In this episode of Catalyst, Tammy is joined by Craig Vaughan, Executive Managing Director and Global Head of AI Go-to-Market at NTT DATA. Craig’s background spans startups, enterprise technology and global consulting. Before this, he held executive roles at SAP and led AI and GenAI practices at Accenture. Tammy and Craig chat about leadership, learning from failure, how the AI market is maturing and why people should stay at the center of the conversation.

Highlights from the episode include:

• The best teams bring different perspectives together. Great ideas rarely come from a room full of people who think alike. Craig explains why diverse skills and viewpoints are needed more than ever now, to innovate on top of AI at the speed of the market.
• Increased focus on the economics of AI. Enterprise AI has moved beyond experimentation. What’s front of mind for leaders now is managing token costs at scale and building private or sovereign AI architectures. The latter is especially important for organizations that need more control over where their data lives and how it's used.
• Optimism is edging out anxiety. While rhetoric about jobs disappearing used to dominate, today the doom language is fading. Companies that rushed into layoffs are hiring again, and there’s less fear in AI conversation.

Check out the full episode to hear Craig's take on multimodal AI, career stewardship and the challenge of earning a master’s degree while also working a full-time job. It’s not for the faint of heart!

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Please note that the views expressed in this episode may not necessarily be those of NTT DATA.