WW International

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Tan Su Shan made history this year as the first woman to lead DBS. With over 15 years at the bank—and earlier leadership roles at Morgan Stanley and Citi—she has been instrumental in expanding DBS’s institutional, consumer, and international banking footprint. Now, as CEO, she’s forging a bold vision for Singapore as the financial bridge between Southeast Asia, China, and India. Tan will share how she navigates geopolitical uncertainty, harnesses the power of AI for next-generation banking, and reimagines what it means to lead in a rapidly changing global landscape.

Shaping Asia's Financial Future with Tan Su Shan

Conferences

So it was originally the Development Bank of Singapore, but I have to say in addition to being Southeast Asia's largest bank, I see here it's the world's best bank, the safest bank, the top for customer experience, customer service. I just think, how do you build on that? You've been in the role since March. How's it going? Is it just, you know, Diane. Let me tell you, I, I joined in 2010. In 2010 we were the worst bank. OK, worst for customer service, for the longest queues, worst bank for product. I mean, the whole works. Um, and, and really it was the team under my, my, my previous boss, the previous CEO of Bush and we, we, we put a lot of, we, we worked really hard as a Singaporean. I don't know if any of you, have you ever flown Singapore Airlines? Oh, you have. OK, so we were all marshaled to Singapore Airlines headquarters by the airport. And taught how do you offer good service quality SQ as they called it. And so that was our first learning was how do you give good service and how do you, how, how are you respectful, easy to deal with and dependable RED red as we as we sags when people look at their bank account. I don't know. pretty well. Um, look, I, I want to ask, you know, first of all, congratulations on being number one on the list. I'd be remiss not to ask how your peers reacted to that, by the way, since I know that you're known and beloved throughout Asia. How did that go? Shock. Yeah, I think a surprise suddenly from my part, surprise from my kids is like, what? Um, but, um, uh, you know, look, it's, it's a great honor. I'm humbled by it. Um, didn't expect it at all. And honestly, the word power, I, you know, I don't know how I feel about the word powerful. Um, I like the word impactful, um, and, um, I don't feel very powerful, to be honest. I, I, I just think, um, it's the team, right? It really is, it's the team that gets stuff done. Uh, and it's my job as a CEO to be the chief energy officer, right? To give energy to the team and to make sure that everyone is headed in the right direction and, and, and we're learning together and when we're doing new stuff together and we're dealing with problems together and we're taking responsibility together and, and, and we're owning up to the mistakes and taking accountability. When I was doing my research, you have wonderful Acronyms. I feel like you're a student of leadership, you know, in addition to the fact that DBS, the D is no longer development for you. You've called it something else. Well, I often joke that the D should stand for digital, digital bank or data bank, but you know, in this very bifurcated world where you have so much volatility and people are so Bifurcated in their views, um, we wanted to be a dependable bank. In Chinese people say Feng Yu Jian Zheing right when this wind and the storm, you see the true, uh, loyalty of your, your, your, your partnership, um, and so we wanted to be that dependable partner through thick and thin. We wanted it to be digital, we want it to be disruptive, you know, using new technologies, and we wanted to be a diversify a bank, you know, because you kind of need to diversify. You need to diversify your supply chain, your counterparts, your currencies, your demand, your supply, your, your interoperability of your tech, etc. So we want to be that bank that if you were Thank you with me. You should think about it because I'm your risk diversity. Well, they will not, and you know one of the things I should mention is that you started pretty soon after that, I believe was Liberation Day and day one, so day one you have Liberation Day, and you are a bridge, among other things, your largest China, India, Indonesia. How is that going for you? So Asia um is 60% of the global growth. Um, and I know I'm in the US and the US is the world's biggest capital markets, but when it comes to global trade, Um, actually, trade within Asia, trade between Asia and Europe, Asia and the GCC is actually growing. Um, and so the two financial hubs that we're in is Singapore and Hong Kong, and then the big growth markets are China, India, Indonesia, we're in all these markets, and they don't tend to move together when India's good, China's in a slowdown when China recovers, India may or may not slow down, but it gives us a good base. It's Huge market. It's growing. It's pretty young, especially in India and Indonesia and Vietnam, and it's very digital. So there's been a lot of digital leapfrogging happening in a lot of our major markets. So how are you helping your customers cope with some of the fallout from the new trade environment? Is that impacting you at all? Diversify. Absolutely. So first all impact was liberation Day, and then everybody had to digest, oh my God, how much more do I have to pay? Um, and if you're only getting your supplies from China, you diversify. So China plus 1, China plus N. I have a client who makes Christmas trees from Shenzhen, and you can imagine he sells to Walmart and Target and all the, you know, big great companies here. He had to diversify, so he moved a lot of his production to Surabaya in Indonesia, and he also sells now to Europe. So that's just one example. You also diversify your demand if you only sell to the US, well, you have to diversify. Um, and so producers are now finding new markets in the GCC within India, Taiwanese producers are going to Taiwan. Um, um, China, you know, China, Taiwan, China, and sorry, China and India historically are not that close, but I think this might actually create more opportunities for Chinese and Indian companies to do more together, certainly on the supply chain. Seeing that right now, China and India getting closer together among Uh, it'll take time to build the trust, but I, the opportunities are there, uh, certainly from a supply chain perspective. We're already seeing one or two good partnerships. There's, uh, Shanghai Auto now partnering through that, that, that ownership of the MG car with JSW, which is a big conglomerate in India, um, and there will be more, you know, there's a lot of solar panels being imported as well from China. to India. So if that grows, the opportunities could be tremendous. You know, one of the things about DBS is it really has been a pioneer and a leader. I think you mentioned digital, certainly with AI. One of you when you spoke to Fortune earlier this year, I loved your anecdote. First of all, you have a WhatsApp group with your board, which I thought OK, let's stop right there with the WhatsApp group, but then they said even the CEO could be replaced by AI so them marching orders for you, but what have you done to really make generative AI sort of the the foundation of the banks? I think that's something that a lot of people can learn from. Well, the first thing and the hardest thing to do is to get your data into a data lake. A lot of banks, corporates have legacy data, so did we. Um, and it was the hard work creating a big data lake. We call it, you know, a a a ADA, it's the analytics for DBS, but Uh, advanced analytics BBS, but really, it's creating metadata so that you can then have protocols and reusable models and, and you have a governance and process that that is common. So that's important, that takes years. Then you learn to create machine learning models. That doesn't come intuitively, by the way, you have to learn. And we tried to make learning fun. So we, we, we adopted AWS's Deep racer. I didn't know how to do machine