2026 Chicago CISO Community Executive Summit

CISOChicago CISO CommunityChicago CISO Programs

Collaborate with your peers

Get together with Chicago's top CISOs to tackle shared business challenges and critical priorities facing your role today. Participate in this one-day, local program with peer-driven topics and interactive discussions with your true C-level peers.

Join your peers to discuss the most critical issues impacting CISOs today:

Accelerate Exposure Management To Defend At Machine Speed

Unify AI Risk Into Existing Cyber Governance Practices

Optimize Cybersecurity Portfolios Through Outcome-Driven Investment Strategies

Governing Body Co-Chairs

Ricardo Lafosse

Kraft Heinz
CISO

Chris Lugo

Blue Cross Blue Shield Association
VP, CISO

Jesse Magenheimer

State Farm
VP & CISO

Bill Podborny

Constellation Brands
CISO

Angela Williams

UL Solutions
SVP, Global CISO

Mike Zachman

Zebra Technologies
VP & Chief Security Officer

What to Expect

Interactive Sessions

Hear from CISO practitioners and thought leaders on how they're solving critical challenges impacting your role today in Keynote sessions, and join smaller, interactive discussions with your peers in Breakout and Boardroom sessions.

Community Networking

Make new connections and catch up with old friends in casual conversations during dedicated time for networking designed to better acquaint you with your Chicago CISO community.

Peer-to-Peer Meetings

Connect with like-minded peers in a private, one-on-one setting through Peer-to-Peer Meetings. You will be matched with peers in your community based on your shared interests and priorities.

Agenda

Coming Soon

The CISO Executive Summit agendas are driven by the mission-critical priorities identified among the community. Each agenda is uniquely crafted By CISOs, For CISOs®, and will be available closer to the gathering. All topics and sessions will be inspired by the following themes.

Accelerate Exposure Management To Defend At Machine Speed

Attacker timelines have eclipsed human-centered vulnerability management models. CISOs must redesign exposure management to move past reactive, static scoring. By enforcing shorter remediation SLAs, automating response actions, and correlating exposures, organizations can eliminate bottlenecks and neutralize AI-driven exploitation before attackers act.

Unify AI Risk Into Existing Cyber Governance Practices

As AI adoption accelerates, creating isolated AI security policies fragments risk management and slows decision-making. CISOs must establish formal ownership over AI cybersecurity risks by evolving existing cyber GRC practices. Integrating threat-informed assessments and AI literacy into unified registers ensures secure innovation while maintaining comprehensive board-level visibility.

Optimize Cybersecurity Portfolios Through Outcome-Driven Investment Strategies

Facing economic headwinds and growing technological complexity, CISOs must transition from traditional rollover budgeting to strategic cost optimization. By eliminating overlapping vendor capabilities and utilizing outcome-driven metrics, cybersecurity leaders can negotiate protection level agreements with executives, ensuring investments directly advance organizational resilience and deliver measurable enterprise value.

Apply to Participate

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Apply to participate in the Chicago CISO Community Executive Summit.

Gartner facilitates exclusive, C-level communities by personally qualifying and understanding the priorities, challenges and interests of each member.

Our selective approach maintains the high quality of the network and ensures top-level discussions with peers from the world’s leading organizations.

Each application will be reviewed, and once your participation is confirmed, you will have access to year-round community programs.