Dr Robert Roop is leading innovation in one of the most overlooked but essential industries in the world. As Chief Technology Officer at Axalta, he and his team are redefining what coatings can do, from improving durability and performance to enabling the next generation of electric vehicles, data centers, and sustainable manufacturing.

In this episode, Russ and Robert explore how coatings go far beyond paint, playing a critical role in protecting surfaces, extending product life, and improving efficiency across industries. Robert explains how Axalta combines chemistry, material science, and customer insight to develop high performance solutions that meet evolving demands without compromising on sustainability.

They dive into the company’s “no compromise” approach to sustainability, where performance and environmental impact improve together, not at the expense of one another. Robert shares how innovations like waterborne coatings, lower energy curing, and reduced material usage are helping customers cut emissions, lower costs, and improve outcomes simultaneously.

The conversation also explores the growing role of coatings in electrification and AI driven infrastructure. From improving battery safety and thermal management in EVs to enabling more efficient data centers, coatings are becoming a critical layer in modern technology systems. Robert also breaks down how AI is accelerating innovation internally, helping teams move faster, solve problems globally, and scale solutions across markets.

Along the way, he shares how Axalta maintains a culture of cross functional innovation, how the company evaluates long term bets around megatrends like electrification, and what it takes to consistently deliver real world, commercialized innovation at scale.

Topics Covered:

[00:01] Welcome and intro, Robert Roop and Axalta’s innovation award wins

[00:31] Overview of Axalta and the coatings industry

[01:49] Why coatings are more complex than paint

[03:06] Customer driven innovation and solving real world problems

[04:33] Managing diverse markets from automotive to industrial

[06:07] What “no compromise” sustainability means in practice

[07:45] Balancing performance, cost, and environmental impact

[09:30] Energy efficiency and emissions reduction through coatings

[10:44] Advances in material science and polymer chemistry

[12:07] Real world examples of sustainability driving performance

[13:18] The role of coatings in electric vehicles

[15:28] Data centers, AI infrastructure, and thermal management

[16:47] Safety considerations in high performance systems

[18:16] Coatings in renewable energy and power systems

[19:40] Building a culture of cross functional innovation

[21:39] Delivering real world, commercialized innovation

[22:10] Balancing short term and long term R&D investments

[23:23] How AI is accelerating product development

[25:00] The impact of robotics and automation on coatings

[25:21] Identifying megatrends and preparing for the future

Lori Tompos is on a mission to transform how leaders show up, communicate, and bring out the best in their teams. As founder of Avail Consulting and a Horizon Award winner, she draws on experience from West Point, Desert Storm, and the corporate world to challenge one of the most ingrained habits in business: managing people instead of leading them.

In this episode, Russ and Lori explore why so many organizations still struggle with ineffective leadership despite decades of books and training. Lori explains how most professionals are never truly taught how to lead, and how that gap leads to micromanagement, low trust, and high turnover.

They dive into Lori’s core philosophy, lead people, manage projects, and what that actually looks like in practice. From building trust and psychological safety to asking better questions and tailoring leadership to individuals, Lori shares a fundamentally different approach rooted in empathy, accountability, and real human connection.

Along the way, she reflects on her experience as one of the first women in combat during Desert Storm, how preparation and confidence shaped her leadership style, and what today’s leaders can learn from high stakes environments where trust and clarity are non negotiable. Lori also breaks down why people leave managers, not jobs, how AI is reshaping the workplace, and why high human skills like empathy, critical thinking, and communication matter more than ever.

