Chicago CIO Community
Executive Summit

The Governing Body of Chicago CIOs and invited guests are welcome to join us for a fun, interactive spin at the annual Governing Body Welcome Reception. Casino Night at the Marriott Downtown Magnificent Mile will feature table games, prizes, food and drinks to kickoff our fall “By CIOs, For CIOs” executive gathering.

• Developing IT leaders
  • What are human capital strategies for building and developing the specialized talent required for IT and business innovation?
  • How are IT leaders tackling challenges related to new ways of working and trying to manage multi-generational teams?
  • How do you integrate an overall leadership strategy into the IT side of the business?
• Leveraging AI
  • How have you deployed AI initiatives; what has worked and what needs improvement? Share lessons learned.
  • How do you measure the return on investment from AI projects?
  • How do you drive employee engagement and overcome barriers to realizing AI’s true potential?
• Customer-centric Strategies
  • What data management strategies generate the most actionable insights into the digital needs and behaviors of your customers?
  • What have been your most successful tactics for increasing the speed with which your technology organization responds to customer demand and delivers value?
  • What is the role of the CIO in ensuring a seamless customer experience?
• Executing While Modernizing
  • How are you helping the business to articulate “value” so that effort and energy are spent on the right things?
  • How can you liberate more of your human capital/talent to focus on transformative, value-added work, and less on “keeping the trains running on time”?
  • What can CIOs do to increase the change appetite of their organizations and foster a culture of continual evolution?
• Improving the Pace of IT
  • What are the greatest “friction” areas in your organization, and what has been successful in reducing that friction?
  • What frameworks or operational models (e.g. agile, DevOps, reorganization) have been most successful in creating more efficient, effective technology organization? 
  • What can CIOs do to ensure that speed is a value of the entire organization, not just the technology org?

The new way of work is remote, mobile-first, and cloud-based. Employees expect instant, secure access to applications, information, and resources. Meanwhile, threats proliferate, VPNs lag, hardware costs rise, and little is truly secure. Hub-and-spoke networks employing castle-and-moat security are no longer tenable, and leaders that cling to legacy architectures put enterprises at risk. Enter Secure Cloud Transformation, a practical cybersecurity approach that prioritizes security and user performance to align with today’s way of working.

In this session, we'll discuss how enterprise IT leaders can:

• Improve customer digital experience while safeguarding sensitive information
• Increase user performance while minimizing risk
• Drive revenue and scalability while controlling costs

Threat actors from nation-states to Ransomware perpetrators are adapting at a breakneck pace. Not only must CIOs stay abreast of this ever-shifting landscape, they must also incorporate this intelligence into strategies and partnerships to protect critical data. In this session, the FBI shares a global threat snapshot and engages on actions to secure your business.

Come to this session to:

• Understand how the FBI views the global threat environment, and what they are doing to combat it 
• Discuss how CIOs can build partnerships - with government and their CISO peers - to build intelligence into your security posture 
• Articulate the role of the CIO in enterprise security management in the digital age

Digital transformation doesn’t have to be a drawn-out process. Reimagine how business can be done with data to maximize the impact of your established infrastructure and accelerate your digital transformation. This conversation between Bob Ridout former CIO for DuPont, and Niall Browne, chief information security officer for Domo, Inc. will provide guidance for developing cultural, technological and data strategies that deliver a measurable competitive advantage.

Learn how to:

• Identify and address the business, technology and culture issues required to succeed in digital transformation
• Deliver more by using what you already have to amplify value creation and keep pace with the market
• Fuel innovation by unleashing real-time data to business decision makers while maintaining the highest levels of security and control

As early as 2025, one-third of the global GDP ($60T) will be controlled and facilitated by companies exploiting digital product-led growth and business ecosystem operating models. Moving from IT projects to product-led growth is the first step towards realizing the power of business ecosystems and the opportunity to exploit IT as an enabler of growth, not merely a facilitator of automation and efficiency.

This interactive session explores: 

•  How IT product visionaries are succeeding at helping their organizations transition from project-based IT delivery to a modern digital product-led organization
•  How and why product-led growth strategies are powerful tools for eliminating corporate silo's and bureaucratic management practices
•  How digital product-led operating models are accelerating the discovery and exploitation of business models critical to revitalizing enterprise growth

Executive boardrooms are intimate and interactive sessions designed to foster dynamic dialogue around a specific, strategic topic. These private, closed-door discussions encourage attendee participation and are limited to 15 attendees (seating priority is given to C-level executives). To reserve your seat, please contact Mallory Paige, mallory.paige@evanta.com

When it comes to your digital imperative, the “why” is the easy part. Rapid value capture and agile flexibility are business-altering goals, but the journey there is as myriad as the companies taking it. In this session, CIOs will trade digital war stories and share what works – and what doesn’t – in the practical execution of digitization.

Come prepared to share:

• Tactics for making digital experimentation more meaningful and outcomes-focused
• Strategies for helping the business define – and be accountable to – a digital roadmap
• Tips and tricks for securing concrete “wins” – and scaling them quickly and effectively

Executive boardrooms are intimate and interactive sessions designed to foster dynamic dialogue around a specific, strategic topic. These private, closed-door discussions encourage attendee participation and are limited to 15 attendees (seating priority is given to C-level executives). To reserve your seat, please contact Mallory Paige, mallory.paige@evanta.com

All CIOs know how powerful transformation can be – it’s the reason you drive change in your organization’s every day. For John Phillips, transformation was a matter of life and death. Facing a frightening cancer diagnosis and an enormous cloud initiative, Phillips took stock of his life and his leadership to make meaningful change that lasts.

In this powerful session, Phillips shares:

• His personal cancer journey and the ways it changed his outlook on leadership
• The parallels between what it takes to conquer cancer and fundamentally reinvent the business
• Universal lessons from his experience that will help you transform your organizations

Toss out the manual on redundancies in the business process; RPA is automating its way to greater efficiencies and a brighter bottom line. This CIO boardroom is a mix of RPA advocates, early adopters and outside observers — joining forces to learn from each other and explore:

• How peers have deployed Robotic Process Automation— what has worked and what needs work
• How to measure the return on investment for automated processes
• How to overcome human barriers — such as employee engagement ­and leadership buy-in — to realize the full potential of RPA

Executive boardrooms are intimate and interactive sessions designed to foster dynamic dialogue around a specific, strategic topic. These private, closed-door discussions encourage attendee participation and are limited to 15 attendees (seating priority is given to C-level executives). To reserve your seat, please contact Mallory Paige, mallory.paige@evanta.com

In this paradigm of constant evolution, CIOs are spending more and more time managing change than implementing new technology. This demands yet another change – to CIOs themselves.

This interactive dialogue looks closely at:

• What makes change stick and how CIOs can make it more seamless and productive
• What it takes to influence a culture built to support business outcomes
• New demands of leadership specific to the digital context

Executive boardrooms are intimate and interactive sessions designed to foster dynamic dialogue around a specific, strategic topic. These private, closed-door discussions encourage attendee participation and are limited to 15 attendees (seating priority is given to C-level executives). To reserve your seat, please contact Mallory Paige, mallory.paige@evanta.com

As digital capabilities expand, CIOs have become stewards and translators of value – helping the business articulate value, strategize for execution and align tech investment accordingly. But there’s no “one size fits all” when it comes to value. To reinvent your business, you’ll need to see things through fresh eyes.

In this session, three CIOs will share:

• A unique case study on value creation – helping you to expand your thinking for the digital age
• Their view on the shifting role of the CIO as value-creator
• New perspectives on leveraging technology at all levels of the business