CIO & CISO Think Tank

The Future of IT & Cybersecurity

Date

September 24, 2026

Location

Chicago, IL

Community

CIO / CISO

Agenda

September 24, 2026
All times Central Time
8:30 AM-9:00 AM
Registration
9:00 AM-9:30 AM
Morning Networking
9:30 AM-9:40 AM
Opening Remarks
9:40 AM-10:05 AM
Vision Voices Keynote
From AI Pilots to AI P&L: Driving Measurable Business Value from Enterprise AI

Most enterprises now have hundreds of AI pilots and a handful of production deployments. Few can quantify the actual financial return. As budgets tighten and boards demand accountability, CIOs are under pressure to convert experimentation into measurable revenue, cost savings, and productivity gains. This session presents a disciplined approach to AI value capture - identifying the workflows where AI delivers durable economic impact, structuring measurement frameworks that hold up to CFO scrutiny, and shutting down pilots that consume resources without producing results. Attendees will gain a concrete model for moving AI from line-item expense to line-item contribution.

10:10 AM-10:55 AM
Panel
The Agentic Enterprise: Reengineering Operations for Autonomous AI Workflows

Agentic AI is moving from demo to deployment, and the implications for enterprise operations are profound. Autonomous systems that perceive, decide, and act without human intervention require fundamentally different process design, control structures, and accountability models than any previous technology. This panel brings together CIOs and CISOs who are actively deploying agentic AI in production environments. They will discuss what works, what fails, and how to build the organizational scaffolding - governance, observability, kill switches, and human escalation paths - required to deploy autonomous systems at enterprise scale without losing control.

Panelists
Russ Felker

Speaker

Russ Felker

CTO

MegaCorp Logistics

Russ Felker is the Chief Technology Officer at MegaCorp Logistics, bringing over 30 years of experience as a CTO, founder, and strategic technology advisor. A versatile leader with a career spanning municipal government, healthcare, and the beauty industry, Russ specializes in leveraging technology to solve complex business problems. His core mission centers on utilizing innovative digital solutions to simultaneously enhance the customer experience and drive significant operational cost savings. Based in the Greater Chicago area, Russ is a passionate advocate for technology-led change and organizational evolution. Throughout his three-decade tenure, he has built a reputation for creating resilient technology frameworks that align with long-term business goals. Whether navigating the high-stakes logistics sector or advising startups, Russ remains dedicated to the transformative power of technology as a tool for both efficiency and human-centric service.
Satinder Singh

Speaker

Sonu Singh

SVP of IT

TheKey

Sonu is a proactive IT leader with deep experience in health and social care, known for driving business growth through effective IT strategy and technical expertise in global deployment, operations, and system migration. A pragmatic, hands-on operator, they excel at spotting improvement opportunities and leading diverse teams to deliver complex projects on time and on budget. With strong communication and relationship-building skills, Sonu specializes in scoping, planning, and budgeting large-scale IT infrastructure, platform integrations, and data migrations and consistently balancing stakeholder needs with cost and quality requirements from project inception through completion.
10:55 AM-11:15 AM
Coffee Break
11:15 AM-11:30 AM
Keynote
Responsible AI Enablement: Balancing Innovation, Governance, and Control in the Enterprise

CIOs face increasing pressure to deliver on the promise of generative AI while maintaining strong governance, visibility, and compliance. As browser-based AI tools proliferate across the workforce, the challenge has shifted from adoption to responsible enablement. Employees are integrating AI into workflows to achieve new efficiencies, but often through unapproved or unmanaged applications that expose the enterprise to data leakage and compliance risks.

In this session, CIOs and IT decision-makers will learn how to strike the right balance between productivity and control. This session will explore the operational, security, and compliance implications of “Shadow AI,” reveal how sensitive data finds its way out of the enterprise and into unauthorized AI tools, and share strategies for establishing policies that unlock AI’s potential safely. Attendees will leave with a clear understanding of how to maintain governance and visibility while empowering their organizations to capture the full business value of AI.

