Happy Llama 2026 / 27th Feb 2026 / Computer History Museum, Mountain View, San Francisco CA
Sunzay Passari is an award winning technology executive and AI 100 Leader known for bringing startup style innovation into large global enterprises. Currently Director and Global Head for Architecture of Tomorrow, AI and Innovation at UPS, he leads flagship programs that embed AI and generative AI into core business platforms such as rating, pricing, billing, CRM, CPQ and analytics, positioning UPS as an AI first enterprise. His work has already delivered hundreds of millions in new annual profits and major efficiency gains through AI powered pricing and re engineered applications. Earlier, as Global Head of Product Management at eBay, he conceived and launched a first of its kind SaaS authentication platform that combined AI based inspection, RFID, warehouse automation and real time analytics, scaling across multiple categories and countries and reinforcing trust in the marketplace. Before that, he led OTT and 5G product strategy at Ooredoo Group, directing significant investments into 5G ecosystems and launching multi country streaming services that generated new digital revenues and established the operator as an innovation leader across the Middle East and Asia.
Sunzay’s career has a consistent throughline of “intrapreneurship” at scale. At Reliance Communications he pioneered one of the world’s first mobile app stores and mobile TV platforms, helping lay the groundwork for India’s later digital disruption and being handpicked for the chairman’s future leaders team. At Vodafone he built a global TMT practice, created “VAS as a Service” platforms, launched hundreds of apps and services, and led multi billion infrastructure and partnership programs that gave the company an entrepreneurial edge across Europe, APAC and MEA. Beyond his operating roles he is a sought after global keynote speaker, board advisor and industry voice on AI, GenAI and digital transformation, known for combining vision, commercial discipline and high EQ leadership. His work spans product, platforms, partnerships and culture change, always anchored in turning ambitious ideas into measurable business impact.
Aravind Peddiboyina is a data and AI innovation executive who leads platform and product strategy at Kimberly-Clark, where he drives enterprise-wide digital transformation through AI and GenAI. As Global AI Innovation and GenAI COE Analytics Engineering Leader, he has architected and scaled Clark-IQ, an omni-intelligent agentic RAG platform that powers a suite of enterprise assistants such as Violet for shop floor operations, Procuree for procurement, FUEL for insights, GenFEI for innovation, Sofie for marketing, LegalMind for legal, and KayCee for HR. Across more than 30 ML and AI use cases spanning forecasting, planning, procurement, anomaly detection and sustainability, his work has improved demand forecast accuracy, reduced inventory and stockouts, optimized trade spend, lifted supplier performance and cut energy and waste costs, contributing to ~100M USD projected ROI and double-digit productivity and efficiency gains on a multi-billion dollar operational base.
Aravind’s leadership blends deep technical architecture chops with product thinking and a strong focus on culture and talent. He has built and scaled global AI and GenAI Centers of Excellence from small seed teams to 30–40+ specialists, while also driving cloud and data platform modernization on Azure, Snowflake, Databricks and IoT stacks that delivered up to 40M USD in licensing and cost savings and significantly improved data governance. A recognised AI100 awardee and member of AIM Leaders Council, he is an active evangelist for responsible and explainable AI, having put in place ethical frameworks, AIObserve360 for MLOps/LLMOps and governance structures that allow AI to be deployed safely across sensitive functions like supply chain, marketing, finance, legal and HR. He also champions AI literacy and democratization through office hours, hackathons, innovation hubs and self-service tools such as “Chat with AI” and Copilot programs, enabling thousands of employees globally to use AI as a practical lever for decision making and innovation.
Samir Lad is a technology executive who builds large scale AI and cloud platforms at the intersection of industrial systems and enterprise software. As Vice President of Enterprise AI and AI Platform Engineering at RTX, he leads efforts to design and operationalise AI driven architectures that support complex businesses in aerospace and defence, drawing on deep experience in cloud, industrial IoT, big data and advanced analytics. Across roles at Amazon Web Services, Elekta, Panasonic Avionics, GE Healthcare and Wells Fargo, he has repeatedly been the person brought in to architect the next generation platform, align it with business strategy and turn it into revenue generating products or massive efficiency gains. His track record includes co creating GE Health Cloud, architecting a first of its kind industrial data lake spanning seven GE businesses, creating new cloud based revenue streams at Panasonic Avionics and digitising back office operations for a multibillion dollar division at Wells Fargo.
A consistent theme in Samir’s career is building high performing teams from scratch and delivering transformative outcomes in environments that are complex, regulated and resistant to change. At Panasonic Avionics he built multiple onshore and offshore teams across cloud, data, ML and applications, cut data processing times from days to minutes and launched NEXT Cloud to power new in flight services. At GE Healthcare he helped shift a 300 person software organisation from on premise enterprise products to a SaaS focused model while slashing operational costs. More recently at AWS he acted as a CTO and CxO advisor to large enterprises, helping them map cloud, AI and data strategies to concrete roadmaps and business cases. Known for tying architecture tightly to business value, he specialises in PaaS/SaaS product strategy, digital transformation and complex programme execution, turning “infinite” data and sprawling legacy systems into coherent platforms that actually move the needle.
