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.

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