11:35 AM-12:20 PM
Panel
Cyber Resilience Beyond Recovery: Operating Through Attack, Not Just After

Traditional resilience planning ends at recovery time objectives. Modern resilience demands the ability to keep operating - safely and at full capacity- while an active attack is in progress. This panel explores how leading enterprises are building "operate through" capabilities: segmented architectures that isolate compromise, immutable data layers that resist encryption, communication channels that survive identity provider outages, and rehearsed muscle memory for sustained adversary contact. The conversation moves the resilience discussion from disaster recovery to continuous operations under pressure.

12:20 PM-1:20 AM
Lunch & Disruptor Showcase
1:25 PM-1:45 PM
Vision Voices
The CISO in the Boardroom: Navigating SEC Disclosure, Personal Liability, and Cyber Governance

The CISO role has been transformed by regulatory expansion. SEC disclosure requirements, expanded fiduciary expectations, and high-profile cases of personal liability have raised the stakes for every security executive. In this candid fireside chat, a sitting CISO and a board director discuss the new operating reality - what disclosure decisions actually look like in practice, how to structure documentation that protects the executive and the company, and how to build the kind of board relationship that holds up under regulatory and legal scrutiny. Honest, practical, and directly applicable to anyone operating in or aspiring to the CISO seat.

1:50 PM-2:05 PM
Disruptor
Eliminating Shadow AI: Visibility and Control Across the Enterprise GenAI Footprint

Employees are using AI tools faster than security teams can sanction them. Browser-based assistants, embedded copilots, and unsanctioned APIs now process sensitive enterprise data outside any governance framework. This session presents practical strategies for discovering, classifying, and governing the full AI footprint - turning shadow AI from a compliance crisis into a managed enablement program that captures productivity gains without surrendering control.

2:10 PM-2:55 PM
Panel
Deepfakes, Synthetic Identity, and the New Era of Social Engineering: A CISO Response Strategy

The convergence of generative AI with social engineering has produced a new class of attack: convincing voice clones impersonating executives, video deepfakes authorizing wire transfers, and synthetic identities passing standard verification. The financial and reputational damage is already measurable, and existing controls are insufficient. This panel brings together CISOs who have faced these attacks and the practitioners building the next generation of defenses. Topics include deepfake detection at scale, authentication architectures that resist synthetic identity, employee training that actually changes behavior, and the cross-functional response playbooks required when a high-fidelity impersonation lands.

2:55 PM-3:15 PM
Networking Break
3:15 PM-3:30 PM
Vision Voices
Powering Open Data Ecosystems with Agentic AI and Radical Transparency

As organizations and governments push for greater openness, data initiatives are shifting from passive repositories to dynamic engines of innovation. However, unlocking the true value of this data requires more than just making it public - it requires making it accessible, actionable, and intelligent.

This session explores the intersection of open data and next-generation data intelligence. We will dive into how autonomous AI agents are transforming raw datasets into real-time, conversational insights, bridging the gap between complex data structures and user accessibility. Attendees will discover how combining transparency with agentic AI not only drives collaborative innovation but also builds an unshakeable foundation of trust.

3:35 PM-4:20 PM
Panel
The AI Talent Stack: Rebuilding Engineering Teams for a GenAI-Native Workforce

As Generative AI transforms how organizations build software, manage data, and generate insights, the skills needed across engineering, data management, and data science are evolving just as quickly. Success now depends on more than technical expertise, it requires teams that can effectively collaborate with AI, build trusted data foundations, and turn intelligence into business outcomes. This session explores how technology and data leaders are redefining hiring, upskilling, team structures, and performance to prepare for a GenAI-native workforce, while balancing human expertise with AI augmentation to drive innovation, productivity, and long-term business value.

4:10 PM-4:20 PM
Closing Remarks & Raffle Giveaway
4:20 PM-5:30 PM
Cocktail Reception

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