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Global business and political leaders gathered in Davos, Switzerland last week for the annual World Economic Forum. And while topics at this year’s event ranged from the opportunities and challenges associated with applying Generative AI to climate change and business resilience, attendees at the World Economic Forum (WEF) also heard from some of the top executives in the HMG community.

For instance, Ralph Loura, former SVP and CIO at Lumentum who is an advisory board member and Chairman of SustainableIT.org, met at WEF with top sustainability influencers from global businesses and institutions such as the UN Global Compact “to discuss our mission to position technology leaders on the critical path to ESG sustainability.”

“There are few IT executives on the WEF’s agenda,” wrote Ralph in a recent LinkedIn post regarding his mission at the global conference. “We need to change that. Corporate technology executives must be part of the dialogue because they hold many of the transformational keys to sustainability success: Essential data for tracking, reporting, and decision-making; AI, digital twins and other innovations to explore ways to act more sustainably; knowledge of end-to-end business processes; and collaborative enterprise and industry relationships.”

Moreover, as Ralph points out, business technology leaders “also preside over the massive environmental footprint of the business technology value chain.”

Meanwhile, Sheila Jordan, SVP and Chief Digital Technology Officer at Honeywell, joined Honeywell CEO Vimal Kapur and other Honeywell leaders at WEF. In one of her LinkedIn posts, Sheila shares her thoughts on the importance of trust with regards to disruptive technologies, including Generative AI.

“So of course, trust is a big theme as you think about technology and the disruptive technologies that come our way,” said Sheila. “But I don’t think it should stop us from doing things. In fact, every technology that’s been disruptive, you had to think about security and trust and how to protect your company’s asset. And we’re going to do the same thing as we think about generative AI.”

As expected, there was a great deal of discussion at WEF about the opportunities and challenges associated with the use of Generative AI. Dr. David Bray, Ph.D., Distinguished Fellow at The Stimson Center and a frequent speaker at HMG events, attended WEF this year to host salon-style dinners on various topics related to Generative AI, including how the choices we make in the type of GenAI we roll-out (active inference vs. deep learning, or some hybrid approach of these two possibilities and more) will impact both the near-term and the future ahead,” wrote David in a recent LinkedIn post.

We’re thrilled to have David share his learnings from these discussions in our next Global CIO & CISO Executive Leadership Alliance (CELA) virtual meeting on January 23 at 5 p.m. ET. HMG’s CELA service is a peer-driven advisory service whereby top-tier CIOs, CISOs and business technology leaders gather regularly to brainstorm on the top opportunities and challenges facing them in their roles with fellow members of the C-suite.

To learn more about HMG Strategy’s CELA service and to inquire about attending the January 23^rd session, contact Tom Hoffman, VP of Research, at tomhoffman@hmgstrategy.com. We hope to see you there!