Topics Covered:

[00:01] Welcome and intro, Lori Tompos and Horizon Award recognition

[00:46] Lori’s background from West Point to corporate leadership

[02:15] Why leadership training is still missing in most organizations

[02:55] The universal truth: no one likes to be micromanaged

[03:32] “Lead people, manage projects” explained

[05:52] Leadership lessons from Desert Storm and real world stakes

[09:01] Building confidence through preparation and expertise

[10:40] Transitioning into corporate and leadership gaps

[12:50] Lessons for navigating uncertainty and AI disruption

[14:51] Why companies default to managing instead of leading

[15:40] Psychological safety and why people leave managers

[18:08] The mindset shift required for real leadership

[20:45] Recognizing and investing in people

[23:42] Growth mindset and learning from failure

[24:25] Leadership in a post COVID and AI driven world

[25:59] Crucial conversations and giving effective feedback

[27:26] Why leaders think they are approachable when they are not

[29:37] Reading culture and leadership signals in organizations

[31:50] Progress and perspective on women in leadership

[33:17] What younger generations understand about leadership

[34:39] Advice for building leadership skills in the future

Vikram Venugopal is transforming how life sciences companies communicate by turning one of the most persistent business challenges into a competitive advantage. As the leader behind Prezent, he is helping organizations move beyond cluttered, ineffective presentations to clear, audience driven storytelling powered by AI.

In this episode, Russ and Vikram explore why business communication, especially presentations, is so consistently broken despite being central to decision making. Vikram explains how most professionals are never trained to translate complex ideas into compelling narratives, and how that gap slows decisions, creates confusion, and ultimately delays impact in high stakes industries like healthcare.

They dive into how Prezent’s AI powered platform flips the traditional workflow by starting with audience context, building “fingerprints” for how individuals consume information, and generating tailored presentations that resonate with decision makers. Vikram also breaks down how their purpose built AI goes beyond generic outputs to handle highly technical content like clinical data, while still simplifying it into clear, actionable stories.

Along the way, they discuss the balance between automation and creativity, the role of human expertise in shaping narratives, and how better communication directly accelerates decision making and business outcomes. Vikram also shares insights on scaling communication quality across large organizations, the rise of AI assisted storytelling, and what it takes for teams to consistently deliver high impact presentations.

Topics Covered:

[00:01] Welcome and intro, Vikram Venugopal and Prezent’s award win

[00:38] What Prezent does and its focus on life sciences communication

[01:24] Why business communication and presentations are fundamentally broken

[03:48] The biggest mistakes people make when building presentations

[05:26] How communication quality impacts decision making speed

[07:46] Moving from slide hunting to AI powered presentation creation

[08:22] Building audience “fingerprints” to tailor communication

[10:31] Adapting presentations for different stakeholders and roles

[11:44] Using enterprise knowledge to improve storytelling

[13:35] Why generic AI fails and the need for purpose built models

[14:50] Where AI helps most and where humans still matter

[16:42] Balancing automation with creativity and emotional storytelling

[17:30] Measuring impact beyond time savings and cost reduction

[18:50] Standardizing communication while preserving individual style

[20:16] Helping presenters deliver stories effectively, not just build slides

[21:59] The future of AI assisted business communication

[23:34] Raising expectations and leveling the playing field with AI

[24:50] Advice for leaders improving team communication

[26:44] The biggest opportunity companies still overlook

[28:59] The roadmap toward an AI powered communication agency

Steve Rotter is helping global organizations turn language from a bottleneck into a competitive advantage by treating translation as core infrastructure, not a side task. As Chief Marketing Officer at DeepL, he focuses on specialized AI models that deliver near human translation quality at scale, supporting everything from contracts and healthcare information to e commerce catalogs and live conversations.

In this episode, Russ and Steve dig into why general purpose AI models struggle with nuance and context, and why DeepL has doubled down on domain specific models trained on years of proprietary data across more than 100 languages. Steve explains how this specialization leads professional translators to prefer DeepL in blind tests and why that matters when mistranslations can damage brands, misinform patients, or distort news.

They explore how DeepL fits into real workflows, from quick “two box” translations and drag and drop document conversion to API integrations that keep products like Notion and large e commerce sites up to date in many languages in near real time. Steve shares how this turns months of manual work into a continuous, automated process that opens new markets faster and makes “borderless” business more realistic than ever.

