Keynotes to light the path ahead

Shelia Anderson joined Unum Group in 2025 as EVP and Chief Information and Digital Officer. She is responsible for leading Unum Group's digital transformation efforts, ensuring that Unum’s technology investments align with enterprise strategy, enhance customer experience, and enable growth across the company.

She has held senior technology leadership roles at leading companies, including Aflac, Liberty Mutual, USAA, Hewlett-Packard, and Electronic Data Systems. Throughout her career, Shelia has guided teams to integrate technology operations, reducing complexity and enhancing value through a unified technology organization. Her strategic vision and innovative approach have also driven significant advancements in cloud adoption, AI, and data analytics, particularly in claims processing.

Shelia is a 2025 CIO 100 Hall of Fame recipient and has been nominated for the 2024 Georgia CIO of the Year Super Global Award. Shelia received the 2021 Boston CIO of the Year Super Global ORBIE Award and was recognized as a 2022 National CIO of the Year Super Global Finalist for her outstanding leadership, management effectiveness, and business value created through technology innovation while at Liberty Mutual. She was recognized as a top transformational leader by her inclusion in Business Transformation 150, Global CIO 100 and as a Top 100 Women in FinTech in 2023 and 2024. She was recognized by Insurance Business America as a 2018 Elite Woman. Aflac has been recognized as a CIO 100 Innovation Award winner under her leadership for 2023, 2024, and 2025.

Anderson is a frequent speaker in leading industry conferences, podcasts, and articles, including InformationWeek, MIT Sloan, CIO, CIO Leadership Live, AIBusiness.com, IT Visionaries, Wall Street Journal, Metis, Forbes, Fortune, Reuters.

Shelia has served on the advisory board for Southern Methodist University’s Lyle School of Engineering. She was recognized as an Outstanding Alumni for Louisiana Tech University’s College of Engineering. She also serves on the Technology Business Management Board of Directors.

Originally from Louisiana, Anderson received her Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Louisiana Tech University and her Master of Science in Engineering Management from Southern Methodist University.

Dr. Asa Kalavade is Vice President of Migration & Modernization at AWS, where she leads AWS Transform, the industry's first agentic AI service for large-scale migration and application modernization. AWS Transform uses specialized AI agents to compress multi-year migration projects into months.

As a builder at heart, Asa loves creating products, teams, and businesses that transform complex technology into solutions that create real value for customers. In her 10-year career at AWS, she has launched six 0-1 products. Prior to her current role, she was responsible for leading the transformation of the go-to-market tools and experiences for AWS's global field organization supporting the $100B+ AWS business. Her team built and scaled a portfolio of AI-based products that spanned the full customer lifecycle – from prospecting to revenue intelligence to customer success. This was one of the first at-scale GenAI deployments in 2023, used by tens of thousands of AWS field teams, with demonstrated business impact in productivity and velocity. Prior to that, Asa led AWS's hybrid cloud storage and data transfer services portfolio with full P&L responsibility. She grew the business 30X over four years, scaling from a single product line to a strategic portfolio, enabling tens of thousands of customers to move on-prem storage, data, and data workflows to AWS.

Dr. Kalavade joined AWS in 2016 after founding and leading two venture-backed startups. She has experience with M&A, acquiring and integrating startups, and remains active in mentoring Boston startups. She holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from UC Berkeley and has been awarded over 40 patents.

Ravi Kumar was appointed Chief Executive Officer of Cognizant in January 2023. In his role as CEO, Ravi sets the strategic direction of the company, promotes Cognizant’s client-first culture, and focuses on ensuring sustainable growth and driving long-term shareholder value.

He is a highly accomplished technology industry executive with experience in transforming businesses. He was recently included in the Time AI 100 2025 as one of the most influential leaders working on groundbreaking advances in artificial intelligence.

Prior to Cognizant, Ravi served as President of Infosys from 2016 to 2022, where he led the global services organization across all industry segments and served as Chairman of the Board of Infosys BPM Ltd. Previously, he was the Group Head for the Insurance, Healthcare, and Cards and Payments unit, and led the Global Delivery organization where he built the Oracle and CRM practices.

Before joining Infosys, Ravi served in positions of increasing responsibility at PricewaterhouseCoopers, Cambridge Technology Partners, Oracle, and Sapient (now Publicis Sapient). The early part of his career was spent as a nuclear scientist at the Bhabha Atomic Research Center of India.

