Houston CIO Executive Summit

In today’s dynamic business landscape, the synergy between CFOs and CIOs is crucial for shaping enterprise technology investments and driving innovation. Collaboration is essential for aligning financial strategies with technological advancements.

Join this session to explore:

• Strengthening the CFO-CIO relationship to make data-driven decisions on emerging technologies and ROI
• Harmonizing views on IT investments and driving results-driven projects
• Communicating business and technology priorities

While many CEOs are tasking the business to advance digital priorities, challenges block progress due to legacy IT, transitioning to the cloud, and the unrelenting task of IT operations. Breaking the bottleneck of transformation is not straightforward, but creating ownership with the wider business can prove to be a winning strategy.

Join this session to discuss:

• Balancing and aligning IT and enterprise priorities
• Incorporating the wider business to drive its own digital priorities
• Collaborating across the C-Suite to meet enterprise goals

Lisa Thompson is a high-altitude mountaineer and former healthcare executive who beat cancer months before standing on the summit of Everest. Lisa later became the first all-American woman to summit K2, which is considered the deadliest mountain in the world. In her talks and book, “Finding Elevation,” Lisa shares the experience of climbing the toughest mountains in the world and the importance of teamwork, resilience and defining boundaries.

Join this keynote session to learn about the importance of:

• Embracing change and overcoming challenges
• Creating a supportive environment inside and outside the office
• Defining clear roles and goals to build a strong, communicative team

Integrating a complex ecosystem across all security areas can optimize defenses without simplifying adversaries’ challenges. This approach balances robust security with efficiency, crucial for navigating generative AI and tech advancements. Achieving this requires strategic selection and consolidation of platforms to enhance agility, reduce risk, and maintain cost-effectiveness.

In this session, you’ll learn:

• The composition of an effective security architecture
• Value you can derive from a converged networking and security platform
• Common consolidation mistakes people make and how to avoid them

Unstructured data is the essence of your business — files like product roadmaps, financial spreadsheets, customer surveys and employee records. Fragmented content across the business leads to security risks and high costs, making AI integration seem impossible. However, intelligent content management makes an AI-powered content strategy feasible.

Join this session to learn about:

• Identifying unstructured data sources and tools
• Developing robust security measures for internal and external data use
• Balancing AI with existing architecture to optimize unstructured data technology

CIOs play a pivotal role in leveraging Digital & AI to unlock new opportunities, streamline processes and show big value to the business. Pragati Mathur, Chief Digital & Information Officer at ConocoPhillips, will share about their multi prong digital and AI approach.

Join this session to hear about:

• How AI fits into the digital journey 
• Cybersecurity considerations within your AI strategy
• Accelerating the digital business through innovation

CIOs must balance IT costs and innovation while strengthening operational excellence. In this session, Lise Monahan shares her leadership philosophy on running IT like a business to create value.

Join this fireside chat to learn about:

• Managing and building stakeholder partnerships
• Creating a baseline for portfolio and financial management to build for the future
• Embracing advocacy to lead teams to success