learning, but through using the deep racer. I'm a gamer, um, I learned to be a gamer. I'm not naturally a gamer, but I had to learn to be a gamer to understand how, you know, you could cut bits of code to make your car turn right or left when you need to, and then you can try and win the race. I didn't win, of course, but I learned that it was really that the machine can learn really quickly. Um, and then you just have to do these experiments, and I still remember my favorite experiment was when we realized we were losing a lot of our customers to the fintech companies on foreign exchange, right, Trans-wise, new wise, Revolut. So they were getting a lot of our FX flows from our SMEs. So I asked the dealers, hey, why are we losing all this market share? And they said, Susan, very easy. It's all about the rates. So if I cut the rates, we're going to get them, the clients back. Yeah, absolutely. Then I thought that seemed too easy. And we thought we had all these machine learning, we should try and test them out. So the, the, the Uber equivalent in Asia is called Grab. And on Valentine's Day, Grab sent me a message and it said, I miss you. I love you. And my husband didn't send me a card that Valentine's Day, but grabbed it. I'm like, hm, interesting. And of course, I opened the EDM and I, I, I looked at the coupon. So I said, how about I miss you because these customers used to deal with us and they went away. And I remember my dealers cringe, like, no, no, no, no, no, that's just too emotional, and I miss. No, this is facts we're talking about, like, try. So just to humor me, they put it in the machine. They had some messages that went great rates, you know, and they had message messages that said I miss you. Guess which one worked better. I love that. There you go, connecting on an emotional level. So, and, and you have to take out the human bias when you're doing this machine learning and the machine helps to take out because everyone, all of us are biased. I was biased with something, the dealers were biased with something else, but the machine takes away the biases, right? And it really tests and learns. So that's how we learn. We learned. Honestly, I learn best by doing, learn by your mistakes, learn by doing, and that's what we did. We started, you know, NLP in 2014, very early on, and it was so hard in those days and we failed, we failed, we failed. And you know what, it was all that failures in the early days that taught us how to do, how to do this in a in a faster. Better way. I want to get into some more about your background, but talk a little bit first about crypto digital assets, anything you want to say on that front, it's been very volatile and it's something that a lot of bankers have sort of kept it at an arm's length. How do you feel about it? So we started custody for crypto in 2021. Yeah, and you know why? Because we found a lot of our, well, in, in, in Christmas of 2019, I looked at all the credit card payments and I realized a lot of the kids were buying Bitcoin through their parents' credit cards. Oh, that sounds dangerous. Yeah. And it was really it was like almost a billion dollars in one month. I was like, what the hell? What is this? And then, um, my friends who had bought them as, as, oh, they were given, oh, there was an organization where the lady boss gave everybody one Bitcoin, it was worth $70 and and and when she gave them all one. Then of course, guess what, nobody could remember their password or the crypto. So when I got to 30,000, I get all these calls and panic like, what the hell, I lost my password, how do I get it back? Then I realized, we realized together that there was a use case to create a safe custody for crypto. Or for whatever tokenized assets to show assets. So we created that custody. So it came from this realization that if you are a bank, and you're supposed to be the custodian of your client's assets, their financial assets, if you don't know how to custodize the tokenize assets, you're going to lose this game long term. So we created the custody. After we did that, our client said, Hey, heck, why don't I just go on ramp off ramp with you? That means buy and sell digital assets with you because I don't want to have to open an account with FTX or whatever. I don't know if they'll last. So we said, oh, OK, never done an exchange before, but Talk to the regulator. They go where the where the customer. So that's what we did and then we thought we'll learn to tokenize as well. So that was the journey we started with the cus, started the exchange, and then we started the tokenization journey. And it's been, honestly, it's been patchy because I think regulators are very schizophrenic. They want to do it, don't want to do it, want to do it, don't want to do it. So you just have to go with the flow. So I feel like I'm we're now into a lightning round here, but I'm curious about you were nominated member of parliament, you know, about a decade ago. I feel like, uh, which is where you're basically a nonpartisan. Member of the Singapore parliament and and now you're in this um economic strategic review committee on global competitiveness. What do you learn from experience in the public sector because we're always talking about what the private sector can bring to public, but not as much about what public can bring to private. Any quick thoughts there? So I learned what it meant to be a congresswoman, right? And I learned that a lot of what happens in Parliament and I guess here in Congress, it's quite staged, but the real negotiation happens in the tea room after during recess, right? Um, but at least, you know, from, from the Singapore perspective, I also learned that They were very open to feedback. That was great. I, I sent all my speeches in before and I thought they might fetch it, they might say, no, don't say this, don't say that. Absolutely not. They will just bring it on. You don't agree, just bring it on. So that was good. I, I, I felt that we had a voice and that was useful. Not everything. That that we suggested was was taken on, to be honest, it took some of the issues took time. Like I I I asked for egg freezing in 2014 and didn't happening for all. So we didn't allow egg freezing unless the woman had a sort of a very bad disease, you know, like a life threatening disease, um, and I was arguing for egg freezing. Uh, for, for, for women before they got married with the view that they could use it after they get married, um, if in case, you know, they couldn't get pregnant naturally, um, that, you know, didn't go down so well at first, but I suggested it, but I think gradually, you know, the society will change, you know, somebody just bid $15,000 I believe to have dinner with you, so it's kind of a warm buffet. But you and your husband you do a lot of great work as a family, by the way, in Cambodia, so I should mention that. But in our final minute here, if you were to give advice to this person who wants some time with you right now and what you've done at DBS and what you intend to do, what would you say? Well, my advice would be, you know, life is in a straight line. Sometimes you have to take one step back to take two steps forward. And so when the going is good, don't lose your head. When the going is bad, don't lose your heart. I love that. I think that's, that's fabulous. And um, I think the other thing I just want to say quickly with regard to parenting advice because I was trolling your kids and they all seem to be, both of them seem to be doing very well. As a family, I think that collective giving that you. is very powerful. Anything you say that and I know a lot of, there's nothing more powerful than bonding with where you're all doing good. That's been a thing for us every year we do one trip together, we go to Cambodia and we do this. You know, activity, it could be cataract, um, it could be cataract operations for, for, for, for the people who can't see or building a school or something, and it really bonds the family, highly recommend it. Most powerful woman in Asia, it's a great honor to have you here. Thank you very much, Susan and to be continued. Thank you.

