Earn The Right Podcast

Who Controls Your AI Agents? Responsible AI Governance | JoAnn Stonier | Apoorv Agarwal | ETR Ep. 8

JoAnn Stonier has been ahead of every major wave in data, AI governance, and AI safety. Formerly Mastercard's first Chief Data Officer and American Express's first Chief Privacy Officer, she now advises governments and corporations on responsible AI, enterprise AI adoption, and how to scale AI without losing control. As President of Cantellus Group, she works with Fortune 500 boards on AI strategy and responsible innovation. She sits on the United Nations Expert Group on Governance and Artificial Intelligence and co-chairs the World Economic Forum's Global Future Council on Data Policy. In this episode of Earn The Right Podcast, she joins Apoorv Agarwal to discuss how to drive enterprise AI adoption inside large organisations, what rogue AI agents and autonomous AI agents reveal about building technology, and why the leaders winning the AI race manage AI risk from day one. JoAnn explains why embedding AI governance into product design allows companies to move faster, not slower. She breaks down the OpenClaw incident as a real-world example of what happens when agents pursue goals without guardrails. She also shares the exact profile of the Chief AI Officer every enterprise needs right now, why the CAIO role is the most misunderstood, and why most companies are hiring the wrong person for it. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN - What happens when autonomous AI agents operate without values, and how to stop it before it hits your organisation - The first question every CEO and board should ask before deploying an enterprise AI strategy - Why waiting on AI adoption is not the safe strategy you think it is, and what responsible AI leadership looks like instead ABOUT JOANN JoAnn Stonier is President of Cantellus Group, a boutique advisory firm helping boards and executives navigate the strategy, oversight, and governance of AI and frontier technologies. She spent 17 years at Mastercard, serving as Chief Privacy Officer, Chief Information Governance Officer, and the company's first Chief Data Officer, responsible for enterprise-wide data strategy across 210 countries and billions of transactions. She later served as a Mastercard Fellow for Data and AI. Before Mastercard, she was the first Chief Privacy Officer at American Express, appointed by CEO Ken Chenault. She sits on the United Nations Expert Group on Governance and Artificial Intelligence and co-chairs the World Economic Forum's Global Future Council on Data Policy. She teaches at Carnegie Mellon University and Pratt Institute, and advises boards including Omnicom Group and Lytical Ventures. She holds degrees in accounting and finance, computer science, law, and interior design. ABOUT EARN THE RIGHT How do the world's most impactful leaders think, decide and build? Through unfiltered conversations, the Earn The Right podcast takes listeners inside the rooms where the hardest choices are made: from building billion-dollar companies to navigating doubt, reinvention and change. The show is hosted by Apoorv Agarwal, an AI scientist, entrepreneur (Text IQ, acquired 2021) and Columbia PhD, who has advised Fortune 500 leaders. For founders and decision-makers developing the future, this is your front-row seat to how the best earn the right to lead. Subscribe to Earn The Right for conversations with the world's most influential leaders.

How a Fortune 500 CIO Is Winning the AI Race: Kathy Kay | Apoorv Agarwal | Earn The Right Podcast #7