Ravi is a member of the Board of Directors of TransUnion and the Board of Governors of New York Academy of Sciences. He is also the Chair of the ICT (IT, Comms, Tech) Industry of the World Economic Forum (WEF) and the Chair of the AI Working Committee of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and on their Board of Directors. He is also the Chair of Nasscom US CEO Forum and on the Board of US-India Strategic Partnership Forum (USISPF).

He holds an MBA from Xavier Institute of Management, India.

Nick Nadgauda is Executive Vice President and Global Chief Information Officer of MetLife. In this role, he oversees a team of more than 12,000 technologists and is responsible for leading the company's technology strategy and execution as well as overseeing application development, infrastructure, enterprise platforms, and architecture teams across the organization. He is instrumental in shaping MetLife’s strategic technology portfolio, focusing on modernization and enhancing the customer and employee journey.

Nadgauda leads MetLife’s partnership with NC TECH, including the Center for Technology Workforce Innovation, which supports the growth and vitality of North Carolina’s technology workforce.

Nadgauda joined MetLife in 2025 after a 20-year career at Citi where he played an integral role in growing, steering, and shaping the vision and technology for Citi Services, most recently as the CIO. Citi Services, an $18-billion business, leverages high-scale, market leading technology in a highly regulated sector to provide payment processing, global custody, liquidity management, and working capital solutions across 90 countries.

Prior to his work at Citi, Nadgauda was the Vice President of Professional Services for Confluent Software, eventually acquired by Oracle. He was also the Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Invertica, a software company specializing in web services and integration middleware. His career began at Motorola’s Corporate Research Labs, where he contributed to wireless communication technologies and acquired six patents.

Nadgauda holds a Bachelor of Science from Cornell University and a Master of Science from the University of Michigan.

Marcia Osborne is the Chief Marketing Officer within the Consumer Lending business at Wells Fargo. She is responsible for leading the marketing efforts for Cards, Merchant Services & Personal Loans, Home Lending, and Wells Fargo Auto. In addition, she oversees the Enterprise Marketing Services teams that manage the company’s marketing ecosystem.

Previously, Marcia oversaw credit card advertising, branding and entertainment, new account acquisition, loyalty marketing, and digital marketing capabilities for the Cards business. Marcia was instrumental in transforming the Wells Fargo credit card portfolio and driving growth that outpaced the industry.

Since joining Wells Fargo in 2019, Marcia has helped execute countless successful projects and initiatives, including managing the marketing launch of the industry-leading Active Cash credit card. Since the card’s initial announcement in mid-2021, new account volume for cash-back cards has more than tripled.

Before joining Wells Fargo, Marcia spent seven years at Citi accelerating the company’s global digital marketing capabilities and working across credit cards, deposits, mortgage marketing, and more. While there, she led the card business to double its new account volume through digital channels in less than three years. Prior to Citi, she spent 12 years at American Express in marketing roles across small business and consumer cards.

Marcia has an MBA from Columbia and a B.A. in Russian Language and Area Studies from Cornell. Following her studies, she lived in Russia for nearly five years, in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Siberia.

In her personal life, Marcia enjoys watching live sports and spending time outdoors, especially going on hikes and playing tennis. She currently lives in New York City with her husband and is the proud mom to two adult children.

Giles Richardson is Executive Vice President of Marketing Strategy & Delivery, where he leads the evolution of data and technology platforms that deliver personalized messaging and experiences to over 70 million customers across digital, branch, email, and telephony channels.

His work spans audience management, content management, digital experience testing, analytics, and real-time, next-best-conversation capabilities, helping transform enterprise marketing at scale.

Over the past six years, Giles has played a central role in the modernization of marketing technology capabilities, culminating in industry recognition through the 2025 Gartner Marketing Communications Awards for Excellence in the Use of Marketing and Communications Technology. A hallmark of this transformation is the Customer Engagement Engine, which powers real-time, next best conversations across digital, branch, and email channels, supporting billions of interactions each month.

Previously, Giles has led groundbreaking programs at NatWest, T-Mobile, and Barclays across both the UK and the United States. His widely recognized “Superstar DJs” program at NatWest demonstrated how data-driven optimization of digital experiences can be achieved through enterprise-wide collaboration. This work reflects his long-held belief that exceptional outcomes are created at the intersection of data, technology, and a federated operating model.

