CDOIQ Newsletter, July 2025 vol. I

CDOIQ-Kipi Executive Dinner

The Future of Agentic Systems

Hyatt Regency Cambridge, MA, USA

July 16th, Wednesday | 7:30 PM - 9:30 PM ET

You are very cordially invited to attend the CDOIQ-Kipi Executive Dinner.  This exclusive fireside chat and dinner—hosted by Kipi.ai, WNS, Snowflake, and CDOIQ—will explore one of the most intriguing and timely topics in AI: The Rise of Agentic Systems. This session is designed for senior data and AI leaders seeking to move beyond buzzwords and into the architecture of tomorrow’s intelligent enterprises.

Join us for an evening of thought leadership and executive networking with speakers from WNS, data.world, and other leading organizations.

Featured CDOIQ Presentations

Data-Driven Transformation in Digital Payments: Insights from Industry Leaders

Eileen Vidrine, CEO, Vidrine Vantage and Former Air Force Chief Data and AI Officer (CDAO), Department of Air Force

Bett Hiatt, Head of Global Data Governance, PayPal

Bob Hedges, Chief Data Officer, Visa

The financial services landscape has undergone unprecedented transformation, with digital payments becoming the backbone of global commerce. As transaction volumes surge and customer expectations evolve, leading payment companies are leveraging advanced data analytics, artificial intelligence, and real-time processing capabilities to drive innovation, enhance security, and deliver personalized experiences.

This panel brings together senior data and analytics leaders from Visa and PayPal—two giants that collectively process billions of transactions annually—to share insights on how they harness data to solve complex business challenges. Panelists will discuss their approaches to building scalable data architectures, implementing AI/ML solutions for fraud detection and risk management, and creating data products that serve both internal stakeholders and external partners.

Key topics will include the evolution of data governance in highly regulated environments, strategies for real-time analytics at massive scale, the role of data in driving financial inclusion initiatives, and emerging trends in payment analytics. Attendees will gain practical insights into how these organizations balance innovation with compliance, manage data privacy across global markets, and transform raw transaction data into actionable business intelligence.

This session is designed for CDOs, data leaders, and analytics professionals seeking to understand how world-class financial institutions approach data strategy, overcome technical challenges, and create competitive advantages through data-driven decision making.

Putting Enterprise Data to Work:

A CDO's Guide to Accelerating Safe AI

Jack Berkowitz

Chief Data Officer, Securiti

In 2025 AI development and adoption continues at a breakneck pace. As more powerful and data hungry AI’s are increasingly able to reason, plan and act, CDO’s must stay ahead and protect their data from new and complex vulnerabilities. Traditional security measures do not address the realities of AI’s.

This session will cover vital topics such as: How to effectively discover, classify, and manage all enterprise data+AI assets? How can sensitive data be processed and utilized by AI tools without exposing it to the wrong people? How to build system-level security to protect against evolving attacks? How to remain compliant with new regulations?

Join Jack Berkowitz, Chief Data Officer at Securiti, as he delineates a strategic roadmap for CDOs to navigate the complexities of competing in the AI era and accelerating the development of safe, responsible AI.

Key Insights:

• Securing AI demands a paradigm shift to address new vulnerabilities.
• Protecting sensitive data in AI requires a strong foundation of data security.
• Robust Data+AI governance can be an innovation accelerator

Strategic Leadership in Data:

Navigating Change, Complexity, and Culture

Murali Vridhachalam

VP & IT Head of Cloud, Data, & Analytics

Gilead Sciences

The convergence of cloud, data, and AI is transforming the pharmaceutical industry—unlocking new potential across drug discovery, development, commercialization, and operations. At Gilead, we’ve embraced this transformation through a unified platform strategy, leveraging a data mesh architecture to break down silos, accelerate collaboration, and scale innovation.

In this session, we’ll share how Gilead is applying traditional machine learning, generative AI, and agentic AI to drive real business value. From platform modernization to scalable data governance, we’ll explore how our integrated approach is delivering measurable outcomes: faster time-to-insight, enhanced decision-making, and increased revenue-generating opportunities.

We’ll also look ahead at what’s next—highlighting immediate opportunities for AI deployment, emerging use cases, and the cultural and operational shifts needed to thrive in this new era. Whether you’re a technology leader or business stakeholder, join us for a practical and forward-looking conversation on how cloud, data, and AI are powering the future of pharmaceutical innovation.

