In-Person

Dallas CDAO Community

Inner Circle

April 8, 2026 | The Constellation Club

April 8, 2026
The Constellation Club

Collaborate with your peers

Join Dallas'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

Dallas 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

Aamer Charania

Best Buy
Global Head of Applied ML

Jayadev Gopinath

DraftKings
SVP, Data

Sonia Khosla

Globe Life
SVP & CDAO

Sanjeev Kumar

NextGen Healthcare
SVP & CDAO

Mano Mannoochahr

Verizon
Chief Data, Analytics & AI Officer

Mark Nance

American Fidelity Assurance Company
VP, CDO

Phanii Pydimarri

Health Care Service Corporation
Data & Analytics Transformation Leader

Latheef Syed

Verizon
AVP, Data & Analytics and Data and AI Products and Governance and Data Engineering

Agenda

April 8, 2026

4:30pm - 5:30pm  Executive Networking Reception

5:30pm - 6:30pm  Discussion Topics

Context Intelligence— The Foundation for Agentic AI Readiness

Ansh Kanwar headshot

Ansh Kanwar

Chief Product 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

We look forward to seeing you at an upcoming in-person gathering

Gartner cares about the health and safety of our community. If you are feeling unwell, please refrain from attending the conference. At this time, Gartner does not have any health-related requirements in place for attendance. Should this change, we will follow up with updated guidance.

Location

More Information

Parking Information

Complimentary valet parking will be provided.

Your Community Sponsors

CDAO Thought Leader

Community Program Manager

For inquiries related to this community, please reach out to your dedicated contact.

Mallory Adamson

Community Program Manager

mallory.adamson@gartner.com