The AI in Business Podcast

Today's guest is Carey Smith, Former President and CIO of XcelerateHealth and Chief Technology Innovation Officer (CTIO) of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota. XcelerateHealth is a health-tech startup and business unit of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota, focused on AI-driven digital products to transform healthcare insurance experiences. Carey joins Emerj's Nick Gertsch to discuss how...

Commercial life‑sciences teams are facing a widening gap between strong brand strategy and fragmented real‑world execution, driven by misaligned workflows, static targeting, and an inability to act at the speed patients move through their therapeutic journeys. In this episode, Philip Poulidis, CEO and Co-founder of ODAIA, unpacks how AI can close that gap by connecting brand intent to real‑time ex...

Today's guest is Raghu Ahobilam, Global Director of Inventory and Assets at NOV. Raghu brings global leadership experience across inventory management, asset strategy, and operational transformation in the energy and industrial manufacturing sector. Raghu joins Daniel Faggella Emerj CEO and Head of Research to examine how enterprise data foundations and emerging AI capabilities are reshaping maint...

Enterprise risk leaders are currently struggling to move beyond static, episodic checklists while managing the data "fire hose" generated by continuous monitoring. In this episode, Dean Alms, Chief Product Officer, and Eric Hensley, Chief Technology Officer at Aravo, break down how AI-native orchestration transforms fragmented risk data into a holistic, board-level resilience strategy. They examin...

Eliminating the friction caused by fragmented customer context is a primary mandate for enterprise operations leaders. Joe Atamian, Vice President at Comcast, joins the program to discuss the transition to an AI-first operating model — where AI acts as the connective infrastructure that maintains history and intent across IVR, chat, and live agents. This briefing explores how the Fortune 500 can m...

Today's guest is Hemant Banavar, Chief Product Officer at Motive. Hemant leads product strategy for AI-driven systems that bring real-time visibility and decision support to safety-critical physical operations. Hemant joins Emerj Editorial Director Matthew DeMello to unpack what changes when AI moves from after-the-fact reporting to edge-based, real-time detection and feedback — where accuracy and...

Today's guest is Umesh Rustogi, General Manager of Dragon for Nursing at Microsoft Health & Life Sciences. An expert in applying AI to clinical workflows, Umesh joins Emerj Editorial Director Matthew DeMello to explain how healthcare organizations are moving AI from pilot programs to real-world adoption. Umesh also shares practical strategies for reducing nurse documentation burden, improving accu...

Today's guest is Dan Keto, President and Co-founder at Easy Metrics , where he focuses on helping warehouse and distribution teams turn fragmented transactional data into a unified "single pane of glass" that supports faster diagnosis of variance and more defensible decision-making. Dan joins Emerj's Matthew DeMello to explore what a solid data foundation looks like in warehouse networks — and why...

Today's guest is Nishtha Jain, AI Innovation Leader. Nishtha leads enterprise data and AI strategy in the biopharma sector, focusing on aligning advanced analytics and AI systems with real-world clinical, regulatory, and operational workflows. Nishtha joins Emerj Client Narrative & Content Strategy Lead Nick Gertsch to examine why most enterprise AI pilots fail to scale, how unrealistic expectatio...

Today's guest is Stephen Wolfram, Founder and CEO of Wolfram Research. Wolfram is a pioneering computer scientist and physicist, best known for creating Mathematica and Wolfram|Alpha, and for decades of work on complexity, computation, and the foundations of how systems evolve. Stephen joins Emerj CEO and Head of Research Daniel Faggella to explore how simple computational rules can give rise to c...

Today's guest is Naveen Kumar, Head of AI Governance at TD Bank. With extensive experience in AI risk management and governance, he provides actionable strategies for secure AI scaling in regulated environments. Naveen joins Emerj Editorial Director Matthew DeMello to discuss foundational challenges blocking AI adoption in banking, including data leakage, prompt injection, shadow AI, and hallucina...

Today's guest is Dean Alms, Chief Product Officer at Aravo. Aravo is an enterprise software company focused on third-party risk management and compliance platforms that help organizations manage vendor, supplier, and partner ecosystems across regulatory, operational, and reputational risk domains. Dean joins Emerj Editorial Director Matthew DeMello to examine how third-party risk has evolved into...

Today's guest is Vijoy Pandey, Special Vice President and General Manager for Outshift by Cisco. Vijoy leads Cisco's internal incubation and strategy efforts focused on emerging technologies, platform development, and reducing technology and market risk as new capabilities move toward enterprise adoption. Vijoy joins Emerj Editorial Director Matthew DeMello to discuss how enterprises are shifting...