Earlier this year, Ulta Beauty promoted former COO Kecia Steelman to CEO. Nine months into the role, she'll share how she’s leading the $11 billion beauty retailer into its next chapter—via its most ambitious international expansion to date, strategic acquisitions, and experiential retail—at one of 2025’s buzziest pop culture moments: Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter Tour.

How Ulta Beauty Stays Innovative

Keisha, thank you so much for being here and joining me. I appreciate it. Yeah, thank you so much to Fortune for having me. I'm excited about our conversation. Of course. So you made the transition from COO to CEO about 10 months ago, one of those rare few. So tell me, in your 1st 10 months, what was the boldest or the riskiest thing you did that you think is paying off now? Oh wow, that's a fantastic question. I will tell you that I think one of the things that you need to be really focused on when you transition into a CEO role is to have a very clear plan, especially if you want to get a lot accomplished in a short period of time. I partnered with the board early on and I said, here's what my objectives are. It was really around 3 different things. First, to get the right team around me, not only for today but for the future, you know, that could be maybe viewed as bold because when you're making people decisions pretty early in your career, I have the benefit of being in the role for 11 years with the company, so I had a pretty pretty good perspective. I would say the second thing was to have a really good framework of strategy that the frontline associate could understand, so could the board and so could the investors. So building a strategy that everyone could understand the role that they played and it made sense. I had heard pre previous strategies and other companies in this one where I was like, I don't know exactly what that means. So if you don't understand what the strategy, it's hard to execute it. And then third, really clearly having decision making rights and streamlined decision making processes, I say often spinning is my least favorite move. So when you get stuck on a decision and you can't move things forward in an organization, it's, it's, it's difficult. So you ask the bold part. I would say that I focus on all of those at the same time and that's bold's that's bold. It was, I felt like we just couldn't wait too long. We needed to move. Quickly and that's exactly what we've done. Now Ulta, which has been such a US centric brand, you made the decision to do a big global expansion. You announced Mexico earlier this year. You're talking about the Middle East. Tell me about the consumers in each of those markets and how are they different and talking to you about what they want versus what US consumers want. Well, I'll start with that they all love beauty and the role that social media has played. has really expanded our brand outside of the US even though we are a US-based brand for 35 years. They were asking for us. You know what I'm hearing in those markets is that they really love the democratization of beauty that we offer everything from low to lux in services components with it. No one's really doing that in a large way that's focused. beauty and wellness outside of the US either, so that's one thing that they're they're excited about. The other thing that they're asking for that's unique that I actually am very excited about even bringing back into our ecosystem in the United States is brands that are true to the region, and they would like to have presence of regional brands in our stores, and I like that because as we continue to be even more global. As a company, bringing new brands into the United States, I think is part of that whole ecosystem too. We do it with fashion. You see what's on the runway in Paris and it comes to the United States. We should be doing the same thing with beauty too. Now you mentioned social media, which is a big part. It's changed the way I think a lot of us shop for beauty. Same with with Amazon. When thinking about that space, what do you think is Ulta's biggest competitive vulnerability right now and how are you standing out? You know, I will say no one does what we do at all to Beauty the way that we do it, and I'm a big believer in focusing on controlling what you can control and leaning into your strengths as a business and futureproofing them. So that's what really we are really focused on is um leveraging our digital assets. We've been investing in our foundational systems the last few years. This year we've really transitioned to. Go to market, uh, and then introduction you were talking about the cowboy Carter, etc. we have to be in the social areas where our guests are, and we need to be a part of the conversation and that's what we've really been leaning into. Beauty has been taking off on social media just for a lot of the young users as well. I know your demographic is skewing towards younger girls age 9 and 10. How do you think about the role. That Ulta and society should ultimately play and you know, young girls shopping for anti-aging products is how do you feel responsible for that type of thing and how do you, you know, kind of police what consumers shop for? Yeah, I will say that I do feel as a retailer we do have a responsibility to make sure that we're serving all of our guests and giving them the best experience with the great products that we can offer for all age ranges. So, um, you know, from. The very first starting, uh, with 8910 all the way to, you know, my 90 year old grandmother or my 90 year old mother-in-law. So you know, we, we have that responsibility I believe as a retailer to make sure that we're offering the right products for the right associate right right occasion, um, and the right experience that's needed. We have a lot of training that we do with our associates, um, we have a lot of the conversations with the parents. Because a lot of times when they're in they're shopping with their parents, so we want to make sure that we're just providing all the educational elements that we can so that they're buying the products that are the right products for them. I'm going to come to the audience for questions in just a second, but first of all, um, I don't know if you noticed Keisha say the magic buzzword, which is Beyonce, so I have to ask about that. Um, I know you've met Beyonce, also partnered with Beyonce and her Cowboy Carter tour. Tell me about one meeting her and to the partnership and That came about. Yeah, well, what I will say is she's just as beautiful in person as what you see on the stage, and she's a beautiful person from the inside out. She's been really engaged with the brand. That's what I see successful with the celebrity brands are those celebrities that are actually very, very engaged. This has been a long process that she's been working on building the brand and her mom's really engaged too, so it's really a family engagement. Um, the product is fantastic. It's for all hair types. Uh, the fixturing if you come into our store is on a really unique beautiful fixture, um, that's in a prominent location. Uh, it's hit the ground running. It's one of our largest hair. I do believe it is actually our largest hair makeup launch or launch that we had in the company and. You know, it's just exciting to be part of the conversation. It's so important that we are at the center of where our guests are, and that activation where we had pop-ups in local stores in the areas where the concerts were happening, it's just bringing music, her brand, our brand all together in a really authentic way, and when you can do that, it really resonates with the