Winners' Circle

Ben Chodor, CEO of CallRevu, is helping transform how over 6,000 automotive dealerships convert conversations into revenue. In an industry where a single missed call can mean a lost sale, his team is using AI to analyze millions of customer interactions in real time, uncover blind spots, and coach employees to perform at a higher level. In this episode, Russ and Ben break down how call data has be...

Prashant Desale leads health and benefits engineering at WEX, an enterprise technology solutions company serving millions of employees managing HSAs, FSAs, COBRA, and benefits administration. His team recently built an AI-powered claims processing system that reduced reimbursement time from days or weeks down to 10 to 15 seconds, using a team of eight people over about six months. In this episode,...

In this episode of the Winner’s Circle, Russ Fordyce sits down with Alex Walker of Aligned Data Centers, a 2026 BIG Innovation Award winner, to explore what it takes to build the infrastructure powering the AI era. From major construction projects in Phoenix to the demands of hyperscale computing, Alex shares how data centers evolve from raw land into critical assets supporting global connectivity...

In this episode of the Winner’s Circle , Russ Fordyce sits down with Scott Moore , a leader at Clearspeed , to discuss their Big Innovation Award-winning voice technology. Unlike traditional AI that predicts behavior based on historical data or social profiling, Clearspeed uses a unique, language-agnostic approach to measure real-time neurophysiological responses—essentially a "fight or flight" si...

In this Winners Circle episode, host Russ Fordyce sits down with Anna Nielsen, VP of Product at Anteriad and a multi award winner, to explore how B2B marketing is evolving through AI, intent data, and smarter campaign execution. Anna shares how Anteriad’s marketing cloud platform connects data, activation, and analytics to help marketers reach the right buyers at the right time. You will hear how...

In this Winners Circle episode, host Russ Fordyce talks with Brandon Sawalich, President and CEO of Starkey and Innovation Award winner, about how a small basement startup founded in 1967 became a global leader in hearing health and AI powered technology. Brandon shares his journey from a 19 year old repair lab intern to CEO and why Starkey remains a caring technology company focused on helping pe...

In this Winners Circle episode, host Russ Fordyce talks with Brian Hill, Field CISO at BlackCloak and Innovation Award winner, about one of the biggest blind spots in corporate security: the executive’s home. BlackCloak’s mission is to “protect the other 12 hours of the family’s day,” closing the gap between hardened corporate environments and vulnerable personal lives where executives, spouses, a...

Guest: Terrence McCrossan, CEO of Oversight | 2026 BIG Innovation Award Winner Most CFOs think they know where the money is going. They don't. Terrence McCrossan runs Oversight — the AI platform that monitors 100% of corporate transactions in near real-time and surfaces the fraud, errors, and waste that manual audits have been missing for years. From AI-generated fake receipts to $500K fat-finger...

In this Winners Circle episode, host Russ Fordyce talks with Bill Anderson of Mattermost about what secure collaboration looks like when failure is not an option. Mattermost powers mission-critical workflows for defense, government, and high-security enterprises that need far more than basic chat to keep people, operations, and data safe. Bill explains how Mattermost became the place where distrib...

Marty Puranik has seen every wave of the internet — dial-up, T1s, colocation, cloud — and now AI. As Founder and CEO of Atlantic.net and a 2026 BIG Innovation Award winner, Marty has spent three decades building secure, HIPAA-compliant cloud infrastructure for healthcare and biotech. Today, that foundation is becoming mission-critical as AI agents start making life-or-death decisions in hospital s...

In this episode, Russ speaks with AWS Senior Technical Account Manager and streaming AI specialist Harshit Kohli about the emerging role of the Model Context Protocol in enterprise AI. The conversation explores why AI deployments stall inside large organizations, how MCP changes the architectural map, and what enterprises should expect as streaming intelligence becomes mainstream. Kohli also break...

In this episode of The Winner’s Circle , Russ Fordyce sits down with Joshua Turiano, SVP of AI at BlueStream Fiber, to talk about how the company turned AI from a buzzword into a practical operating advantage. As a 2026 BIG Innovation Award winner, BlueStream Fiber is being recognized not just for the tech itself, but for a team-first approach that focuses on helping people work faster, smarter, a...

