Stories in AI by Ganesh Padmanabhan

The Future of AI & Healthcare | Mini Suri | Stories in AI

Mini Suri, Co-founder and CEO of Velmeni, joins me to talk about the future of AI and healthcare. Mini started Velmeni with the intention of solving digital problems within the dental industry. With her expertise, we were able to discuss complex topics around healthcare data management and privacy and how AI will continue to impact the world of health.
 
About Mini Suri:
Mini Suri, a brilliant contributor to the tech industry, is an innovative trailblazer in AI/ML/NLP Automation and an advocate for the betterment of others. Mini’s deep experience and creative inspiration have led VELMENI to the forefront of AI healthcare through predictive and analytical artificial intelligence in dentistry.
VELMENI’s platform is evolving as the standard-bearer for dental practices. Mini has acted as Chief Customer Officer at KORE.ai, head of IA for Uber, and Senior Vice President at Citi.
With an MBA from MIT’s Sloan School, she provides VELMENI with deep-tech strategy, financial skills, and hands-on operational management. A doer and problem-solver, Mini leads product development, raises capital fosters a high-performance culture, and is building the most talented team in the industry.
As a Board Member at TiE Silicon Valley and throughout her career, Mini has brought big-picture thinking to foster technology entrepreneurship, youth engagement, and women’s leadership initiatives—including The Hunger Project to eradicate world hunger and establish women as a force for change-making. This includes establishing the first robotics and STEM education for girls.
Find more at: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/minisuri/
 
A note about our sponsors:
A big thank you to Experian, whom you may know as the credit bureau, but they are at heart a data company. When you are buying a car or a home, sending your kids to college or borrowing to grow your business, Experian is most likely helping you behind the scenes. They unlock the power of data, to make better decisions, get access to financial services, and to prevent crime, unlocking a whole world of opportunities for individuals and organizations.
Learn more at https://Experian.com.

Future of eCommerce, The Customer Experience, & AI Value Creation | Chandhu Nair | Stories in AI

On this episode of the Stories in AI podcast, Chandhu Nair, VP of Product and Technology at Lowes, welcomes me and offers valuable insight on what it's like to lead one of the largest retailers in the market. We discuss what it takes for a company like Lowes to undergo a digital transformation, why the customer experience is so important, and much more. Don't forget to like and subscribe for more!
 
Chandhu's Bio:
As vice president, technology omni-channel marketing and customer engagement, Chandhu Nair is responsible for building best-in-class technology products and customer experiences which engage and inspire customers across all Lowe’s touchpoints. He leads a global product and engineering team and works cross-functionally across the enterprise and with strategic vendor partners to deliver technology solutions that best enable Lowe’s total home strategy. He leads the team accountable for the omni-channel customer platform, enabling segmentation and personalization and a compelling customer loyalty platform and experience.
Chandhu also leads efforts including customer engagement, content management and digital marketing. He joined Lowe’s in 2020. Chandhu has more than 17 years of experience in technology. Prior to joining Lowe’s, he served as CEO and co-founder at Cognitive Retail Inc., a retail tech company providing large U.S. based retailers with an advanced data analytics and personalization platform, and he served as an independent technology consultant for Lowe’s.
Prior to his recent positions, he was a managing partner and co-founder at Merkatus Partners. He also spent nine years at Staples Inc. in global e-commerce and technology leadership roles. He earned a bachelor’s degree in engineering from Bharathiar University, and a master’s degree from Harvard University
Learn more at:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chandhunair/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ChandhuNair
A note about our sponsor:
Experian is the world’s leading global information services company. We empower our clients to manage their data with confidence and build trusted relationships with consumers, using advanced analytics, decisioning technology, and fraud prevention tools. We help businesses to make smarter decisions and thrive, lend more responsibly, and prevent fraud and financial crime.
As the world’s leading repository of consumer credit data, Experian is transforming data into solutions that facilitate transactions, ensure financial safety and improve the financial lives of millions of consumers around the world.

Invisible AI, Developer Empowerment, Leadership In Turbulent Times | Dheeraj Pandey | Stories in AI

Amazing conversation with  Dheeraj Pandey, CEO of DevRev, ex-Founder/CEO of Nutanix. In this episode we talk about building companies during down market cycles, invisible AI, the ying and yang of AI, developer in the center of the builder universe, product-led sales and much more.
Be sure to like and subscribe for more. 
 