guests. Do you want to do more of that going forward? Yeah, I think where it makes sense, absolutely, very cool. All right, any questions from anyone out here? Up front we got one. And if you could say your name, title, and company please? Betsy Bay and Danny Herman, head of research at Phillips. We had dinner last night together, and there was a quote, and I know we don't talk about dinners, uh, they're off the record, but about not being bitter and being better, and I think the rest of the folks here might actually appreciate hearing that as well. that you're, we're breaking the rule on dinner, but it's a good one. No, it's a good one. Yeah, what, what we were talking about is like there have been times in all of our careers where we've been passed up or we didn't get that that next role when we even felt like we were ready for it. And I said that the one thing that's really true to me is I think that you can either choose to be better or you can be better, and I took this opportunity the last few years getting ready to be the CEO of Alta Beauty to really focus on being better. I really supported Dave Kimball, who was our CEO. I Learned as much as I could to prepare myself for the next role, and I think that actually allowed me to hit the ground running. If I would have been bitter, I could have left and taken a CEO job someplace else. I had plenty of opportunities, but this is the company that I wanted to be with, and I took that opportunity to be better instead of being bitter. That's a that's I love that that phrase. That's a really good one. Um, and you've had such a long career. You've been at Ulta for, for a decade, right? Target before that, and you actually had a partnership with Target, I think, probably thanks to all the relationships you built there recently you decided to part ways. Can you talk to us a bit about the lessons you learned from that and what you're taking into partnerships going forward? Yeah, well, what I will say is that I'm really proud of the work that we had done with Target and we did make a mutual decision to go in different directions. I think that's just a natural occurrence of business and you know, with me coming in as a new CEO, my responsibility is to make sure that I'm focused on the right processes and you know, investments for Ulta Beauty and our Ulta Beauty Unleashed plan, which we've talked about since day one when I hit the ground, is where I really feel that I want to focus my team, my assets, and that's where I feel like I can get the greater shareholder value in return. It's in the Alta Pia unleash plan is around 3 different pieces, uh, for those of you that maybe don't understand, it's the first one is our core business. So clearly our day in and day out business that's running 80% of our sales still come from our stores, but really working on brand building and store execution and our investments in our digital assets. Personalization is really important. That's that's driving the core business of and of itself. And then we've got margin of creative businesses that, you know, can help us continue to make more money and to continue to grow in an asset-like way. So international is one of the pillars of my margin of creative plan. Marketplace, which we just launched and officially shared today, it hit the wire that we have 100 brands that are now being sold on our online capabilities at the really seamless transaction, so marketplace is up and running, which is great. Wellness is a $400 billion category that's highly fragmented. I've got space in stores to really do this right. The guests are telling us that we have the right to to drive that business. Uh, and then UV Media, which is our retail media network, uh, we have 46 million loyalty members in our ecosystem. Now that's a clean database, so they've shopped within 12 months. That's a huge asset that we have that we can partner with our brands and really drive the business and also look at non-endemic advertising too, uh, and then you underscore that was just operation. Excellence and that's what my also beauty unleash plan is and that's what we're seeing working right now internally I talk a lot about we had to get our swagger back. I felt like we lost our swagger just a little bit and I feel like we've got our swagger back, uh, the company you can feel it internally in the company. You can see it, uh, in the interaction in our stores and. And it's great. I have one of my uh chief leaders here with me, my chief retail officer Amy Bear Thomas. It's the people that make all the difference with your team, and I feel like I have the best team in retail working with me right now. Operational excellence that's really the COO and you just shining through which I love Keisha um so I wanna end also by talking about the future um what does you know. Future consumers like Gen Alpha, what do they want that millennials, Gen Z, Gen X, all of them haven't wanted before that you're right now planning for? Well, what we're seeing with the Gen Alpha consumer is yes, they're getting their information online, but they really, really like that experience in store. They like trial, they like, uh, you know, hands on. K Beauty is really. Important to them, so Korean beauty, they're, they're very much into that. They like clean beauty. They really do want great products that uh the value, it's not necessarily just about the cost, but the value for what the benefits are. They are a very smart segment and they're going to, they have very high expectations, so we've got to make sure that we're always prepared to deliver for them. And my last one for you Keisha, I feel like beauty is such an industry that thrives on reinvention trends are constantly coming and going. How do you decide what trends are worth investing in and what you're just gonna pass on, and it's a passing thing? Well, we have a great group of merchants uh and a and a great leader leading our merchandizing teams, you know, I, I think that's where their expertise is. I I like that we have new avenues to be able to try some brands and maybe a little bit. Less risky way with bringing them into our marketplace to see if they sell well then we can always convert them onto our econ platform and then ultimately into our store but you know I think that's part of the art and science of retail and that's what makes it so fun is that you've got to look out there to find that that one that's the next one and that's what our merchants do just such a fabulous job of and I couldn't be more proud of what they do day in and day out and quickly favorite Ulta product. Oh, that's like asking me my favorite child. You can pick top three. You can take top 3. Alright, I will say, um, my, my favorite, uh, is gonna, I'm gonna start with an Ulta Beauty product. So an Ulta Beauty lip oil, we have a great, uh, Ultra Beauty lip oil. It's got a nice flavoring. So if you're one of these that talk and eat your lipstick at the same time, it's a good one. Um, I like SA ladder Advanced Night Repair. It's, uh, you can take it and it works for all skin types. It's a, it's a great one, yes, I know SA ladder up there, um, and then, you know, I'd say the other one is, um, I do like skin Iceland. I'm a big, I'm all about skin right now and know these. that you can put on your eyes and go to bed and you look a lot better in the morning, especially as much as much travel as I have. It's like a micro needling eye patch that you can put on. Don't pull it off because it will hurt, put it on and you wake up the next day and you look a little bit more ref. Alright, well, you heard it here first. Thank you so much. Thank you I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you.