Giles is based in Seattle, Washington.

Alan Trefler is the Founder and CEO of Pegasystems Inc. (NASDAQ: PEGA). Pega is shaping how the world’s largest enterprises design, run, and continuously evolve AI transformation. As a visionary leader who combines strategic foresight with disciplined execution, Alan has guided Pega from its founding to its position as a global leader in AI-powered enterprise platforms built to learn, adapt, and scale.

His unique journey from chess master to technology pioneer began with tying for first place in the 1975 World Open Chess Championship. His strategic mindset, combined with software engineering expertise from Dartmouth College, led him to develop early AI systems that taught computers to play chess and laid the foundation for Pega's innovative approach to enterprise technology.

Under Alan's leadership, Pega has emerged as a leader in enterprise AI. The company's innovations in generative AI, intelligent automation, and AI-powered decisioning are enabling the world's leading organizations to achieve unprecedented business outcomes – from real-time personalization at global scale to autonomous operations that continuously optimize themselves.

Alan's contributions to technology and business have earned him numerous accolades, and his best-selling book, "Build for Change," reflects his vision for business transformation in the digital age.

Together with his wife Pam, Alan extends his transformative vision through the Trefler Foundation, which creates lasting positive change through initiatives in education, workforce development, and community health, particularly in underserved communities.

Kerim is responsible for delivering Pega’s full suite of products built on Pega Infinity™. He leads the company’s 1,000+ team of engineers, product managers, designers, and architects, building best- in-class solutions across 1:1 customer engagement, customer service, and intelligent automation.

Kerim is focused on using the latest technologies and development approaches, such as low code, AI, robotics, and cloud to support business users. He is an advocate for building software that makes the underlying technology transparent and serves the needs of the business. This focus on business impact has contributed significantly to the company being recognized as a leader in the major product and technology categories important to clients, including low code, customer relationship management (CRM), case management, intelligent automation, real-time analytics, and business process management (BPM).

Kerim began his career at Pega developing applications for customers in financial services and insurance, and he put his customer-centric perspective to work in establishing the company’s product management function. Early in the company’s history, Kerim recognized the power of connecting back-end operations to front-end, customer-facing applications. He continues to focus the product team on developing applications that allow business visionaries to innovate how their organizations interact with customers and help employees get work done more effectively.

Kerim holds a BS in Mathematics and Computer Science from Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Rob F. Walker is the GM for 1:1 Customer Engagement at Pega. Rob is responsible for driving Pega’s 1:1 Customer Engagement offering across sales, delivery, marketing, and product development, as well as implementing its strategic direction. Rob’s vision for next best action and 1:1 customer engagement has gained broad market acceptance and adoption among some of the world’s leading brands. He is frequently called upon to speak with global audiences, the media, and Fortune 1000 executives about using data to optimize the customer experience and customer value through real-time personalization.

As one of the world’s foremost experts in the area of enterprise decisioning, Rob is also at the forefront of advocating for responsible AI in business. Prior to the acquisition of Chordiant by Pega in April 2010, Rob was responsible for managing the strategic direction and development of Chordiant’s industry-leading predictive decisioning technologies. As a member of the Office of the CTO, Rob also provided support to Chordiant’s global sales activities and partnership initiatives. He joined Chordiant when the company he co-founded in 2000, KiQ Ltd., was acquired by Chordiant in December 2004. KiQ was a specialist provider of decision management and predictive analytics software. Prior to KiQ, Rob spent eight years in positions of increasing responsibility with leading global information technology consulting firm Capgemini. From 1999–2000, he served as Program Director for Capgemini where he was responsible for the creation, development, and evangelization of technological innovations in the areas of business intelligence and predictive analytics.

Rob holds a PhD in AI from the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Don Schuerman is CTO and Head of Marketing at Pega. He’s a techie, a lucky husband, a proud and exhausted father, an avid bike commuter, and a recovering improv comic.

He has 20 years’ experience delivering enterprise software solutions for Fortune 500 organizations, with a focus on digital transformation, mobility, analytics, business process management, cloud, and CRM. Don has led enterprise software implementations and provided technology and architecture consulting to senior business and technology executives from Fortune 500 organizations, including American Express, Citibank, JP Morgan Chase, and the U.S. government.

Don holds a BS in Physics and Philosophy from Boston College.