Dheeraj's Bio:
Dheeraj founded Nutanix in 2009 and built the company from the ground up to over 5,000 employees in just over 10 years. He led Nutanix through its 2016 IPO and exceeded $1 billion in revenue as its tenth anniversary approached. In August 2020, Pandey announced his retirement from the company, seeking to work from home and spend more time with his wife and children. Upon retiring from Nutanix, he co-founded Param Hansa Values and Param Hansa Philanthropies. He has now recently launched his newest venture, DevRev.
Prior to founding Nutanix, Pandey worked for Aster Data Systems from 2007 to 2009, first as director of engineering and then as vice president of engineering. Previously, from 2003 to 2007, he was a software development senior manager at Oracle, where he managed the storage engine group and co-authored numerous patents in distributed databases. Pandey began his career as a software developer for Trilogy Software in 1999, moving on to Zambeel Inc. where he worked as a senior software engineer.
Pandey has received recognition for his work, including being named Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year and among Dell’s Founders 50. He currently serves on the boards of Adobe and the University of Texas at Austin.
Pandey received a bachelor’s degree from the Indian Institute of Technology. He also holds a master’s degree in computer science from the University of Texas at Austin. Find him at: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dpandey/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/dheeraj
 
A note about our sponsor:
Experian is the world’s leading global information services company. We empower our clients to manage their data with confidence and build trusted relationships with consumers, using advanced analytics, decisioning technology, and fraud prevention tools. We help businesses to make smarter decisions and thrive, lend more responsibly, and prevent fraud and financial crime. As the world’s leading repository of consumer credit data, Experian is transforming data into solutions that facilitate transactions, ensure financial safety and improve the financial lives of millions of consumers around the world.

Scaling an AI Startup & The Winning Model for AI | Tim Estes | Stories in AI

Very glad to welcome on Tim Estes, Founder of Digital Reasoning, on to the Stories in AI podcast. In this episode we discuss the model driven approach to AI and technology for enterprises, how companies can be ready to adapt AI into their model, and Tim's personal experience building and scaling one of the earliest AI companies that drove Enterprise value. Hope you enjoy it!
Tim's Bio:
"Someday all software will learn and every day brings us closer to that day. It is important that it learns in a way that builds up the human race rather than tries to shape or control it for the enrichment or empowerment of a few."
Tim Estes founded Digital Reasoning in college and have been its CEO throughout most of its development, and exiting after 20+ years at the helm in 2021. Digital Reasoning built software to automate understanding of structured and unstructured data based on a distinctive, patented mathematical approach to understanding natural language and leverages distributed computing technologies to make these analytics work effectively on Big Data. Digital Reasoning served the Defense, Intelligence, Financial, Enterprise Risk, and Health Care markets with solutions.
Tim was one of the first AI founders to really build a business helping institutions and governments generate and create value from all of the data at their disposal. He is a brilliant entrepreneur, mission driven and has a wealth of knowledge and passion in helping other founders navigate the treacheries of entrepreneurship.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/testes/
 
A note about our sponsor:
Experian is the world’s leading global information services company. We empower our clients to manage their data with confidence and build trusted relationships with consumers, using advanced analytics, decisioning technology, and fraud prevention tools. We help businesses to make smarter decisions and thrive, lend more responsibly, and prevent fraud and financial crime. As the world’s leading repository of consumer credit data, Experian is transforming data into solutions that facilitate transactions, ensure financial safety and improve the financial lives of millions of consumers around the world.

Deploying AI in a Rapidly Changing Landscape | Christopher Wilson | Stories in AI

Christopher Wilson is the VP of Portfolio Strategy and Go To Market at Experian, and he joins me to talk about AI deployment amongst businesses in the ever changing landscape of technology. He gives insights on the challenges companies must navigate to utilize AI successfully including consumer trust, data privacy, hybrid work, and more. I hope you enjoy this episode.
Chris Bio: Christopher Wilson is Experian’s VP of Portfolio Strategy in global credit risk software. He focusses on helping large organisations weather the turbulent waters of Digital Transformation and achieve many of the promises of Big Data and Artificial Intelligence, all without the use of a crystal ball. After a number of years travelling around Asia, Chris now lives with his family in South London where he can be found on his day-off enjoying a diet of 80s cinema and New Wave classics.
Find Chris at: LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/christopher-wilson-0990b015/
Blogs: www.experian.com/blogs/global-insights/author/christopher-wilson/
A note about our sponsor: Experian is the world’s leading global information services company. We empower our clients to manage their data with confidence and build trusted relationships with consumers, using advanced analytics, decisioning technology, and fraud prevention tools. We help businesses to make smarter decisions and thrive, lend more responsibly, and prevent fraud and financial crime.
As the world’s leading repository of consumer credit data, Experian is transforming data into solutions that facilitate transactions, ensure financial safety and improve the financial lives of millions of consumers around the world.
 

Measuring Enterprise AI ROI & Communicating AI Value | Daniel Faggella | Stories in AI

In this latest episode of Stories in AI, Daniel Faggella, CEO of Emerj AI Research, sits down with me to talk about the ROI enterprises are seeing from AI investment. As a detailed researcher of the industry, he offers advice for communicating the value that AI can bring to specific businesses and how the value created can be measured. Give it a listen!
 