Ankur Uttam is a data science, machine learning and AI executive who operates at the intersection of product, growth and strategy. Over more than 20 years across technology, gaming, and ecommerce, he has built and led high impact analytics and ML teams at companies such as PlayStation, Microsoft, LinkedIn, Facebook, eBay and Poshmark. As VP II of Data Science and Analytics at Poshmark, he is part of the executive leadership team, owning the data strategy that underpins growth, monetisation and user experience. He leads a global organization of 50+ data scientists and analysts working across product, ads, pricing, forecasting, marketing, operations and risk. His teams have delivered multi million dollar revenue and efficiency gains through initiatives such as marketplace pricing, recommender systems, personalization, full funnel attribution, media mix modeling, experimentation platforms, and anomaly detection for account security and policy enforcement. He has also driven data readiness for IPO and M&A, including privacy aware access, lineage and due diligence.
Beyond his operating role, Ankur is recognised as an inventor, advisor and thought leader in enterprise AI. He holds multiple US patents in attribution and data driven marketing, and frequently speaks and writes on topics such as the future of AI, building and scaling data science teams, and using data to transform customer experience and business strategy. He has advised startups and growth companies as a board and product advisor, helping founders design data and AI roadmaps that tie directly to P&L. A graduate of IIM Bangalore with executive education from Stanford Graduate School of Business, he combines deep technical and quantitative expertise with boardroom level communication, translating complex models and systems into clear narratives and decision frameworks for C suite leaders. His work consistently focuses on using AI as a practical lever for value creation rather than hype, with a strong emphasis on cross functional collaboration, talent development and responsible deployment.
Hari Gutlapalli is an executive technology leader at Kaiser Permanente, where he serves as Executive Director for Data, AI and Platforms and drives large scale digital transformation across the health plan business. With more than 25 years of experience in enterprise applications and healthcare, he combines deep technical leadership – backed by 18+ patents – with a sharp focus on member experience, operational efficiency and speed of delivery. At Kaiser Permanente he has led the reimagining of membership experiences across Commercial, Individual/Family, Medicare and Medicaid plans, built the next generation KPMC platform for billing, enrollment and group setup, and driven initiatives like CCPE for customer and channel partner experience. His crisis leadership was on display when he helped deliver a multi region COVID vaccine appointment application from concept to production in just six weeks. He also leads health plan wide DevOps and “Project Velocity” efforts to improve automation, release management and testing efficiency, while building scalable GenAI platforms using LLMs and SLMs for healthcare use cases and transforming teams into product centric, agile organizations.
Alongside his enterprise role, Hari is an entrepreneur and product builder as co founder and board member of goDeskless, a cloud CRM platform for sales, customer service and field service on smart devices, now used by more than 30,000 enterprise users across customers such as Tata Motors, Bechtel, the State of Arizona and Volvo. Earlier in his career at Oracle and Siebel, he led development for Fusion CRM, field service and real time scheduling, and was primary inventor on multiple search and scheduling patents. Known for his people first leadership style, he consistently earns very high people pulse scores and is recognized for building and retaining high performing, globally distributed teams. His work sits at the intersection of strategy, architecture and delivery, where he is adept at making pragmatic buy/build/customize decisions, evaluating vendors and technologies at speed, and turning complex requirements into resilient, customer centric platforms that scale.
Gaurang “Gary” Patel is a machine learning, data science and analytics leader with more than 15 years of experience helping Fortune 500 companies turn data into commercial outcomes. He has built and led high impact analytics functions across technology, ecommerce, gaming, retail and banking for brands such as Sony PlayStation, Dell, Cisco, HP, eBay and Commonwealth Bank of Australia. As Senior Director of BI and Analytics at Albertsons Companies, he focuses on leveraging data and machine learning to drive profitability and growth in grocery ecommerce at massive scale, supporting thousands of stores and tens of millions of weekly customers. His expertise spans recommendation engines, experimentation and A/B testing, customer lifetime value, next best action, multi touch attribution, acquisition and retention modeling, Customer 360 and executive facing BI and reporting, with a strong emphasis on building fit for purpose, scalable data platforms.
Gary combines technical depth with product and commercial thinking. He is seasoned at partnering with senior executives to define analytics roadmaps aligned to business objectives, leading cross functional teams of analysts, data scientists and engineers, and translating complex insights into clear narratives for decision makers. An ex startup founder with multinational experience across the US, Australia, the UK and India, he is comfortable operating in both high growth and mature environments and is known for creating order out of chaos in data rich, ambiguous problem spaces. His leadership track record includes growing and mentoring teams, standing up analytics centers of excellence and evangelizing data literacy and self service analytics across large organizations, always with a focus on measurable business impact rather than vanity metrics.
Datta Junnarkar is a global business and technology leader with more than 25 years of experience spanning startups to Fortune 50 enterprises, operating at the intersection of CIO, CDIO and CISO responsibilities. As Chief Information Officer for Maritime at Boeing, he leads strategy, architecture and execution across IT operations, infrastructure, business applications and emerging technologies, with a focus on AI, data analytics, AR/VR and secure digital transformation in highly regulated environments. Over his career he has built and led global teams, designed and delivered enterprise scale technology programs and established an M&A integration center of excellence, successfully executing more than 13 end-to-end integrations that aligned technology, security and business outcomes.
Beyond his operating remit, Datta plays an active role in shaping the broader CIO community and next generation leadership. He serves as Chair of the Silicon Valley CIO community at HMG Strategy, is a governing body member in Gartner’s C-level communities and has advised academic institutions such as California State University East Bay. His experience spans IT governance, cybersecurity, privacy and compliance frameworks such as ISO 27001, DFARS NIST 800-171 and CMMC, as well as board and advisory board engagement on technology risk and digital strategy. Known for bringing clear strategy to complex problems and for centering both internal users and customer experience, he continues to drive technology-led business transformation while contributing his expertise through board roles, industry forums and non-profit work focused on education and poverty alleviation.