Kathy Kay has led technology through some of America's biggest crises. From the Great Recession to California wildfires to a global pandemic, she was the person building systems that kept companies and people afloat. As EVP and CIO at Principal Financial Group, she brings a battle-tested instinct for building technology through disruption. She has done it at General Motors, PG&E, Comerica, and SunTrust Bank. Every role sharpened her approach to innovating with compliance. That cross-industry depth is exactly what makes her perspective on scaling enterprise AI worth listening to right now. In this episode of Earn The Right Podcast, she joins Apoorv Agarwal to discuss enterprise AI adoption, the build vs. buy decision for AI agents, and why being a regulated company is no excuse to move slowly.  Kathy shares how she democratised AI across an entire organisation, starting by opening her first ChatGPT study group to attorneys, compliance, risk, and engineers all at the same time. From there, she explains why the one-time cost to build software is always the cheapest part of any program. She also makes the case for why human contact becomes more valuable, not less, as AI automates everything around it. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN * Build vs. buy for AI: why the one-time cost is always the cheapest part of any program * Why outcome-based pricing aligns AI vendor contracts better than seat-based models * The difference between a mentor and an advocate, and why your career needs both ABOUT KATHY KAY Kathy Kay is Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer at Principal Financial Group. She leads global technology strategy, IT operations, security, and innovation across retirement, insurance, and asset management. Under her leadership, Principal went from 800 to 17,000 active AI users in a single year across a workforce of 20,000. She was inducted into the US CIO Hall of Fame in 2026. She won CIO of the Year at the Technology Association of Iowa's 2023 Prometheus Awards. Before Principal, she served as SVP and CIO at PG&E during the California wildfire crisis, CTO at SunTrust Bank, and SVP and CTO at Comerica through the 2008 financial crisis. She began her career at General Motors Research Labs and OnStar, building connected vehicle systems that saved lives. ABOUT EARN THE RIGHT PODCAST How do the world's most impactful leaders think, decide and build? Through unfiltered conversations, the Earn The Right podcast takes listeners inside the rooms where the hardest choices are made: from building billion-dollar companies to navigating doubt, reinvention and change. The show is hosted by Apoorv Agarwal, an AI scientist, entrepreneur (Text IQ, acquired 2021) and Columbia PhD, who has advised Fortune 500 leaders. For founders and decision-makers developing the future, this is your front-row seat to how the best earn the right to lead. Subscribe to Earn The Right for conversations with the world's most influential leaders.

America's Privacy and Cybersecurity Crisis | Apoorv Agarwal | Randy Milch | Earn The Right Podcast Ep. 6

Thirty years ago, a rejection letter changed internet history. Randy Milch never planned to be a General Counsel. He wanted to be Secretary of State. When President Reagan fired all 300 diplomats-in-waiting on his first day in office, Randy went to law school instead. What followed was two decades at the center of American corporate history. As General Counsel of Verizon, Randy navigated the MCI merger, NSA surveillance, and telecom deregulation. When the government's secret surveillance program became front-page news in 2005, he was the lawyer managing it from the inside. Randy's argument in this episode is uncomfortable: America is protecting the wrong thing. Billions go toward litigating individual data breaches; power grids, water systems, and critical infrastructure remain exposed. He makes the case for a tiered cybersecurity standard that forces a national reckoning with what actually needs protecting. On AI, he is skeptical but not dismissive. He watched billions pour into dot-com infrastructure in the late 1990s. He was inside one of the companies whose networks ran it all. He knows what a cycle looks like before it turns. The questions he is asking about AI today are the same ones few were asking in 1999. That experience is exactly what he now brings to NYU, where he co-chairs the Center for Cybersecurity and built one of the first programs training lawyers and engineers to understand each other's risks and blind spots. In this episode, we cover: • Why risk aversion is a lawyer's greatest liability • How Verizon won long distance by losing the right way • What the NSA surveillance crisis taught Randy about leading under pressure • Why America is solving the wrong cybersecurity problem • What the dot-com boom tells us about the AI moment we are in now • Why engineers and lawyers need to close the gap between legal liability and technical reality Subscribe to Earn The Right for conversations with the world's most influential leaders.