LD walks through the rise of enterprise grade AI agents, how banks are now underwriting loans in days instead of months, why humans are “just another model,” and what a future marketplace of reusable, chainable agents will unlock. The conversation ranges from semantic models to trust, from document intelligence to portfolio level decision making, and finishes with a surprisingly optimistic view of...

The renewable energy market is booming — but most solar and storage assets are quietly underperforming, and nobody knows it. Alon Mashkovich, CEO and Co-Founder of enSights, is on a mission to change that. A 2026 BIG Innovation Award winner, enSights built an energy business management platform that gives asset owners real-time visibility, clean data, and actionable insights across their entire po...

Imagine a world where crops can text their farmers when they’re feeling sick—weeks before a human eye can spot a single symptom. In this episode, we sit down with Shely Aronov , the visionary CEO and co-founder of InnerPlant , to discuss how her company is turning crops into living sensors. By tapping into a plant's natural immune system and adding a "line of code," InnerPlant enables soybeans and...

Going through a merger, restructure, or career transition? Executive coach Ruth Redding has survived eight major M&As and now helps leaders navigate organizational change with confidence. In this episode, Ruth shares her new Change Accelerator program designed to help executives thrive during uncertainty—not just survive it. Discover Ruth's three-circle framework for managing anxiety during ch...

In this episode, host Russ Fordyce of the Business Intelligence Group brings together a powerhouse panel to tackle one of the most urgent challenges in modern customer experience: How do we make AI and humans work together without losing context, connection, or quality? With AI now embedded in every touchpoint—from call centers to underwriting to enterprise-scale CX—organizations are struggling wi...

In this episode of the Winners' Circle , host Russ Fordyce sits down with Daniel Ziv , Global VP of AI and Analytics at Verint , to discuss the revolutionary impact of Generative AI on the customer experience (CX) landscape. Verint recently took home an award from the Business Intelligence Group for GenieBot , a tool that is turning decades of "bottlenecked" call center data into actionable busine...

In this Winners Circle episode, host Russ Fordyce sits down with Tasneem Chital, Head of Product at Simplify Healthcare, to unpack how her team is reinventing one of the least glamorous yet most critical parts of healthcare operations: regulated member documentation. Tasneem explains why documents like summaries of benefits and evidence of coverage are not just “paperwork” but high stakes legal co...

In this Winners Circle episode, host Russ Fordyce sits down with Omer Kehat, VP of Product at Revuze, to explore how AI is transforming voice of the customer from static dashboards into an always on decision engine. Omer shares the journey of evolving a decade old SaaS platform into an AI powered system that helps brands understand not just what is happening in their business, but why it is happen...

In this Winners Circle episode, host Russ Fordyce sits down with Samantha Clarke, Head of Partnerships at VDURA and 2025 Herizon Award winner, to talk about what it really takes to feed the GPU hungry world of AI and HPC. Samantha shares how her journey from hands on engineer in New Zealand, designing and launching electronic ovens, to global partnerships leader in high performance data has shaped...

Join host Russ Fordyce as he sits down with Franck Leveiller, Chief Scientific Officer and Global Head of R&D at Alcon, the 2026 BIG Innovation Awards Overall Winner. Discover how Alcon's Unity VCS console is revolutionizing operating room efficiency by combining two separate surgical systems into one modular platform with over 12 first-ever innovations. Franck shares insights on co-creating w...

In this Winners Circle episode, host Russ Fordyce sits down with Amanda McGuckin Hager, CRO and CMO of TrueDialog, to unpack the future of business texting and why SMS remains one of the most intimate and powerful communication channels brands have. Amanda explains how cultural shifts away from phone calls and email are driving a surge in business text messaging, especially among students and youn...

Summary In this conversation, Russ Fordyce and Eliana Starbird discuss the importance of awards in branding and employee recognition, particularly in the context of the upcoming 2026 budget season. They explore various award categories, including Best Places to Work, AI Excellence, and Sustainability Awards, emphasizing the strategic benefits of each. The discussion highlights the role of employee...

Chief Commercial Officer Laurie Oswald joins host Ruth Redding on Winners Circle to talk about leading commercial transformation at two century old companies, C and D Technologies and Trojan Battery Company, while championing women in leadership and global diversity. ​ Laurie shares how she oversees sales, marketing, product, customer service and inside sales across both businesses, powering criti...