance Corporation
Laura McCanlies has made climate-focused innovation and artificial intelligence core to the operation of the International Finance Corporation, a member of the World Bank Group and the largest global entity working on private sector growth in underdeveloped regions. For the IFC, improved efficiency means more private capital toward structural challenges in much-needed areas. To that end, McCanlies created and deployed the Climate Risk Portal which measures the potential threats climate change poses to IFC investments using data and climate modeling. The assessments lead to smarter and more sustainable development decisions, helping to ensure long-term success. She also led AI adoption: More than 5,000 employees utilize ChatIFC, an internal chatbot using OpenAI technology. Additionally, she’s led the implementation of automated processes that have saved an estimated 10,000 hours of manpower.
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Greg Meyers
Title: Chief Digital & Technology Officer
Company: Bristol Myers Squibb
Since he took on the role in 2022, Greg Meyers’ focus has been on advancing the use of AI and machine learning across Bristol Myers Squibb, bringing it to bear on early drug discovery all the way to commercialization. Under his guidance, the company has begun using AI models to predict the possibility of success for a new drug before moving concepts into the lab. Bristol Myers Squibb is also using AI for IT support and to prepare documents needed to begin clinical trials as well as to help respond to regulatory requests.
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Brad Miller
Title: CIO
Company: Moderna
Just two weeks after GPT-4 was launched by OpenAI, Brad Miller’s team at Moderna had already deployed mChat, its own customer AI tool built on top of it. That’s not the only AI initiative that Miller has spearheaded. There’s also DoseID GPT, which helps synthesize and review clinical data to assist scientists. And then there’s Contract Companion GPT, which the company’s legal teams use to summarize complex contracts. Miller also helped build Moderna’s AI Academy to provide education about AI tools for its employees.
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Mark Murphy
Title: Chief Information & Digital Officer and EVP
Company: 3M
In the three years Mark Murphy has served as the Chief Information and Digital Officer for 3M, he’s both moved over 92% of the company’s enterprise technology to the cloud and reduced the amount the company spends on technology to facilitate it by over a third. He also helped 3M launch health care device company, Solventum, in 2023, which took in $8.5 billion in revenue last year. Murphy led the push to create a GenAI Center for Excellence in 2023, which both trains employees on efficient artificial intelligence practices and suggests the best 3M products to fit users’ needs.
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Sathish Muthukrishnan
Title: Chief Information, Data & Digital Officer
Company: Ally Financial
After stints working as CTO at Honeywell Aerospace and CIO of Enterprise Digital at American Express, Sathish Muthukrishnan joined Ally Financial in 2020 with a focus on customer experience. He’s strengthened Ally’s technology foundation by creating a consolidated data warehouse and made improvements to its consumer-facing app to be more user-friendly. Last year, Muthukrishnan and the Ally innovation team launched Ally.ai, an in-house generative AI platform that can summarize customer service calls, streamline project management and more. One of Muthukrishnan’s biggest accomplishments has been the creation of a unique coding model that shields customers’ sensitive banking information from AI applications. Ally was also the first U.S. bank to become a member of the Responsible AI Institute, a global nonprofit dedicated to responsible organizational AI usage.
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