The Reboot Chronicles with Dean DeBiase

Charles D. Smith spent his career as one of the NBA's premier shot blockers and an Olympian, but the transformation that defined his second act required something far more difficult than anything he faced on the court. After retiring from professional basketball, Smith spent seven years in therapy rebuilding how he thought, communicated, and led, a process he describes not as a transition but...

The conversation around artificial intelligence has shifted. It is no longer a question of what AI can do, it is a question of where it belongs inside an organization and how to integrate it into the fundamental operating system of a business. Brian Bryson, principal technology analyst at MIT Technology Review, has been tracking that shift closely, and his conclusion is clear: AI is no longer a te...

Eric Schimpf left the Army on a Friday and walked into Merrill Lynch as a trainee on the following Monday morning. With no transition period, no legacy track, no shortcuts, just two suits, three ties, and a rusted-out Jeep he was encouraged to park several blocks away from the office. Thirty-two years later, Schimpf is president of Merrill Wealth Management, overseeing 25,000 associates, 1.7 milli...

The technology research and advisory industry is being rebuilt from the ground up, and Daniel Newman is leading that charge from the inside. As CEO of Futurum, Newman has spent the last several years transforming what was once a traditional media and analysis firm into a real-time AI-powered intelligence platform serving technology buyers, enterprise investors, and the world's largest technolo...

Few journalists have spent more time inside the power centers of American finance than Justin Baer. As a senior editor at the Wall Street Journal, Baer has covered the biggest banks, brokers, and asset managers in the world, from the post-2008 regulatory battles to the pandemic economic shocks that rewrote the rules of investing almost overnight. His reporting has taken him inside Goldman Sachs, M...

Few executives bring the range of perspective that Mari Cross carries into the C-suite. As Chief Customer Officer at Infor, a roughly $3.5 billion enterprise software company with 17,000 employees, 2,000 partners, and 60,000 clients across 175 countries, Cross leads customer success, value engineering, and transformation teams spanning some of the most complex industries in the world.  From discre...

Few people have spent more time inside the minds of the world's most powerful leaders than Jeffrey Sonnenfeld. As Senior Associate Dean and Lester Crown Professor at Yale School of Management and Founder of the Chief Executive Leadership Institute, Sonnenfeld has advised five US presidents and thousands of chief executives navigating crisis, succession, geopolitical shocks, and the ever-shifting e...

The future of journalism is being reimagined real time, with rising stars like Morgan Brennan leading the way. As anchor of CNBC's Morning Call and host of Manifest Space podcast, Brennan brings a rare combination of editorial instinct, policy fluency, and operator-level curiosity to one of the most consequential shifts in modern media history. Having covered defense and emerging space economies f...

The global financial system is being rebuilt from the ground up, and Heath Tarbert is helping lead that effort As President of Circle , the company behind USDC, the world's second largest regulated stablecoin, Tarbert brings a rare combination of regulatory authority, legal prowess, and market experience to one of the most consequential shifts in modern finance. Having served as Chairman of the CF...

Eric Winter didn't take one path. He took all of them.  At once. The actor, best known as the no-nonsense Sergeant Tim Bradford on ABC's smash hit The Rookie, was once a pre-med student at UCLA on track to become a doctor. Then nearly a paramedic with the LA Fire Department, then a model, a soap opera actor, parallel paths until something clicked. While producing TV movies, pitching shows,...

Jamie Siminoff had bet everything; his savings, his family's security, and his reputation, on reinventing a device from the 1800s. At the time, he had no salary, almost no cash, and a company on the edge of bankruptcy. He had been rejected on Shark Tank with only days of runway left, not to mention a court-enforced restraining order from ADT effectively halting sales. He had $187,000 in the ba...

The warning signs were there, but the fall was still dramatic. A telecom powerhouse that once traded at $50 had slipped to nearly a dollar, burdened by debt, declining revenue, and a legacy architecture that couldn’t keep pace with the data-driven world emerging around it. Internally, the mission narrowed to survival — renew contracts, slow the erosion, hold the line. But survival mode doesn’t win...