Accelerating AI Innovation:

Building Trusted Data Foundations with AWS

Atif Salam

Enterprise Technologist and CxO Advisor, AWS

As organizations accelerate their adoption of AI and autonomous AI systems, data leaders face critical decisions about their data infrastructure. This session explores how AWS customers have successfully built robust data foundations that support trusted analytics and AI operations at scale. Drawing from real-world examples, we’ll discuss strategic approaches to unlock enterprise-wide data value, from accelerating AI-ready data preparation to implementing effective governance and enabling confident enterprise deployment.

AI’s Hidden Price Tag:

How Data Quality Can Make or Break ROI

Gorkem Sevinc, CEO, Qualytics

Renée Colwell, Global Data Quality Lead, Revantage

As organizations race to adopt AI, many overlook the hidden cost sabotaging results: poor data quality. In this session, Gorkem Sevinc, CEO of Qualytics and serial tech founder, joins Renée Colwell, Global Data Quality Lead at Revantage (a Blackstone company), to unpack how data quality directly impacts AI performance and ROI. With insights from both a platform innovator and an enterprise leader, they’ll share lessons on building scalable, proactive data quality programs that keep AI on track—and budgets intact.

Powering AI, Analytics, and Operations

with a Data Quality Framework

Alla Zaykin

Data Governance Practice Manager, Athena Solutions

Cynthia Schmidt

Data Governance Director, Athena Solutions

We will introduce a modern Data Quality Framework (DQF) model built to operationalize data quality by embedding it into workflows and assigning clear business ownership. In the race to implement AI, fast-track analytics, and streamline operations, many organizations overlook a critical risk. The impact of poor data quality shows up in failed projects, stalled dashboards, and widespread distrust, yet the root cause often remains undiagnosed. Most enterprises already employ data quality tools, but without structure, these tools become siloed, reactive, and disconnected from business outcomes. This session makes the case that what’s missing isn’t another tool, but a sustainable capability for producing clean, trusted data across the enterprise. Attendees will leave with a practical vision for a strategic framework that powers AI, analytics, and operational excellence.

Your Data SLAs Are Wrong - A Fail Safe Way to Fix Them

Paul Walker, Head of GTM, Pantomath

Most data teams still measure success with stale, one-size-fits-all SLAs – “five nines” uptime, vague data-quality thresholds. The result? You find out something’s broken when a business user does, and by then it’s already costing time, money, and credibility.

This session shows why those legacy SLAs miss the mark and lays out a fail safe approach that combines Pantomath’s real-time pipeline observability to automate data operations. You’ll see how automated lineage, anomaly detection, and root-cause analysis trigger ITSM workflows the moment an issue appears, routing context-rich incidents to the right owner and kicking off self-service fixes. The outcome is a living SLA that adapts to workload priority, business impact, and governance requirements – no more static targets, no more firefighting.

Final Data Quality Check

Colleagues: We are more than a week away from the 19th Annual CDOIQ Symposium. Below is the current draft of the symposium proceedings that we can share to the attendees. All registered attendees will receive a final copy of the symposium proceedings a week before the symposium.

📢Attention Sponsors and Speakers:

✔ Review your session details by clicking the links below

✔ Submit any changes or corrections ASAP

CDOIQ Symposium Sponsor Exhibit Theater

We are thrilled to hold the Sponsor Exhibit Theater with in-person presentations at the Amesbury Ballroom, Hyatt Regency Cambridge, MA. This Exhibit Theater aims to enable CDOIQ sponsors to showcase their innovations, demos, and more. Be sure to mark your calendars and join them onsite!

3rd CCDO Professional Program

We are now in full swing for the 3rd CCDO Professional Program and accepting participants. Enhance your skills and advance your career with our comprehensive curriculum designed for aspiring Chief Data Officers. Take the next step in your data leadership journey and register today!

Previous Newsletters

Check out our previous 2025 CDOIQ Symposium newsletters to see confirmed speakers and get more details. Stay informed and be ready for an exciting event!

The 19th CDOIQ Symposium is held in collaboration with

MIT Industrial Liaison Program, MIT Horizon, MIT Sloan CIO Symposium, Citizant, and UCSD SPARK AI

https://cdoiq-2025.org/

Join the CDO LinkedIn Group