Ascend NorCal April Networking Mixer (Santa Clara)

AAPI Leadership in the Age of AI: Navigating Innovation, Security, and Executive Leadership

Event Details

Date: Friday, April 11, 2025

Time: 5:00 PM - 8:00 PM PT

Venue: SCU Leavey School of Business (Lucas Hall), 738 Franklin Street Santa Clara, CA 95050 (Map)

Admission: Members: $20 I Non-Members: $40

Attire: Business Casual

Description

Join us at the Ascend NorCal April Networking Mixer for an engaging fireside chat on Leadership in the Age of AI: Navigating Innovation, Security, and Executive Leadership. As AI reshapes industries, professionals must navigate its impact on leadership, cybersecurity, and business strategy. This discussion will explore how professionals—especially those in AI-driven industries—can transition from technical expertise to executive decision-making, balance AI automation with human leadership, and shape the future of responsible AI governance. Gain actionable insights, connect with industry leaders, and discover strategies to advance your career in an AI-powered world.

Agenda

5:00 PM - 6:00 PM:

Registration, Networking, Food & Drinks

6:00 PM - 7:00 PM:

Main Program: Fireside Chat & Audience Q&A

6:00 PM - 6:05 PM:

Welcome & Opening Remarks

6:05 PM - 6:45 PM:

Fireside Chat: Leadership in the Age of AI

6:45 PM - 7:00 PM:

Audience Q&A

7:00 PM - 8:00 PM:

Networking, Food & Drinks

Panelists

Adhir Mattu

SVP, Chief Information Officer

NXP Semiconductors

Bio.

Sruti Patnaik

Former Chief Information Officer

Former Camping World, Sportsman's Warehouse

Sruti Patnaik is a transformative technology leader with a track record of driving innovation and business growth across multiple industries. She has successfully led multibillion dollar organizations as a CIO through digital evolution, AI-driven modernization and M&A integrations. She has worked at companies such as Ross Stores, Camping World, and Sportsman’s Warehouse where she led IT strategy across various verticals such as automotive, retail, and insurance, focusing on revenue generation, cost optimization, and IT monetization. She is a technology advisor for many startups and a keynote speaker. Beyond tech, she is the Founder and President of Twinkle Academy, a nonprofit dedicated to children's education for the last 25 years.

Rohit Valia

CEO and Founder

Tumeryk.com

Rohit Valia is the CEO and Founder of Tumeryk.com, an enterprise AI security pioneer. His vast domain expertise spans fintech, cloud computing, AI/ML, and analytics. He has held leadership positions at FICO, IBM, Oracle, and Sun Microsystems. He led development of the first software firewall (SunScreen Firewall), launched the world’s first pay-per-use infrastructure-as-a-service solution (Sun Grid), led Product Management for the first Java 2EE certified application servers. He drove the successful transformation of the leading financial services AI/ML platform at FICO by crafting strategies to offer real-time SLAs for billions of financial transactions in the cloud.

Moderator

Ellen Kim

Corporate Counsel / Career Design Coach

Workday / SCU

Whether in negotiating an agreement, resolving a dispute, or strategizing a career pivot, Ellen Kim strives to invite impactful conversations through the art of a beautiful question. She is currently Corporate Counsel at Workday, where she serves as a strategic business advisor and deal negotiator to a robust Sales organization. In her role at Workday, she also leads sales enablement initiatives to train the Sales organization on how to effectively position legal conversations. She leverages the same skills of active listening, creative solutioning, and attentive reframing as a negotiator in her work as a mediator to facilitate effective settlements. Additionally, Ellen enjoys coaching business leaders in Silicon Valley through Santa Clara University's Graduate Business School as a Career Design Coach. In particular, she is passionate about providing tailored, culturally attentive caching to a new generation of diverse business leaders.

Program Partner

Safety of our guests is paramount to Ascend. Attendees are responsible for monitoring their own condition and agree to comply with the safety, hygiene and CDC identified pandemic level communicable illnesses (including COVID-19) guidelines established by relevant health authorities. We request that attendees not attend an event should they test positive or if they experience COVID symptoms prior to the event.