Russ and Steve also discuss trust, accuracy, and human in the loop review. Steve outlines DeepL’s layered approach, where low risk content is fully automated, higher stakes material is routed for targeted checks, and short, high impact assets like ad copy still rely on specialists. They then turn to DeepL Voice, real time multilingual meetings, and why latency and comprehension are just as critical as raw accuracy when people are trying to follow a live conversation.

Topics Covered:
[00:01] Welcome, intro, and DeepL’s AI award recognition
[00:30] Steve’s background and why he joined an AI language company
[01:02] Why language is a fundamental marketing and business challenge
[01:40] Specialized language models versus general purpose LLMs
[02:26] Blind tests and when translation quality becomes mission critical
[03:26] Capturing nuance and context across 100+ languages
[12:23] How customers use DeepL: text, documents, and APIs
[13:46] Examples from Notion and large e commerce brands
[15:39] Time to market and simultaneous multilingual launches
[21:59] Human in the loop tiers from low risk to premium content
[27:16] Borderless business and DeepL Voice in real time communication

About The Winners Circle:
The Winners Circle is hosted by Russ Fordyce, CEO and founder of Business Intelligence Group. Each episode features leaders and innovators recognized through BIG’s annual award programs across AI, innovation, sustainability, cybersecurity, and more. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Nominate your company or team for a BIG award: https://www.bintelligence.com/

Nithin Mummaneni is rethinking how enterprises negotiate high stakes contracts by turning years of procurement consulting experience into an AI powered “negotiation intelligence” platform. As cofounder and CEO of Infinity Loop, he is helping large organizations finally answer a deceptively simple question at scale: did we get a good deal or not, and how do we do better next time.

In this episode, Russ and Nithin walk through how procurement and contract negotiation work today, with teams manually reading contracts, benchmarking market rates, and preparing RFPs across hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars in third party spend. Nithin explains how Infinity Loop ingests contracts, amendments, and rate sheets, then uses machine learning and macro data to score each deal like a report card, highlight where companies are overpaying, and recommend specific negotiation strategies to improve both price and risk.

They dig into why Infinity Loop stops short of letting bots negotiate million dollar plus deals and instead focuses on augmenting human negotiators. Nithin shares how automating the prep and analysis can free procurement managers to handle two to three times more deals, avoid expensive consulting engagements, and design better protections into contracts, such as index based pricing or caps that could have softened shocks like the tenfold spike in ocean freight costs during COVID.

Russ and Nithin also explore the trust and change management required to introduce AI into a sensitive, bottom line critical domain. Nithin explains how Infinity Loop acts as a middleware intelligence layer integrated with tools like Coupa, SAP, Oracle, DocuSign, and Ironclad without touching redlining or existing workflows, and how transparent pilots and clear ROI help win over both security teams and procurement staff who may initially fear that automation threatens their roles.

Along the way, Nithin shares lessons from building a lean, fast moving team in a space dominated by large incumbents, including why speed of iteration and deep domain expertise matter more than trying to automate everything. He outlines Infinity Loop’s roadmap to expand across more industries and categories, and why he believes negotiation intelligence is one of the most underexploited frontiers for AI driven margin improvement.

Topics Covered:
[00:01] Welcome, Infinity Loop intro, and AI Excellence Award recognition
[01:15] Turning “did we get a good deal” into a data problem
[02:03] How enterprise procurement and contract negotiations work today
[02:51] Why prep and benchmarking consume most procurement time
[04:14] Integrating with RFP, P2P, and legal systems as an intelligence layer
[06:47] How Infinity Loop scores contracts and surfaces savings opportunities
[09:04] Improving outcomes beyond price with better contract risk design
[11:41] How AI changes the role and impact of procurement teams
[12:10] Democratizing consulting grade expertise through software
[13:01] Building trust: security, data protection, and enterprise diligence
[15:03] Competing as a lean, fast moving team in an entrenched space
[16:02] From concept to enterprise deployment and proving ROI
[17:22] Why negotiation intelligence is a largely untapped AI frontier
[20:07] Roadmap and expanding across more industries and categories