Most global technology companies start as tight-knit engineering teams, but only a few manage to scale into organizations of tens of thousands without facing moments that fundamentally reshape how they operate. Growth at that level is about navigating inflection points that test a company’s identity, resilience, and ability to adapt. Rapid expansion, unexpected crises, and shifting market forces a...

As AI adoption accelerates, the industry is gaining speed—but so is the challenge of separating substantive innovation from the surrounding noise. While today’s language models excel at generating text, many still fall short when the work requires scientific accuracy, computational rigor, or decisions with material business impact. That performance gap is where enterprise value—and competitive adv...

When one of the world’s largest antimony mines went offline, the world didn’t just lose a mineral source—it exposed a geopolitical fault line. China, which controlled the mine and most of the global supply, began restricting exports as reserves tightened. Suddenly, the materials behind ammunition, advanced optics, semiconductor manufacturing, and even renewable energy systems were in question. A m...

The best reboots don’t start with a flashy roadmap. They require honesty and reflection with courage to make consequential decisions swiftly.  When a company is bleeding cash, stuck in the past, and getting further from what customers want, you eventually hit a fork in the road. Do you strip it down and rebuild, or walk away and call it a day? It’s a tough decision as it forces leaders become refo...

The global economy doesn’t run on boardrooms. It runs on the people who keep the real world moving. They’re the ones staffing hospitals and elder care centers, keeping restaurants humming through the dinner rush, unloading trucks before sunrise, and holding retail together during the most chaotic shopping weeks of the year. They are essential — and they are everywhere. Yet for decades, the systems...

AI and digital transformation are no longer operating in a vacuum. They are unfolding inside a world shaped by geopolitical pressure, economic coercion, and state-driven competition. CEOs are being forced to make technology, supply chain, and capital allocation decisions that carry consequences far beyond quarterly results. In this environment, leadership failure is rarely about a lack of informat...

In a world where the pace of change is compressed into weeks vs years, we can’t help but consider how to stay relevant and on top of innovation so as to not be outpaced.  The AI conversation in the broader marketplace is centered around models, tools and code however in the boardroom and breakrooms, the real story is anchored in the human factor.  How to remain relevant, add value, drive change to...

Industrial distribution rarely makes headlines, yet it quietly powers nearly every corner of the modern economy. When factories run, hospitals operate, and infrastructure stands strong, it’s because an intricate and largely invisible supply network is performing as intended. . Today, that network is under pressure from rising customer expectations, global volatility, and rapid advances in artifici...

If life had a reset button, would you hit it? Would you have the courage to create parallel paths of greatness giving up the known to pursue your life’s passion? Buckle up for a motivational locker room like discussion with  Joe Moglia  this weeks guest on the Reboot Chronicles. A leader who’s proven, time and again, that reinvention isn’t just possible, it’s powerful. His career spans two worlds...

American capitalism is almost always under scrutiny—whether it’s debates over how to define it or questions about whether it truly serves the average worker. That scrutiny has only intensified in an era where a handful of tech giants dominate entire markets and artificial intelligence sparks both opportunity and anxiety. Confidence in capitalism has wavered, but our next guest on  The Reboot Chron...

For years, modern medicine has promised certainty—more data, sharper diagnostics, faster answers. Yet some spiritual moments defy logic and explanation. Instances where coma patients awaken after weeks of silence, or individuals once immobilized by Lewy Body disease rise and walk with strength. These are modern-day miracles, often grounded in faith and prayer, reminding us that healing can transce...

Supermarkets and grocery stores are a staple of our daily lives. They are a business that most visit weekly and are so used to that they can navigate the aisles blindfolded. This familiarity is due in part to the fact that grocery stores can go decades without modifying their layout. It is the exact type of industry that needs a reboot to bring it into 21st century consumer demands. Imagine an int...

Building on our recent global markets episodes, we now turn to one of the most urgent and fascinating conversations of our time: energy. From powering nations to fueling the explosive growth of AI, the energy sector is at the center of innovation, geopolitics, and technological transformation. As data centers expand and tech giants demand ever more power, the question of how we generate, manage, a...