Many tech pros aspire to become a CIO or CTO, responsible for an organization’s entire tech stack. What skills do you need to take a position at the top, and how is the role changing with the evolution of A.I. and other cutting-edge technologies? Those were just some of the topics we covered in a recent ‘Tech Connects’ podcast episode with Sastry Durvasula, who’s the CIO and Client Services Officer of TIAA.

The audio version of the episode is available on multiple platforms, including ACast, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. We also have a video version for your viewing pleasure:

We’ve also included some transcript excerpts (edited slightly for conciseness and clarity). Follow along as we break down career advice, the state of A.I., and more!

What has your journey to the CIO role been like? What advice do you have for people who might be interested in the CIO or CTO role someday?

When I got to a level of middle management, where I was leading the teams—I guess the CIO/CTO-type responsibility was in the line of sight; at a distance, but a line of sight—I had a great mentor who gave me this fabulous advice which I vividly remember.

We always talked about platforms, processing, people. He said, “Look, once you get into leadership roles, it's all going to be people. The platforms you're going to build now that you're very much invested in, you're going to end up decommissioning these platforms and you're going to be building new platforms. The processes that you're instituting or the processes that you're leading or living with today, they're going to get reengineered. But once you start investing in people, they grow with you; grow with them.”

That was eye-opening mentoring advice that I got, so that really got me started on the journey, and so now that I do a lot of mentoring myself, I've got my own three [pieces of advice]: learn, listen, and lead authentically. I feel very passionate about these three.

The advice I took from my own mentor back in the day to kind of code the concept of platforms getting re-platformed and skills getting re-skilled and processes getting re-engineered, especially in a CIO/CTO-type role. You're constantly learning and relearning and unlearning, so to me, learning is probably the most important attribute… Listening, which is an underrated skill, unfortunately, on the communication side, I think that's an important aspect; then leading authentically and being very comfortable in your own skin and who you are, which was not, frankly, if you look back like twenty years ago, that was not easily recommended.

But now we live in a world where  we've democratized the personas quite a bit that everybody can be themselves. And that's I think a powerful way to lead and aspire.

Everyone’s trying to figure out the ‘right’ approach to integrating A.I. into their respective tech stacks. What are your thoughts on this?

I always keep this little keepsake box on my table here. It has a few things and they constantly remind me. I have the original Blackberry phone… and a bunch of floppy disks, as well.

The reason I keep this, and I use this as a prop even in my own internal meetings and town halls, is we should have that reminder that [A.I.] is a big wave, but we have gone through many waves in the past; it's not the first time. As a world, we are going through a massive technology wave; the pandemic itself was a big wave, we all had to jump on it and on a screen like this with a camera and a microphone and then boom we were in business.

So I'm an optimist when it comes to technology-driven transformation, and I think this one is, and it is like everything else that we've gone through, whether the first version of the internet or web 2.0, obviously speaking, social media, digital payments, digital banking, and fintech and now here we are.

So, I think there are two ends of the [A.I.] spectrum. There is the conservative side, where we need to make sure that we understand all the risks and the implications, the biases, the hallucinations, the ethics, the cybersecurity concerns that must be catered to; and then there is the other side, where this is the best thing that happened in democratizing A.I., and how we disrupt our own businesses. How do we compete in a different way? How do we enrich the experiences that we have for our clients and our colleagues, and how do we really redefine and reimagine?