About The Winners Circle:
The Winners Circle is hosted by Russ Fordyce, CEO and founder of Business Intelligence Group. Each episode features leaders and innovators recognized through BIG’s annual award programs across AI, innovation, sustainability, cybersecurity, and more. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Nominate your company or team for a BIG award: https://www.bintelligence.com/

Faruk Capan is rethinking how pharmaceutical companies bring products to market by rebuilding the entire commercialization model around AI. As Chief Innovation Officer at Eversana, he is leading the development of an AI powered platform that replaces slow, manual, and highly regulated workflows with a faster, more scalable system driven by intelligent agents and human expertise.

In this episode, Russ and Faruk explore why traditional pharma marketing and commercialization can take months to execute and how Eversana’s AI agency model is cutting that timeline down dramatically. Faruk explains why simply adding AI tools to existing workflows is not enough, and why his team took a startup approach to rebuild processes from the ground up with an 80 percent AI and 20 percent human model.

They also dive into how the platform orchestrates the entire lifecycle from strategy and content creation to compliance and activation across channels, while maintaining strict regulatory standards. Faruk shares how partnering with Google enables enterprise grade security and scalability, why explainability and trust are critical in healthcare, and how AI is unlocking true personalization in an industry that has historically struggled to deliver it.

Along the way, he discusses the real business impact including faster speed to market, reduced costs, and fewer people required per project, as well as the organizational challenges of driving AI transformation at scale. Faruk also offers practical advice for leaders on where to start, why pilots often fail, and how to balance innovation with real business accountability.

Topics Covered:

[00:01] Welcome and intro, Faruk Capan and Eversana’s AI award win

[00:44] The role of commercialization in pharma and why it is so complex

[02:03] Compliance challenges and why traditional workflows take months

[03:45] Why AI requires rethinking the business, not just adding tools

[04:25] Taking a startup approach to rebuild workflows from scratch

[05:56] The 80 percent AI and 20 percent human in the loop model

[08:25] Building an end to end AI platform from strategy to execution

[10:01] Orchestrating campaigns across channels with AI agents

[11:57] Partnering with Google for security, scale, and compliance

[14:25] Explainability and avoiding black box AI in healthcare

[15:47] Measurable impact including speed, cost savings, and efficiency

[17:14] Unlocking true personalization in pharma marketing

[17:58] AI generated doctor avatars and patient acceptance

[20:04] Balancing automation with human trust in healthcare

[21:04] Driving organizational change and leadership buy in

[23:26] Why hands on AI adoption matters more than theory

[24:16] Prioritizing innovation with real business accountability

[26:11] Advice for leaders on AI strategy and avoiding pilot traps

[28:43] Scaling the platform and iterating at startup speed

About The Winners Circle:

The Winners Circle is hosted by Russ Fordyce, CEO and founder of Business Intelligence Group. Each episode features leaders and innovators recognized through BIG’s annual award programs across AI, innovation, sustainability, cybersecurity, and more. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Nominate your company or team for a BIG award: https://www.bintelligence.com

Jim Straus is helping power the next wave of semiconductor innovation by improving one of the most critical and overlooked parts of chip manufacturing: the process. As Head of Sales and Service at ACM Research, Jim works with leading chipmakers around the world to increase yield, reduce waste, and unlock more production from every wafer through advanced wet cleaning and electroplating technologies.

In this episode, Russ and Jim explore how ACM Research fits into the global semiconductor ecosystem, not by building chips themselves, but by designing the highly complex equipment and processes that make modern chip production possible. Jim explains how their technology integrates mechanical, chemical, and software systems to deliver measurable improvements in yield, and why that has been the foundation of their rapid growth.

