Guidance for Procurement Leaders in Recovering Supply Chains - with Edmund Zagorin of Arkestro and Len DeCandia of Johnson & Johnson
Release Date: 04/17/2024
Where AI Should Actually Earn Its Keep in Biopharma - with Mukhtar Ahmed of Greenstone Biosciences
The AI in Business Podcast
In biopharma R&D, AI investment has overwhelmingly targeted generating more drug candidates, even though the industry has rarely lacked for compounds worth pursuing. In this episode, Mukhtar Ahmed, Director of Project and Portfolio Strategy at Greenstone Biosciences, explores why the harder and more valuable problem is deciding which candidates deserve continued capital and attention. The conversation covers synthesizing fragmented evidence across teams, keeping human judgment and accountability in the loop, and measuring AI's impact across a portfolio rather than a single program. ...
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Modernizing Finance Data for Faster and More Reliable Operations - with Ciprian Porutiu of Marsh
The AI in Business Podcast
Finance teams face immense pressure to operate faster, but rushing to automate over fragmented systems only compounds errors downstream. Ciprian Porutiu, SVP of Strategic Initiatives at Marsh, joins host Yolandi de Weerdt to explain why establishing a common language and federated data domains matters far more than forcing everything into a single centralized database. He shares practical approaches for managing phased rollouts, involving cross-functional users early in system design, and connecting underlying data governance directly to strategic business performance. This episode is...
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Managing Change Across Modern Financial Operations - with Nathaniel Bell of Wells Fargo
The AI in Business Podcast
For large banks, the barrier to AI at scale is rarely the model. It's decades of fragmented systems, inherited through mergers, acquisitions, and new products, where each team trusts its own data and no single view of context exists. Agentic AI doesn't fix that fragmentation; it amplifies it across every user and every prompt. In this episode, Nathaniel Bell, Data Management Director at Wells Fargo, joins host Yolandi de Weerdt, to examine why the real challenge for regulated institutions is scaling trust while automating, why leaders should judge new technology on the business...
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Transforming Cardiovascular Care — How AI-Driven Insights Unlock Value for Hospitals and Clinics - with Jim Hartman of Cleerly
The AI in Business Podcast
Hospitals and clinics continue to face a central challenge: extensive cardiac testing still fails to deliver clear, consistent diagnostic answers, slowing decision‑making and creating downstream operational and financial strain. In this episode, Jim Hartman, Chief Commercial Officer at Cleerly, examines with host Marilie Fouché how AI‑driven coronary CTA analysis strengthens diagnostic certainty, streamlines workflows across radiology, cardiology, and the cath lab, and supports more defensible adoption decisions for clinical and operational leaders. The discussion highlights practical...
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Closing the Gap Between Commercial Plans and What Happens on the Shelf - with Stephanie Lilley of Reckitt
The AI in Business Podcast
For consumer goods companies, the gap between the commercial plan agreed at head office and what gets executed on the shelf is one of the costliest disconnects in the business — investment goes out against activity that never happens, and revenue never arrives against activity that does. In this episode, Stephanie Lilley, VP of Transformation for Europe at Reckitt, examines why rigid rep call cycles and fragmented store-level data keep that gap open, and where AI is starting to close it — from image recognition that verifies in-store compliance to dynamic routing that sends field teams...
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Why Traditional Training Can’t Keep Technical Teams Current - with Nicola Lyons of Andela
The AI in Business Podcast
Traditional, event-based training can't keep pace with technical skills that now shift every six to twelve months. In this episode, Nicola Lyons, Senior Director of Talent Operations at Andela, breaks down why assessment-based, personalized learning is replacing one-time training programs. The conversation covers how leaders can build continuous learning loops that keep technical teams current without turning into another mandatory course. This episode is sponsored by . Reach VP+ leaders at America’s largest enterprises through Emerj’s podcasts. Emerj reaches 1 million...
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Responsible Generative AI in Healthcare and What Leaders Need to Know for 2026 - with Rhett Alden of Elsevier Health
The AI in Business Podcast
Generative AI is entering clinical workflows just as healthcare institutions grapple with black-box outputs, unclear regulation, and the need for provable accuracy. In this episode, Rhett Alden, CTO at Elsevier, joins Emerj’s Yolandi de Weerdt to articulate how claim-level validation and transparent sourcing are becoming prerequisites for clinical trust in AI. The conversation covers emerging AI governance boards modeled on clinical trial review structures, the limits of current US regulation, and why final clinical responsibility remains with the physician. Learn the strategies...
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Building AI Into Systems That Can't Afford to Be Late - with Drew Barbier of MIPS
The AI in Business Podcast
For AI systems built into vehicles, robots, and industrial equipment, being smart isn't enough — the difference between success and failure often comes down to whether real-time performance was designed in from the start or added on afterward. In this episode, Drew Barbier, Vice President, IP Business Unit at MIPS, breaks down why starting with the software workload, rather than the hardware, produces measurably better outcomes in real-time compute design. The conversation covers a real-world example of a three-to-five-times performance gain from workload-first design, what changes on a...
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AI-Powered Revenue Operations: The Future of Sales for SMBs - with Vanessa Tabbert of Salesforce
The AI in Business Podcast
Enterprise sales teams routinely let the majority of inbound leads go untouched simply because there isn't enough team bandwidth to work them all. In this episode, Vanessa Tabbert, VP of Agentic Transformation and Sales Development at Salesforce, breaks down how her own team deployed an AI SDR agent to recover leads that would otherwise go cold, without replacing the humans who convert the best ones. The conversation covers how to identify a low-risk first use case, why an AI agent should be coached and measured like a team member rather than launched and left alone, and how the same approach...
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Where Agentic AI Pays Off in the B2B Back Office - with Chris Bradley of Veritiv
The AI in Business Podcast
Large B2B operations keep running order entry, invoicing, and other repetitive back-office workflows by hand, years after most companies started investing heavily in AI. In this episode, Chris Bradley, Chief Marketing Officer and Head of AI Transformation at Veritiv, breaks down why legacy systems have kept agentic AI out of these workflows, and what changed once Veritiv began automating a process handling 1.7 million orders a year. The conversation covers the audit-trail controls needed to trust an agent with an end-to-end task, how a supervising AI agent checks another agent's work, and how...
info_outlineToday’s guests are Arkestro Founder & Chief Strategy Officer Edmund Zagorin and Johnson & Johnson Chief Procurement Officer Len DeCandia. Arkestro is an AI-driven startup in the procurement space with broad partnerships across the automotive, construction, and manufacturing sectors. Together, the two discuss procurement from a distinct leadership perspective and the broad range of challenges, from keeping talent ahead of scaling to the post-pandemic realities of recovering supply chains. If you’ve enjoyed or benefited from some of the insights of this episode, consider leaving us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, and let us know what you learned, found helpful, or liked most about this show!