With an annual revenue of approximately $7.5 billion, SAIC Inc. (Science Applications International Corporation) is one of the largest tech contractors for the U.S. government, with a mission to strengthen and transform America’s national security and critical infrastructure. Against the backdrop of President Trump’s proposed Golden Dome for America, Toni Townes-Whitley, ranked number 82 on the 2025 MPW list, joins us to discuss working with the government to keep Americans safe, and the continually evolving landscape of emerging technology.

Powering National Security

Tony, we are speaking about national security at the same time that we just saw this historic ceasefire agreement between Israel and Gaza. At the same time, I think we all know that over the last few years we have seen a rise in global conflict, not just in the Middle East but elsewhere as we just heard. And we've also seen that the nature of war warfare has has changed. So I want to start by just asking you to tell all of us in the room here what do we need to be thinking about, what do you see as the biggest shift, um, you know, both the rise and again just the changes in how wars are fought today. So what we're seeing initially as you've mentioned a couple of the regional conflicts, you can't look at the situation in Israel, the situation, uh, quite frankly in North Korea, around the world, the various regional conflicts throughout Europe and the Middle East, and, and not see the effect of aerial warfare, just the absolute modernization speed and scale of aerial warfare. We see the introduction of various emerging technologies like hypersonics, electronic warfare, different kinds of capabilities around uh aerial systems, and it immediately challenges the speed and scale with which the US has traditionally thought about its perimeter defense. Those areas where we had large seas or oceans between us and adversaries are no longer the boundary conditions that we have experienced. We have adversaries that operate in multiple domains that go beyond land, sea, and air, but cyber and space. So in a multi-domain environment, our ability to understand the threat, see the threat, react. Is one that is more connected by data and the ability to integrate data across so many different nodes, uh, and being able to do that in a predictive way. How we build whether it be munitions or weapons systems changed by digital engineering and different digital forces and opportunities and so with a company like SAIC we've for 57 years kind of been at the intersection of commercial technology being introduced to very austere and difficult complex mission environments and we have to acknowledge that we are also um. Engaged with a peer adversary that is operating on multiple modes. Not just in terms of militaristic, economic, um, political. And and cyber and all the various attacks, and I think one of the things that probably keeps us up at night in the national defense world is the fact that our adversary can use their entire industrial base. They leverage every aspect of their industrial base. Some of our industrial base, what we call our defense industrial base has grown anachronistic over time, has aged with legacy capability as we introduce new commercial technologies, and we haven't really seen the urgency of the signal yet. That we need to in fact enlist all of our industrial base. In fact, I think I wear this bracelet. Many of my team does, it's not an exciting bracelet, so it's not out there for your uh purchase for those of you who are on the, you know, on the bizarre floor there, but um. WID TIW, which I pulled that bracelet from another phenomenal leader, Alexis Bonnell from the Air Force Research Lab, but she had everyone wearing the bracelet. WID TIW says, would I do this in war? The urgency that she was holding her team accountable that make every decision as if you were doing this in a war environment. The balloon has gone up. How do we, because there's things we do as a country that are amazing when we've got a threat right in front of us. The question is, how do you keep that pace, that urgency, that prioritization when the threat may be a bit diffused or you don't have a clear sense of timing. Um, you touched on this a bit just talking about data. I think we still, we kind of we think warfare, we think missiles, kinetic warfare. Just real briefly explain what SAIC does, has been doing for a long time, and then I want to get to what's changing today. Yeah, so for a long time we've talked about bringing more technology. Uh, into and moving, if you will, the way we think about national security, both our critical infrastructure as well as defense and the intel space with more emerging technologies around AI obviously which we call sort of operational AI that is AI for the battlefield, if you will, for the war fighter. Uh, but, but data, um, data integration, data migration, cloud, cloud-based, secure cloud-based capabilities, digital engineering, uh, robotics, and, and all things that I know people are tracking on the electronic, I'm sorry, on the tech front. I think we see an equation evolving at SAIC. Because of our legacy, the equation says that to operate moving forward in the current environment with which we have to not only protect the United States but its allies as well and go in coalition environments, we have to have enough mission experience to know what a great mission outcome looks like. You have to have enough digital experience and technology to know what works in different mission environments and what we're solving for in a deductive way. And you've got to know how to integrate those two because legacy, we're not gonna walk away from all of our legacy platforms and capabilities, but how do you introduce new? And then you have to add to that an ecosystem. I would argue that the words that we use are even anachronistic. Defense industrial base, I would suggest is transitioning to a national security innovation ecosystem. If we're going to be able to compete. And protect and do the types of work that we do out of the defense and intel sector, we have to have an ecosystem focused on national security, not just physical perimeter, but quite frankly critical infrastructure here in the US, which is as much a target as what we're used to in terms of military bases, and we have to then engage the technologies with the knowledge of the mission to build an ecosystem when we, for example, when we think about counter UAS or counter on. Unmanned aerial systems, like drone attacks were particularly on display in Ukraine. And the ability for a $10,000 drone or a $500 drone to take out an exquisite multi-million dollar system was on display. So counterattacks, counter UAS is a critical area for the Department of Defense war depending on how you reference it for national security. And yet when you look at that, when we bring a solution around that, we bring about 40 partners to the table. We bring garage startup capability all the way to a hyper scalar like a Microsoft or an AWS or others, and we're doing that because you have to be able to plug and play new technologies into existing, and that has to work in a mission environment. You've got to be able to demonstrate that outcome. So I think where SAIC feels like it's position. we have the history of the mission. We have that passion. A third of our company, uh, our veterans, and we've had a chance to engage with some of the female veterans here and we're so thankful for your service. 