Today's guest is Gillian Hinkle, Senior Director of Growth & Digital Marketing for Heroku at Salesforce. Gillian brings extensive experience in enterprise growth strategy, digital operations, and the practical deployment of data and AI across complex marketing and revenue workflows. Gillian joins Emerj Editorial Director Matthew DeMello to explore how enterprise leaders can distinguish automation...

Today's guest is David Carmona, Vice President of Discovery & Quantum at Microsoft. David leads work at the intersection of AI, scientific discovery, and advanced computing, with a focus on scaling research innovation in complex, regulated environments. David joins Emerj Editorial Director Matthew DeMello to discuss how enterprise leaders should think about AI's role in transforming R&D beyond pro...

Today's guest is Ylan Kazi, Chief Data and AI Officer, Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Dakota. Ylan joins Emerj Client Narrative & Content Strategy Lead Nick Gertsch to explore balancing AI innovation with risk governance in regulated healthcare sectors. Ylan also shares practical takeaways like forming cross-functional teams for realistic policy development, applying an AI Hippocratic Oath by sta...

Today's guests are Daniel Lidar, Holder of the Viterbi Professorship of Engineering at USC, Director of the USC Center for Quantum Information Science & Technology, co-founder and CSO of Quantum Elements, Inc., and Izhar Medalsy, Co-founder and CEO of Quantum Elements. Quantum Elements develops tools to reduce noise in quantum computers for scalable performance. Daniel and Izhar join Emerj Editori...

Today's guest is Nina Edwards, Vice President of Emerging Technology and Innovation at Prudential Insurance. With decades of experience driving strategy, innovation, and AI-enabled growth at leading financial and consulting firms, Nina brings deep expertise in applied intelligence and emerging technology. Nina joins Emerj Editorial Director Matthew DeMello to discuss how enterprises can adopt AI s...

Today's guest is Thomas Holmes, Chief Actuary, North America at Akur8. Holmes works at the intersection of actuarial pricing, AI governance, and operationalizing analytics inside regulated insurance environments. Thomas joins Emerj Editorial Director Matthew DeMello to discuss how insurers move from AI experimentation to enterprise deployment — particularly when models must satisfy regulators, exe...

Today's guest is Emma Vitalini, Head of Global Digital Health Technology Innovation at Amgen, where she leads initiatives at the intersection of digital health, data strategy, and clinical innovation. Emma joins Emerj Editorial Senior Editor Marilie Fouche to explore how data and AI are reshaping patient recruitment, consent, and execution in clinical trials, with a focus on decentralized models,...

Today's guest is Vasili Triant, CEO of UJET . UJET is a next-generation cloud contact center platform leveraging AI to modernize customer experiences. Vasili joins Emerj Editorial Director Matthew DeMello to unpack the shift from reactive customer service to proactive, data-driven engagement — and why the transition matters for enterprises rethinking the role of their contact centers. The conversa...

Today's guest is Rommel Ong, Regional Service Director at Belimed. Belimed provides sterilization and infection control solutions for healthcare facilities. Rommel joins Emerj Editorial Director Matthew DeMello to explore how data and AI address field service challenges like staffing shortages, paperwork burdens, and capturing tribal knowledge from veteran technicians. Rommel also shares practical...

Today's guest is Thomas Holmes, Chief Actuary for North America at Akur8 . Holmes focuses on how actuarial teams can modernize pricing and reserving with automation and AI while maintaining governance and actuarial soundness. Thomas joins Emerj Editorial Director Matthew DeMello to discuss why pricing and reserving modernization is hard to execute in practice, and how insurers can adopt AI with th...

Today's guest is Prukalpa Sankar, Co-Founder & CEO at Atlan . Atlan is a metadata platform delivering data and AI governance. Combining enterprise data with AI infrastructure with business context and security, Atlan allows humans and AI agents to find, trust, and govern data across the entire enterprise. Prukalpa joins Emerj Editorial Director Matthew DeMello to unpack why so many enterprise AI p...

Today's guest is Vaithi Bharath, Associate Director of Data Science & AI Solutions at Bayer. Bharath joins Emerj Editorial Director Matthew DeMello to break down why clinical R&D timelines often slip for reasons that have little to do with model performance. Rather, delays compound when data moves across fragmented systems, teams rely on slow handoffs, and validation requirements turn minor adjust...