Daniel's Bio: Founder and Head of Research at Emerj Artificial Intelligence Research, Daniel Faggella is an internationally recognized speaker on the use-cases and ROI of artificial intelligence in business. Emerj tracks and maps what’s possible and what’s working in artificial intelligence in order to help leaders develop winning AI strategies.
Emerj’s AI Opportunity Landscapes are the industry benchmark of artificial intelligence ROI across sectors. Daniel is regularly called upon by global enterprises in financial services and security, and has spoken for many of the largest and most reputable organizations, including the World Bank, the United Nations, the OECD, INTERPOL, and more.
Learn More:
AI in Business Podcast: https://emerj.com/artificial-intelligence-podcast/ 
Website: https://danfaggella.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danfaggella/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/danfaggella
A note about our sponsor:
Experian is the world’s leading global information services company. We empower our clients to manage their data with confidence and build trusted relationships with consumers, using advanced analytics, decisioning technology, and fraud prevention tools. We help businesses to make smarter decisions and thrive, lend more responsibly, and prevent fraud and financial crime. As the world’s leading repository of consumer credit data, Experian is transforming data into solutions that facilitate transactions, ensure financial safety and improve the financial lives of millions of consumers around the world.
 

Solving Systemic Problems Through Early STEM Education | Rachna Mathur | Stories in AI

I enjoyed having a dear friend of mine, Rachna Matura, on the latest episode of the Stories in AI podcast. Rachna Matura, Founder & CEO of STEMology Club, opens our eyes to just how valuable teaching STEM ideas early in the education system is.
About Rachna:
Rachna Mathur is an educator and a computer engineer with over 20 years of combined experience in teaching children and adults coding, AI, robotics, other STEM subjects, dance, and art. She is a computer engineer, classical Indian dance teacher, STEMpreneur, and educational researcher who is currently the founder of STEMology Club, teaching out-of-school STEM programs to K-6 students and teachers, and a Doctoral Candidate at ASU's Mary Lou Fulton Teacher's College focusing her research on elementary-age STEM education. Rachna's diverse experiences and expertise in art, education, and engineering are often interconnected and reinforce critical thinking, critical inquiry, and problem-solving skills through various perspectives. Prior to the world of education and starting her own STEM education non-profit, Rachna spent 10+ years at Intel working on challenging projects as a Software Engineer/Architect and in Software Product Marketing. Her first job as an ASU first-year student was informally teaching coding outside the classroom, sometimes to a room of 100 students! She has served as Director at ID Tech's summer STEM camps, Academy & Marketing Director at prominent Indian dance schools in Austin and Phoenix where she lead and grew company operations, managed instructor staffs, implemented their software platforms, and most importantly, taught whenever needed
Learn More:
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/rachnamathur
Website: www.rachnamathur.com
A note about our sponsor: Experian is the world’s leading global information services company. We empower our clients to manage their data with confidence and build trusted relationships with consumers, using advanced analytics, decisioning technology, and fraud prevention tools. We help businesses to make smarter decisions and thrive, lend more responsibly, and prevent fraud and financial crime. As the world’s leading repository of consumer credit data, Experian is transforming data into solutions that facilitate transactions, ensure financial safety and improve the financial lives of millions of consumers around the world.

Power of Data and Context, Role of the CDO, & Data Driven Mindset | Bret Greenstein | Stories in AI

Data is the driver for innovation in every industry, and that's why I invited my good friend, Bret Greenstein, back on the Stories in AI podcast. Being a leader in digital transformations with AI and data, Bret offered valuable insights on how data is being used to shape industries around the world. We also talked about the powerful role Chief Data Officers play in the new age of technology and how important it is for them to apply context to data and keep a mindset driven by data.
 
Bret's Bio: Bret is the Data and Analytics Partner, PwC US and is focused on helping transform Chief Data Officers transform their businesses through Data Modernization. The Data Practice provides essential capabilities to help companies architect for and adopt cloud, embrace external data, increase accessibility of data, and ensure data governance at scale. Bret is also helping to drive Data transformation across Cognizant’s business units and participates in industry advisory boards to shape Data policy, accelerate education, and share best practices.
Prior to this, Bret was the SVP and Global Head of AI & Analytics for Cognizant and prior to that, he lead IBM Watson’s Internet of Things Offerings, establishing new IoT products and services for the Industrial Internet of Things. He built his career in technology and business leadership across a range of roles throughout IBM in software, services, consulting, strategy, marketing, and as IBM’s CIO for Asia-Pacific. He has worked globally in these roles including living in China for 5 years working with clients and transforming IBM’s IT environment.
He holds patents in the areas of collaboration systems. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering and a master’s degree in Manufacturing Systems Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
 
A note about our sponsor: Experian is the world’s leading global information services company. We empower our clients to manage their data with confidence and build trusted relationships with consumers, using advanced analytics, decisioning technology, and fraud prevention tools. We help businesses to make smarter decisions and thrive, lend more responsibly, and prevent fraud and financial crime.
 
As the world’s leading repository of consumer credit data, Experian is transforming data into solutions that facilitate transactions, ensure financial safety and improve the financial lives of millions of consumers around the world.