2/3 of my company have have some form of classified security clearance, but to operate in this new world order, it's not enough to just be a part of the ecosystem. You gotta build it. You've got to bring in companies, you gotta bring in startups, you got to engage with large players, and you gotta be able to demonstrably prove. The least sexy word right now in national security, but the most important, which is interoperability. If things can't work, imagine a coalition war fight where you've got 9 coalition partners, 9 other countries. You've got to get data to war fighters that are of different classification levels, and all the 9 countries have their own classification levels. Now we're talking about what feels like a large language model to determine how you get that data just in time and only that data that they are allowed to see by way of access. This sounds like the nerdiest example I can tell by your faces. I need to find something new. I get it. Geeky folks enjoy this. We do. But the fundamental piece of this is we can't do coalition war fighting unless data could be integrated, integrated across legacy and new, and integrated across many, many different platforms. That's why companies like SAIC exist, and that's quite frankly what gets us up in the morning. So let's make this more real. I think we've all heard about and Read about the Golden Dome missile defense system which there's an initial budget for at least 25 billion. um, can you talk a little bit about just just kind of take us through how your what your role is in this and how this kind of ecosystem approach comes into play here? Is this an opportunity for that? It is, and I think quite frankly it is, it's an integration opportunity first. It's an architecture. Because to understand Golden Dome is to understand that this country has invested in all five of those domains, whether it be air, land, sea, cyber, or space, we've invested lots of technology and capability. The issue isn't that we don't have sufficient tech. We do, we can obviously improve and move on. The issue is how do you integrate that in a golden dome environment that is by definition uh multi. Varied equation that has to be solved for across multiple domains and different kinds of technology and capabilities and so a company like SAIC can prove out pieces of that through simulation through digital twins. We can show where you're able to, as we've done with NORAD, one of the, the um uh combatant commands within the military, how you can get to a common operating picture by integrating data from multiple sources and whether that's legacy or new. And how we can understand what the continuous surveillance of that airspace looks like. We do that by also operating in what we call the LEO or the low Earth orbiting satellite world, which suggests that space is now a contested arena for for threat. We have obviously commercial space ventures that are interesting and and are important for this country, but space is also a tactical threat environment for protecting this country and protecting our coalition partners, and Golden Dome has to operate across all five of those domains with architecture that's integrated so we spend some time demonstrating, simulating, prototyping, as well as showing where we deliver that in different parts uh across the department. of Defense. And then let's go to, you know, something like FAA. Part of understanding the modernization of our airspace just as travelers, as civilian travelers, is knowing how do we surveil the US airspace, how do we protect it, and how do we use traffic control capability and modernization. So if you're going to play in the Golden Dome space, and we don't think it's a big bang, you'll hear that trust me, Golden Dome has been called everything and everyone's in it right now. It's kind of a trendy thing to talk about, but the fundamental distinctions between who's sort of playing and engaging in that space will be who can operate with an architecture that can integrate. Who can demonstrate in small packets in simulation what sort of defending defending the airspace looks like, who can create a common operating picture, and who can do that with coalition partners around the world. So we feel like we're pretty well situated, but it's not, as I said, it's not just a thrust, a single thrust. This is sort of what we do every day. I think it's in the DNA of the company. Um, I'm gonna go to you guys for questions if you have a question for Tony, please, uh, we already have one. You can go ahead and ask it now then. Uh, there's a microphone coming over to you. Locked and loaded. I didn't plan this, but it's so great to hear you. Yes, so my name is Ashley Tappin. I'm with Insignia. We're a consulting firm and we're one of the sponsors for the NPW, um. I'm curious a couple questions. One, when you talk about the anachronism that you're dealing with in this industry in the defense industry, how do you as a leader, get people to think differently and act differently so that they can speed up the the modernization of these anachronistic, uh. Sure. Infrastructures and then my second question is, um, what do you make of the of the context of calling the United States Defense Department now the Department of War? Which you're still getting used to obviously evidently you can see I'm still working through it um um I'll take that first question first. hey, um. So Look, I think one thing that we, we as a company do, but I think obviously there are many companies in our space, and we do a lot of simulation and digital twins and abilities to put a scenario, show the, uh, if you will, the acceleration of that scenario, what good can look like, how fast we can move. There's a lot of focus coming out of the department of war right now relative to speed to the war fighter, speed, speed, getting technology direct commercial tech into these important commands. One way to do to show what is slow, what is slowing the process, often it's not tech, it could be policies that have been created over time. It can be authorities that are, we have some stove pipes across our military and Intel, and so oftentimes we use simulation as a way of saying if we solve for X this is how fast we can move like reverse engineering, we need to get this quickly. Let's now look at all of the gaps across that root cause analysis. And so that's one. Even when you look at munitions and weapons systems, we've learned so much using tech. We use digital engineering to recreate the production line for the Mark 48 torpedo, the heavyweight torpedo, that it's going to be obviously critical if you think about the Indo-Pacific and long distances where we have to protect the country, but it was recreated after World War II by digital engineering, so you can use tech to recreate a munitions line, a production line. So there's a lot that we use with technology. How do I talk about DOW versus DOD? Let me just say that I think Uh, whatever we call the organization, here's what I love about, um, working in defense and I am a military brat and I've got a 3 star at home, OK, 91 year old father who is my roommate and, and he enjoys reading the National Defense Authorization Act, which is concerning. I, I'm trying to introduce him to Netflix and Hulu, but he is not there yet. So, uh, for those military in the room, I do a sit wrap or a situation report at 2100 hours every evening. Uh, with, uh, three-star retired, uh, Lieutenant General Cash McCall, who was first African American, by the way, as the Comptroller of the Army. Super proud of his 41 years. Super proud of my military family, and that's Air Force, Marine, and Navy and my family. And of course my service decision was Peace Corps. I copped out and did Peace Corps. Now I say all that to say, you know, how do we, what's important is that we, we respect the service of our service individuals that we respect the service, whatever we call the department. It's important that we respect what these individuals do and that we never lose sight of the sacrifice. Many of them are on multiple deployments in ways that I didn't experience when I was growing up. And we have a smaller group of individuals defending our country in many austere places over and over and over again. So the name we can go left or right on the name. My whole focus is support the war fighter in all that we do, our language, our actions, our resources, our budget support the warfighter. And those are great questions, thank you. Um, I want to just end on on this quick note, um, we, we had the pleasure of having Tony also speak in front of our veterans who you will all meet later and so got to hear a lot more about her dad, but thank you so much for being here sharing with us and with the veterans. Thank you, appreciate that appreciate all of this sounding. this one, thank you so much.

