Modern CTO

Dan Cardinal, CTO at Beghou Consulting, leads platform engineering and applies AI to accelerate software work. He discusses using Blitzy to automate roughly 80% of migrations and repetitive tasks. He covers cautious AI adoption in healthcare, human-in-the-loop controls, governance and IP tradeoffs, and how documentation and embedded expertise unlock new AI-powered services.

Iccha Sethi, SVP of Engineering at Vanta and seasoned leader from Atlassian and GitHub, explains why AI makes software never truly finished. She discusses model drift, evaluation frameworks, dashboards and alerts for AI features. Topics include CI evals, A/B model testing, team ownership for monitoring, and new skills like prompting and task chunking.

Jacob Morgan, author and futurist who studies the future of work and employee experience. He discusses why employee experience must be rebuilt for an AI world. He outlines eight laws of employee experience and five leader archetypes. He explains designing for flexible careers and introduces foresight tools and practical ways to prepare for coming changes.

Hrishi Dixit, Principal at Gordian Labs and seasoned engineering leader, shares why making yourself replaceable is a leadership superpower. He outlines a four-step approach: spread knowledge, step out of the weeds, design leadership, and build lasting culture. Hear practical ways to prepare successors, measure readiness, and treat human redundancy like system resiliency.

Jack Tam, SVP and CTO at Intuit Mailchimp with 20+ years in engineering leadership. He talks about authentic leadership and why integrity means doing the right work even when no one’s watching. He describes staying calm under pressure and practical habits that sustain long careers. He also explains spotting coachable technical leaders and why today’s AI moment is thrilling.

Tony Martignetti, executive coach and author known for Campfire Lessons for Leaders, shares his journey from artist to coach. He explores why people hide parts of themselves at work. He explains leaving the room to change the room. He highlights curiosity, compassion, and connection as keys to building psychological safety and long-term change.

Noah Cantor, an executive coach who trains tech leaders to build clarity and alignment. He discusses why leaders often get no management training. He explains how inconsistent leadership styles demotivate teams. He emphasizes aligning actions with core values to reduce stress and lead predictably.

Francisco Trindade, VP of Software Engineering at Braze and systems-thinking advocate, explains how AI is shifting the bottleneck from writing code to reviewing it. He discusses the challenges of agent-driven automation, risks in brownfield codebases, and why restructuring systems unlocks big productivity gains. He also shares leadership lessons on incremental change and practical systems thinking.

Kayvon Beykpour, co-founder and CEO of Macroscope and former Periscope founder, discusses AI-first tools reshaping software teams. He explains Macroscope’s status summaries, AI code review, and customizable agents. They explore how agentic tooling accelerates prototyping, ports legacy systems, and shifts organizational workflows.

Brian Alvey, CTO of WordPress VIP and veteran web platform engineer, discusses AI as artificial creativity. He reframes AI as a creative force that reshapes publishing and work. He explores agents and stacked models, how AI changes teams and CTO skills, and the everyday plus ethical choices around automation.