Kathryn Guarini (ex-IBM CIO) on Org Design, AI Leadership, and Enterprise Transformation

Kathryn Guarini spent over two decades at IBM leading transformations across product, engineering, and IT, eventually becoming CIO.

In this episode, we dive into:

The real bottlenecks in digital transformation

What AI readiness looks like in the enterprise

Building high-trust orgs that can handle change

Operating models that scale across 300,000+ employees

Her personal leadership lessons from the boardroom to the trenches

🎙 Hosted by Middleware – the software delivery intelligence platform that helps you make engineering workflows visible, measurable, and better.

When companies fail at digital transformation, it’s rarely because of bad tools.

It’s because change feels like chaos. In this episode of the Change Story Podcast, Jennifer Arndt — a seasoned transformation leader in academic publishing — shares how she rebuilt her company’s approach to change from the ground up.

From mindset shifts to team dynamics, from Agile to ADKAR, Jennifer offers a candid blueprint for leading change with clarity and integrity.

🎙 What you’ll learn:

• Why timing matters more than tactics
• How to build an “A-Team” of change agents
• What ADKAR looks like in the real world
• The role of kindness, rewards, and cultural mindset in lasting transformation

Most companies build for the problems they can see.

But the leaders who win? They build for the opportunities they can’t yet imagine.

In this episode of The Change Story by Middleware, Boomi’s Stephen Fishman and Matt McLarty dive deep into how resilient, adaptive organizations engineer their success — by investing in optionality, seizing opportunity, and optimizing with intention.

We explore:

🔹 Why the most successful companies act before the opportunity is obvious

🔹 How APIs and composability create business resilience

🔹 The real reason AI readiness starts with integration and modularity

🔹 Lessons from companies that thrived (and those that struggled) in the age of AI

Whether you’re a CTO, Head of Platform, engineering leader, or digital strategist — this conversation will reshape how you think about planning, building, and scaling in 2025 and beyond.

📚 Based on insights from Stephen and Matt’s book Unbundling the Enterprise.