It’s been said Kristalina Georgieva can make or break a nation’s finances. As head of the International Monetary Fund, she is leading the 191-member organization through a turbulent era. From tariffs and geopolitics to inflation and uncertainty, Georgieva joins us to discuss how the IMF navigates times of crisis and fundamental shifts in the world economy.  

The Pursuit of Global Economic Security

Managing director at Geva, I have to say that you said good music walking on. It makes me wonder, do you have a favorite walk-on song for IMF meetings? Yes, I do. Oh, really? What is it? We will, we will. OK, I think that sets the tone right there. This must be the most wonderful time of the year for you. You've got the annual meeting of the World Bank, IMF. You've got 191 member countries coming in. Give us a sense. This is day one. Thank you for joining us. Um, what have you been hearing so far? Give us a bit of a highlight. Well, the world is in a Very interesting place. Uh, so what I hear is mostly questions. Hey, how is it going to be? What would the world economy look like? Are we going to survive the trade war? And what about my country? What advice do you have for us? I actually started the day with The delegation of Tajikistan. Tiny country in Central Asia. Used to be a basket case. They had the Civil War. And then they lucked with leadership. I was delighted to have them as my first meeting because their growth is strong. Inflation is Below 3%. Their public debt is coming down, uh, and how are they doing that? Strong fundamentals, they pay attention to their policies, strong institutions, and hey, the IMF is there for them. So my message to my membership. If you come here so we can see better through the fog of uncertainty lying over our heads together. And what I'm asking you is leave your trade wars, your cold wars, your hot wars outside of my room. You can why mothers should be in charge, right? Yes, we keep it outside. Keep it outside. Well, you talked about what's heartening, what's disheartening to you right now. Uh, what is most disheartening is the risk we face for many countries. To lose hope for converging with those that are better off. What we have experienced over the last years, shock upon shock, upon shock. has pushed the fate of many poor countries into a more desperate place. And why should we care? We should care for two reasons one, Because when part of the world is falling behind, that means more insecurity for you guys, those who have global companies, shrinking market, and 2, because it is morally wrong. You know, I'm struck you, you led the World Bank. You're now in your 2nd term, you know, at the IMF. These are two organizations that really grew out of Bretton Woods in a spirit of globalization. Let's start with how do you lead an organization of people that is devoted to globalization in this fragmented environment? Well, the IMF is devoted. To help countries do better for their people. It happens that a more integrated world economy works better for the majority of people, but not for all. And one thing we have been saying now for some time is pay attention to those who are left out or left behind. Uh, and if we don't, then we risk more trouble. But let me deliver two messages to you. The first one is that despite the fragmentation in the world economy, we are still seeing. Countries reaching out to each other. And if globally we have more difficulty then at the regional level, subregional level, we seek compensation. Gulf Cooperation Council, ASEAN regions countries are looking for ways in which they can trade more with each other. And second, frankly, this thing that trade is dead is completely overstated, um. Trade is like water. You put obstacle, it goes around it. What we are seeing, and this has been like this for thousands of years, um, when we came to assess where is the world economy these days, we look at what is happening with trade and actually the impact of trade tensions is more muted for three reasons. One, Because the tariffs that were announced in the United States in April that shocked the world at that time 23%, now nominally they are still high, 17.5% but less, and when you look at collection, how much is collected, it is more around 10%, still much more than the under 3% before, but Not as dramatic impact as initially we anticipated. 2. The rest of the world has chosen not to retaliate. 188 of our 191 countries said. We're good. We actually like to continue to trade on most favored nation rule. And 3, and the tree is very, very interesting. When we look at the upswing in regional engagements, it's actually amazing and frankly these guys should have been trading more with each other. They're right next to each other and they have been kind of obsessed with shipping all the way to the to the United States rather than say ASEAN trading among themselves. So I think I'm, I full disclosure, I'm an optimist. I believe in the good of people and I think that ultimately we actually find the high road to do better and I see that this world, we are a more fragmented world, a more uncertain world. It is also getting people to recognize that. We are in this one big boat. It is a rough sea. We better row together. Well, let me go back to 2 a second when you talk about this resilience in the economy and the fact that people are not retaliating, that sounds like a bit of a fragile piece to me. Do you think that's going to last? Give us some message to the US and those of us here who are US based leaders. Uh, the Most important factor that determines how we look at the economy today is uncertainty, and my message to business leaders is very simple, buckle up. Uncertainty is here to stay. And uncertainty is driven by just far too many very powerful factors. You have technology, you have geopolitics, you have policymakers being less predictable. You have demography, some countries aging, some countries exploding. All of this is creating a foggy world. I was actually talking to Diane before we came here. We know the world we lived until recently, that we know. We don't know where we are going to land in this period of transition. That is the saying, the king is dead. Long live the what? And in this week we will see many of our members actually concentrating on how can we provide more anchors of certainty. So what we do, we do work on two of these anchors. First one is policies and institutions and we are telling. Loudly to everybody. You need good policies, you need Good institutions and you need independent institutions in some anchors of policymaking protected to private sector. I understand that the majority of you here are business people. Well, good news for the world. Private sector is more agile, more adaptable. Over the last years we have seen in many countries where there was big state presence in the economy. Including because of IMF urging them to pull back more private sector initiatives and in this time. of strong winds. You guys are an anchor of stability because you adopt, you just keep doing it. You know, I think about another quote from one of your favorites, John Maynard Keynes. In the long run we're all dead, which is another that's either optimistic or pessimistic, but I do think about that essay which I know you've quoted from the economic possibilities for our grand. Children and just the arc of the last 100 years, the progress we've seen, we're very much in a short game