The Story of One of Wall Street's Most Influential Lawyers | Apoorv Agarwal | Greg Palm | Earn The Right Podcast EP. 5

What does it take to protect the world’s most powerful financial institution for nearly three decades? In the fifth episode of Earn The Right, Apoorv Agarwal sits down with Greg Palm, the legendary former General Counsel of Goldman Sachs. The story of this small-town bred lawyer is a striking departure from the typical Wall Street pedigree.  Growing up in Chenango Bridge, New York, Greg was the son of parents who never attended college. His path was paved by merit and curiosity, sparked by the national push for science education following the launch of Sputnik.  He attended MIT on a scholarship before completing a joint JD/MBA at Harvard. Before joining Goldman, Greg honed his legal expertise as a clerk for Hon. Judge Henry Friendly and Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr., followed by a prestigious partnership at Sullivan & Cromwell.  Over a 27-year tenure spanning five CEOs, Greg served as Goldman Sachs’ top lawyer, navigating the bank through its 1999 IPO, the 2008 financial crisis, and aggressive regulatory battles. This conversation provides unparalleled insight into high-stakes leadership, the intersection of law and business, and building structural integrity when the global economy is on the brink of collapse. In this episode, we explore: * The 2008 Financial Crisis: A behind-the-scenes look at survival strategies, the Abacus settlement, and the emotional weight of leading through a black swan event. * The Power of Focus over Networking: Why Greg considers himself an outlier who prioritized merit and deep work over intentional networking early in his career. * From Theory to High Stakes: How a student of theoretical physics and economics at MIT became one of the architects of the modern Goldman Sachs Group. * Investing in the Unknown: Why a lawyer now bets on the future of space and biology to keep his mind sharp. * Empowering Autonomy: Greg’s philosophy on building a massive legal department by hiring partners who refuse to be looked over their shoulder. * The Myth of Gordon Gekko: Why the sleazy Wall Street stereotypes portrayed in movies couldn’t be further from reality. For more deep dives into the crucial decisions and character-defining moments of world-class leaders, subscribe to Earn The Right.

Building the AI Marketing Lab | Apoorv Agarwal | Teresa Barreira | Earn The Right Podcast Episode 4

Teresa Barreira leads marketing at Publicis Sapient, with prior tenures at IBM, Accenture, and Deloitte. She has seen every major technology shift. AI is different. In this episode of Earn The Right, Apoorv Agarwal sits down with Teresa Barreira, Global Chief Marketing and Communications Officer at Publicis Sapient, to unpack how AI is fundamentally reshaping marketing, leadership, and the future of human work. Teresa is one of the most influential marketing leaders operating at the intersection of enterprise transformation, AI adoption, and creative strategy. With more than 25 years of global leadership experience, she has built and scaled marketing organizations inside some of the world’s most complex enterprises, often during periods of rapid technological change. But this conversation goes beyond tools and tactics. Born and raised in a small village in northern Portugal, Teresa emigrated to the United States as a teenager. She learned English by watching soap operas. She began working in her family’s business at the age of ten. Those early experiences shaped a leadership philosophy grounded in accountability, adaptability, and human judgment. These are qualities she believes matter even more as AI becomes embedded in everyday work. At Publicis Sapient, Teresa is redefining modern marketing by building AI-first operating models, experimenting with agentic systems, and rethinking roles around tasks rather than titles. Her mandate is clear. AI should not replace humans. It should elevate them. This is a conversation about what actually changes inside companies once AI moves from theory to operations. It explores how decisions are made, how teams are structured, and where human judgment still defines impact. In this episode, we’ll explore • Why every company is becoming a software company: AI is not just automating marketing tasks. It is forcing organizations to learn how to build, test, and iterate systems as a core capability. • Why creativity beats consistency in the age of AI: When execution becomes automated, originality and judgment become the true competitive advantage. • Why AI replaces tasks, not jobs: Breaking roles into tasks reveals where humans create value and where automation actually helps rather than threatens. • Why most AI pilots fail inside enterprises: They optimize existing workflows instead of redesigning how work should happen in the first place. • Why CMOs must become builders, not just operators: Modern marketing leaders are expected to design systems, not just oversee outputs. • Why exploration matters more than specialization: AI rewards curiosity, adaptability, and learning speed over narrow expertise. Subscribe to Earn The Right for unfiltered conversations with leaders redesigning work culture to create impact during technological shifts.