“While AI is an exciting and transformative technology, long-term success depends on using it responsibly with strong governance, transparency, and security,” says Mamta Singh, Commonwealth of Massachusetts Deputy Chief Data Officer, reflecting the tone of CDO Magazine’s Roundtable Exchange on July 22 at the Glass House in Boston.

Held during the CDOIQ Symposium week, the Roundtable Exchange gathered industry leaders to explore:

• How organizations are assessing AI agent maturity, 
• Share lessons from moving beyond proof-of-concepts to production deployments, 
• Examine governance and security challenges, 
• Highlight human-in-the-loop safeguards, and
• Outline the ROI metrics being used to measure agentic AI success and business impact.

“It was a great discussion on Agentic AI, covering AI maturity, the gap between demos and production deployments, and the importance of demonstrating measurable ROI from AI investments,” Singh adds. 

She also shares her takeaways:

• AI maturity must align with organizational maturity. Successful AI adoption depends not only on the technology but also on the organization’s readiness, governance, and culture.
• Value drives adoption. Once people understand how AI can eliminate inefficiencies in their daily work, adoption accelerates. Identifying practical, high-impact use cases creates momentum.

“What an inspiring evening co-chairing the CDO Magazine Roundtable alongside Trang Nguyen!” describes Anu Sundaram, Rue Gilt Groupe VP, Business Analytics. “The event brought together leading trailblazers in Data, Analytics, and AI. Our discussion on moving ‘AI agents from PoC to production’ reinforced that true agentic maturity demands strong technical capabilities, robust guardrails, human-in-the-loop governance, and clear ROI metrics. Beyond the robust discussion, it was fantastic connecting with fellow leaders who share the same passion and challenges in driving AI transformation.”

Trang Nguyen, Prudential VP, Data Science, highlights her key takeaways:

• Agentic AI is moving from pilots to production, with leading organizations demonstrating value while facing a key challenge: maintaining accurate domain context across agents and long-running workflows. Effective context management is becoming a foundational capability for ensuring consistency, reliability, and high-quality outcomes at scale.
• A pragmatic AI architecture is emerging, leveraging intelligent model routing—using smaller, lower-cost models for routine tasks and reserving larger foundation models for complex reasoning to optimize both performance and cost.

According to Jenna George, CDO Magazine Community Director, “Our July Roundtable in Cambridge was filled with many new Boston leaders who are now officially CDO Magazine community members!”

Nirranjana Jaiswwal, Google Cloud Customer Engineering Manager, sums it up, “Google Cloud was thrilled to engage with so many forward-thinking data leaders at the CDO Magazine Roundtable. The discussion highlighted the significant impact that Agentic AI will make across organizations and products both small and large. The enterprise AI conversation has officially shifted from model scale to secure, agentic deployment. Success in this next era will be defined by how robustly organizations establish data readiness and integration with core enterprise systems.” 

Thiru Arunachalam, Walt Founder & CEO, adds, “CDOs moving agents from PoC to production are asking a new question this year. It’s no longer ‘how do I build a context layer’ but ‘how do I guarantee deterministic results’? And they’re realizing that once agents act on their data, the platform itself must become autonomous, from ingestion and transformation to reasoning and reliability.” 

*Trang Nguyen and Mamta Singh are members of the CDO Magazine Global Board.

Special thanks to Google Cloud, Ignitho, Posit and Walt for making this event a success.

Executives attending the CDO Magazine Boston Roundtable Exchange included: 

Dia Adams, The AI Table Chief Responsible AI Officer; Chakkry Arunachalam, Vertex Pharmaceuticals Head, HR Data Strategy Analytics & Governance; Tom Blakeley, Vertex Pharmaceuticals Executive Director, Data & AI Platforms & Engineering; Cathlin Bosch, Covetrus Director, Data & Analytics; Xu Cheng, Ascot Group Group Head, Data Strategy & Insights; Denise Cheung, InfoBeans SVP, Design & Innovation; Kam Chinta, Accertify Global Director, Big Data & ML Ops; Amyn Damania, Toyota Motors North America General Manager & Head, Data Engineering Arch. & MDM; Pathik Desai, TriNetX Chief Information Officer; Louis Dimodugno, Verisk Global Chief Data Officer; Huaxin Gong, MassMutual Head, Data Science & AI Engineering Investment & Finance; Jaya Gwalani, iRobot Director, Enterprise Data & Analytics; Ravindra Harve, Boston College Enterprise Data Architect; Justin Heller, (Former) Synchrony Chief Data Officer; Malcolm Hicks, Team Hicks Chief Data Officer; Nirmal Jingar, Wayfair Sr. Technology Leader; Caitlin Johnson, Allied Benefit Systems Sr. Director, Client Analytics Reporting & Insights; Ranganandh Kanala, Synchrony Financial Head, Operations & Risk; Sravan Kasarla, Berkshire Hathaway Specialty Insurance Chief Data Officer; Krishna Kodeboyena, Logan Data President; Sunanda Koduvayur, (Former) Dick’s Sporting Goods Sr. Director, Data Science; Olivia Kew, Vanderbilt University Chief Data Officer; Gopi Mannaava, State of Connecticut Chief Data Architect; Nachiket Mehta, The Hartford VP, AI & Data Engineering; Steven Moskowitz, Industry 4ward LLC Founder; Chris Moss, Bose Head, Data & AI; Trang Nguyen, Prudential VP, Data Science; Hima Obbu, USAA Head, P&C Data Analytics & AI; David Perko, Pyramid Global Hospitality SVP, Business Analytics; Seth Proctor, Tranquil Data Chief Executive Officer; Heena Purohit, Microsoft Director, Data & AI Startups; Sudeep Regmi, Takeda Head, Enterprise Data Management & Innovation; Kasun Samarasinghe, Accertify Director, AI ML; Joseph Santos, ZoomInfo Head, Data Advisory; Suganthi Senthil, O’Reilly Media VP, Data; Charles Sheils, City of Boston Director, Data & Spatial Engineering; Mamta Singh, Commonwealth of Massachusetts Deputy Chief Data Officer; Raad Siraj, Amazon AI & Privacy Governance Workplace Trust; Anu Sundaram, Rue Gilt Groupe VP, Business Analytics; Asif Syed, Verisk VP, Data Strategy & Governance; Yu Tian, AbbVie Bioresearch Center Director, Pharmaceutical; Michelle Yaiser, IPG (Former) Executive Head, Product; Starry Zhou, Bright Horizons Analytics Manager; Thiru Arunachalam, Walt Founder & CEO; Dieter Fraehsdorf, Posit VP, Sales; Nirranjana Jaiswwal, Google Cloud Customer Engineering Manager; Ritesh Kohli, Google Cloud Data Analytics & AI Solution Strategist; William Lowe, Walt; Scott Nugent, Ignitho Technologies Co-Founder & SVP, Sales; Roney Soloman, IgnithoTechnologies CEO& Co-Founder; Matt Wallace, Posit Senior Solutions Architect; Molly Baab, Chief Operating Officer, Data Society Group; Jenna George, CDO Magazine Community Director; Anthony Losanno, CDO Magazine Managing Director; John Vulopas, CDO Magazine Account Director.