right now. Talk a bit about the long game from where you sit. I love John Maynard Keyne's little essay Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren. Basically, he says there. In 100 years we are going to be about 8 times better off. 100 years later we are about 8-9 times better off, so he nailed this one in parenthesis, what he got wrong, he was saying we would be so productive that we don't have to work 5 days, 6 days a week. We would be working only 3 days a week. And we would be writing poems in the rest of the time. Why did he get that wrong? Totally. And actually I love when I read the AI enthusiasts that say now AI is going to deliver a lot of free time and we would be having only 3 days to work. The rest we would write poems. I think, I think it is in human nature we actually are keen to deploy ourselves. We like to, I mean, we like to work. Um, let me ask you actually this, how many of you like to work? So that's the, so when I look forward, I do believe that we will be much better off as humanity. In 100 years' time. And if medicine decides to advance faster than it is doing right now, we will be there to see it, right? You know, one of the things I find So in addition to being the 2nd woman to lead the IMF, I should ask you, do you hang out with Christine Lagarde? Do you guys? We do, yes. Christine was, as you probably remember, she was the managing director of the IMF before me, first woman, so Christine came, broke the glass ceiling. I came after her. No scratchy. Well, you're the first woman. You're the first, you're the first leader from an emerging market economy, so you've got your own first. You're also somebody who did your PhD in environmental protection policy and growth in the USA. Now climate change, environmental policy, that is not something that is Very high on the radar right now in some countries. Uh, how are you feeling about that as a factor in growth? So we at the IMF, we work on macroeconomic and financial stability for growth and employment. Anything that is a risk to macroeconomic and financial stability, we have to take into account. Some of my members, some of our members say Caribbean states. Uh, they can get 100 to 100% of GDP wiped out just by one hurricane. So obviously we have to integrate this in the way we think about supporting countries. We want to help them help countries have good insurance policies. Uh, we want them to have good thinking about how at low cost they can be more resilient to climate, and I want to give you just one example why it matters. Um, Bangladesh, Bangladesh is a country that gets flooded on a regular basis, and so they were thinking how they can have resilience policies that are affordable. They worked at that time I was with the World Bank. We worked with them on investing in dual purpose infrastructure. So you build the school, the school is a school. If there is a flood, it's lifted, people with their animals go there for shelter. One of the measures that we came up, they came up and we reinforced was they used to have lots of chicken. And they switch from chicken to ducks. When the flood comes, chicken die, ducks swim. I love that the index. It doesn't have to be expensive, but you have to put some thinking and then translate it into economic activity. That's very smart. You know, um. I notice you, you bring your granddaughter occasionally to events, and you are the great granddaughter of a revolutionary Ivan Karshovski, who was a great revolutionary in Bulgaria and also a journalist. I think you started out wanting to be a journalist. I dodged a bullet. No, I'm just kidding, but, but I'd love to talk a little bit about what is your message to her? I mean, she's now studying in the US you came. An Alexander Hamilton scholarship here, give me some sense of of the legacy and how you think about, you know, leadership in your own family and what you tell her. So what I'm telling her is one change is unstoppable, unstoppable. So lean forward because that's going to be in front of you. This is going to be your life. 2, do the right thing. Even if it is not popular, even if it is not politically correct, do the right thing. This is what my father taught me. This is not what my great grandfather left for us. And 3, the world is fabulous. We have to protect our ability. To work with each other, we need to protect that, uh, making the world a really small place and you, your generation has a role to play. By the way, fun fact, imagine communist Bulgaria, we are just coming out of it. There is a Alexander Hamilton scholarship I can apply for. I did. I'm going for the interview. Now, as you can imagine in communist Bulgaria, they didn't teach us more about much about the founding fathers here. So The main question the journalists are asking, sorry, the interviewers are asking is, who is Alexander Hamilton? No Google, no phones, and I'm saying, I saw, I saw him recently. Where did I see him? And then The good of being dollarized at that time, I saw him on a $10 note. So I walk in the interview room. They asked me who is Alexander Hamilton, and I said, Who the guy on the $10 note? They didn't know. They started, there you go. This is my, my message is create, you know, never lose your cool, whatever the situation, come through it, come out of it victorious. I love that. This is also what I teach. I teach my granddaughter. I love that. Well, well. Have you seen the play, by the way? Hamilton? Of course, the first thing I did when she came to the United States, I took her to see Alexander Hamilton, and she loved it. So, so let's end on a note around back to the global economy. You've got a lot of anxious people, I'm sure, who are in town this week. What is your message to them in terms of these 191 member countries, excuse me, you've got finance ministers, central bankers, leaders. First of all, that's a Tough group to manage, but what is, what does success look like right now? So what we, what we provide to our membership is to see the world from the same vantage point. We produce global economic world economic outlook. Financial stability report and fiscal report and then we say, look at this, what strikes you the most? Three things. One, Better than feared, worse than we need. We touched, we, you know, ditched the bullet. But It's not over, so please you guys cooperate. Don't get out of this meeting. In the lunacy of economic wars. 2 Look at your finances. You're in trouble. Your debt levels have shot up during the pandemic, everybody had to borrow to support households and businesses. But nobody is pulling this support out. Why? Because people like it. What is not to like? Have the guts. To come to fiscal consolidation because if you don't, when the next shot shot shock comes and it will. You're in a very bad place. And 3, there are imbalances. Across countries, let's figure out a way to reduce them because they're an obstacle to a better global economy. Great woman leader, we have 18 seconds left. What is your message to this room of women leaders? But my message is think of the unthinkable. So you're ready when the Anticable comes because we know from COVID, we know from the war in Europe, it will come, and we women, we women are so strong and resilient we can face it. I love that. Please join me in thanking managing director Georgieva. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. Thank you.

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