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Explore the future in action
Join us for keynotes, executive events, and conversations that dig into your toughest challenges—from AI and automation to cybersecurity and IT strategy.
Join PwC at our booth and throughout the conference as we listen closely, ask the hard questions, and work with you to turn possibility into progress.
If you’d like to connect with our specialists onsite or learn more about our sessions and invitation-only events during the Symposium, click “Get in Touch” at the bottom of this page and we’ll follow up. We look forward to the conversation.
Our sessions
Explore the session highlights below. For full details on keynotes, breakouts and workshops, check out the CIO 100 Awards & Symposium agenda to plan your optimal schedule.
- Executive roundtable
- Welcome reception
- Keynote
- Executive dinner
- Keynote
- Women in IT Luncheon
Executive roundtable
Monday, August 11, 2025, 2-3:30pm MT
When The Business Buys AI: Can CIOs Harness Distributed Innovation Initiatives to Enable Transformation at Scale?
The session will explore one of the most urgent leadership challenges facing today’s CIOs: how to manage the growing wave of business-led AI adoption that is reshaping traditional roles, responsibilities, and operating models. This discussion will surface actionable strategies for CIOs to reassert their influence: governing decentralized AI activity, bridging the gap between POC and production, and enabling enterprise-scale deployment without sacrificing agility. Attendees will also engage PwC professionals on how to realign the CIO role around consultative leadership, infrastructure readiness, and long-term value creation in an increasingly AI-driven enterprise landscape.
We’ll focus on:
- How CIOs can reposition themselves to lead when innovation happens outside IT
- Governance and architecture models that preserve agility while implementing enterprise standards
- Infrastructure and funding strategies that turn scattered experimentation into long-term enterprise value
- The role of managed services in maintaining control, speed and cost predictability at scale
Walk away with an enhanced playbook for matching the business’s appetite for AI with IT’s mandate for value, risk control, and lasting impact.
Welcome reception
Monday, August 11, 2025, 5:30-6:30pm MT
PwC is excited to host the CIO 100 Symposium & Awards welcome reception. Please join us for networking and cocktails!
Keynote
Tuesday, August 12, 2025, 11:30am-12pm MT
Your Next Hire Might be an Agent: Redefining the IT Workforce
As agentic AI moves from pilot to production, CIOs are being called to do more than upgrade systems—they’re rethinking how people, processes, and autonomous agents work together. This session explores how AI is reshaping IT workflows, team structures, and decision-making—and how leaders are designing operating models where human ingenuity and AI agents complement each other.
We’ll explore:
- How agentic AI is transforming day-to-day IT operations and product development
- Where to draw the line between human-led and agent-led responsibilities
- How team structures and skills are evolving—fast
- Strategic resourcing: what to build, buy, or delegate—and where managed services fit in
- What early adopters are learning about governance, accountability, and moving at speed
You’ll walk away with a clear, forward-looking view of how to evolve your IT operating model—so you can build high-performing teams, deliver faster with confidence, and lead your organization through the next wave of transformation.
Danielle Phaneuf, Principal, PwC US
Rani Radhakrishnan, Principal, PwC US
Tim Walding, Principal, PwC US
Cenk Ozdemir, Principal, PwC US
Executive dinner
Tuesday, August 12, 2025, 6:30-9:30pm MT
Who owns the workforce when AI owns the work?
Rethinking CIO influence in an agentic, hybrid workforce
Agentic AI is redefining work—collapsing roles, reshaping teams, and blurring lines between tech and talent leadership. This invite-only dinner brings CIOs together to examine how their influence is evolving as workforce strategy becomes inseparable from technology strategy. Discussion areas include:
- How AI is shifting operating models and forcing role redesign
- What new CIO–CHRO partnerships look like in AI-enabled enterprises
- The economic and organizational impact of hybrid human-agent teams
- Guardrails, platforms and knowledge systems needed to scale agentic AI sustainably
The intimate dinner discussion is designed to provoke candid dialogue about how CIOs are not just enabling transformation—but increasingly architecting the workforce behind it.
Keynote
Wednesday, August 13, 2025, 11:10-11:40am MT
Preparing for Blockchain – A CIO’s Perspective
As digital transformation accelerates, CIOs are uniquely positioned to guide their organizations through the next frontier: the blockchain revolution. This session offers a strategic lens on how distributed ledger technologies are reshaping core enterprise functions—not just in financial services, but across sectors.
We’ll explore high-impact use cases for blockchain, including real-time payments, asset tokenization, smart contracts, and frictionless B2B contracting and settlement. These innovations hold the promise of operational efficiency, enhanced trust, and new revenue models—important levers for any CIO navigating a rapidly evolving technology landscape.
The second half of the session will spotlight stablecoins, now on the cusp of mainstream adoption amid anticipated regulatory clarity. With the potential to redefine liquidity, settlements, and cross-border flows, stablecoins are emerging as a game-changer for digital infrastructure—requiring CIOs to plan ahead for integration, compliance, and innovation.
Join us for a forward-looking discussion on how CIOs can leverage blockchain to help drive enterprise agility, scalability, and resilience in a decentralized future.
Aditi Lyall, Principal, PwC US
Matt Blumenfeld, Principal, PwC US
Women in IT Luncheon
Wednesday, August 13, 2025, 12:10-1:30pm MT
Leading in the Age of AI: How women tech executives are redefining the future
Join us for a candid, peer-led conversation with senior women in technology as we explore the leadership journeys, challenges, and opportunities that AI has introduced into your organization—and how they’re reshaping our role in the enterprise.
We'll focus on your evolving role in the C-suite today: the pace of change, the added visibility—and scrutiny—AI brings, and the female leadership traits that can help you grow in an era where IT strategy and business outcomes are increasingly inseparable.
This discussion will spotlight where women are gaining ground, where bias still creeps in, and how to build lasting influence in the rooms that matter most. Topics will include:
- Real-world pivots in a time of constant change: Navigating uncertainty, being agile and leading beyond IT when AI is everywhere in the business
- Allyship that scales: Empowering each other and the next generation of women to lead this transformation
- Turning technology backed with business strategy into boardroom influence
- Leading trust-by-design efforts in AI innovation
- Balancing leadership pressure, confidence, and setting the vision—even at the most senior levels
This session is designed to spark authentic, forward-looking dialogue among CIOs, CTOs, CISOs, and senior women navigating this AI-led transformation. Participants will leave with fresh insights, peer perspectives, and renewed energy to lead.
Danielle Phaneuf, Principal, PwC US
Rani Radhakrishnan, Principal, PwC US
Aditi Lyall, Principal, PwC US
Congratulations to the CIO 100 award winners!
These awards celebrate 100 organizations and the IT teams within them that use technology in innovative ways to deliver business value, whether by creating competitive advantage, optimizing business processes, enabling growth or improving relationships with customers. The award is an acknowledged mark of enterprise excellence.
PwC US is honored to be recognized as a CIO 100 Award winner this year for ChatPwC, our innovative GenAI platform designed to help our people work smarter and faster. As PwC’s first-ever CIO 100 win, it marks a major milestone in our journey as a human-led, tech-powered leader in AI-driven innovation. We are proud to be recognized alongside the world’s top tech-driven organizations and are excited to celebrate with our fellow award winners in Scottsdale this August.
2025 CIO 100 award winners and hall of fame inductees
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