What Boards and CEOs Want to Hear
Boards and CEOs aren't asking engineering leaders the same questions they used to. They've moved past asking if you're using AI, that's assumed now, to asking what you're actually getting for it. Adoption alone doesn't buy credibility anymore; ROI does. At the same time, they're pushing three competing demands onto the same team at once: move faster, spend less, and improve business outcomes and the customer experience, all simultaneously. Deloitte's 2026 Leadership Study shows that many leaders feel ready, but their orgs are not structured to support this expanded mandate. This panel is about understanding the expectations, and how leaders can close the gap and communicate effectively, before they're asked to.
Shibani Sanan is a technology and product executive with more than 30 years of experience building and scaling high-impact products and global engineering organizations. She currently serves as Senior Vice President of Engineering at Intuit, where she leads engineering for the company's Mid-Market Group, building AI-native software purpose-built for mid-market businesses.
Over a 16-year career at Google, Shibani rose from software engineer to Vice President of Engineering, ultimately leading a global organization of approximately 1,000 engineers responsible for the advertiser platform behind Google Ads, DV360, and SA360. She scaled fast-growing business lines, and built two businesses from the ground up. She led the re-architecture of the advertiser platform from a monolith to microservices.
Following Google, Shibani was Head of Engineering for Credit and Financial Access at Plaid, leading roughly 150 engineers and data scientists and launching machine-learning products that expanded access to credit. As Chief Technology Officer at Ladder, a venture-backed life insurance technology company, she oversaw engineering, IT, and security, and led a full cloud transformation that migrated the company from AWS to Google Cloud Platform.
A hands-on technologist as well as a leader, Shibani is a named inventor on seven distinct inventions across 16 granted U.S. patents spanning location attribution, ad measurement, machine learning, and distributed systems. She brings deep expertise in AI/ML, fintech and regulated industries, digital advertising, cybersecurity and technical risk, and the scaling of both products and organizations.
Shibani serves on the CTO Advisory Board of Bain Capital Ventures. She holds a BS EE (Bachelor of Engineering, Electronics) from Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology (VNIT).
Shibani Sanan
SVP Engineering
Intuit
Janna Groisman
VP, People
Walmart
Janna is an accomplished HR executive with more than 20 years of experience across multiple industries. She is known for driving organizational transformation and building performance-driven cultures, partnering closely with business leaders to design and execute effective people strategies at scale. She currently serves as VP, People for Global Tech, Product & Design at Walmart. Prior to that she held people leadership roles at Okta, Renesas, and Applied Materials. She began her career as a labor and employment attorney with Bryan Cave LLP. Janna holds a J.D. from Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law and a B.A. in Political Science from Arizona State University.
Nandini Easwar is Head of Technology for Beam by Principal, following Principal Financial Group's acquisition of Beam Benefits where she played a key role as CTIO. She continues to lead technology strategy and information security for the Beam business within Principal. She is a Board Member and leader at SheTO.org, an organization dedicated to increasing the representation of women+ in engineering leadership.
Nandini previously founded and served as CTO of Speakfully, a human-centric SaaS platform addressing workplace mistreatment including retaliation, harassment, and microaggression, which she led through an acquisition by HR Acuity. Known for humanizing tech solutions, she integrated social and emotional intelligence into product strategy throughout her career. Earlier, she was Global Head of Engineering and IT Compliance at Esurance, where she led that function through Esurance's acquisition by Allstate.
A passionate advocate for women in STEM, Nandini has been invited to a special White House briefing to discuss support for women in tech leadership, and speaks widely on equity and equality for women in the industry.
Nandini holds a Master's degree in Computer Science and a certificate in Executive Leadership from UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business.
Nandini Easwar
Head of Technology
Principal Financial