They also discuss the massive demand being driven by AI, the increasing complexity of chip design, and how innovations like panel level packaging could reshape the economics of semiconductor manufacturing. Jim breaks down how moving from traditional round wafers to larger square panels can dramatically reduce waste and costs while increasing output, and why this transition presents both a major opportunity and a significant industry challenge.

Along the way, Jim shares insights on sustainability in semiconductor manufacturing, the importance of aligning roadmaps with customers, and why close collaboration across the ecosystem is essential to keeping up with rapid development cycles. He also highlights ACM’s expansion in the United States and what it will take to bring more semiconductor manufacturing and innovation back home.

Topics Covered:

[00:01] Welcome and intro, Jim Straus and ACM Research’s award win

[00:36] What ACM Research does in the semiconductor manufacturing ecosystem

[02:00] Global growth, operations in Asia, and expansion into the US and Europe

[03:22] How wet clean technology impacts every step of chip production

[04:24] AI driven demand and the global importance of semiconductor supply

[05:43] Innovations in wafer level and panel level packaging

[07:21] Why moving to square panels can reduce cost and increase efficiency

[08:46] Sustainability efforts in reducing chemicals and waste

[10:00] Ideal customers from large chipmakers to specialized innovators

[11:00] Breakthroughs in electroplating and improving uniformity

[12:17] How customers measure yield improvements from ACM technology

[13:25] Accelerating product development cycles in the AI era

[14:28] Investing in US manufacturing and R&D capabilities

[16:16] The importance of co creation and aligning with customer roadmaps

[17:24] Challenges ahead with panel level packaging adoption

[18:51] Advanced cleaning techniques without damaging wafer structures

Links and Resources:

ACM Research: https://www.acmrcsh.com

Business Intelligence Group: https://www.bintelligence.com

BIG Awards for Business: https://www.bintelligence.com/awards/big-awards-for-business

About The Winners Circle:

The Winners Circle is hosted by Russ Fordyce, CEO and founder of Business Intelligence Group. Each episode features leaders and innovators recognized through BIG’s annual award programs across AI, innovation, sustainability, cybersecurity, and more. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Nominate your company or team for a BIG award: https://www.bintelligence.com

Amol Waishampayan, Chief Product Officer at Full Throttle AI, is helping mid market brands and agencies move beyond click based attribution and walled gardens to real, outcome driven advertising on the open internet. In this episode, Russ and Amol explore how Full Throttle AI combines cookieless, household level identity, omni channel activation, and AI powered measurement so marketers can see which campaigns actually sell more cars, services, and high consideration products instead of just driving cheaper clicks.

They discuss why over investing in Google and Meta has become a race to the bottom, how signal loss and privacy changes exposed the limits of legacy ad tech, and how Full Throttle’s patented approach turns anonymous web behavior into first party household intent that marketers can segment and act on. Amol explains where agentic AI really shows up under the hood, how the platform uses models to interpret URLs, score propensity, and price bids, and why human strategy still matters in deciding audiences, offers, and guardrails. He also shares practical examples from automotive and home services, lessons from building a cookieless platform back in 2018, and the mistakes teams make when they chase AI enabled widgets instead of truly AI powered architecture.

Topics Covered:

[00:01] Welcome and intro, Amol Waishampayan and Full Throttle AI’s award win

[00:35] Full Throttle AI’s mission to be the “easy button” for the open internet

[01:30] Serving mid market brands and agencies that are underserved by legacy ad tech

[02:00] Why click based attribution pushed spend into Google and Meta and broke media mix

[03:30] Seeing the full journey from CTV, display, and mail to search, social, and in store sales

[05:25] The real problems mid market marketers and agencies are trying to solve today

[08:50] Building a cookieless, household based identity approach before third party cookies faded

[11:30] Why household level measurement beats hashed emails for big ticket, multi decision purchases

[16:20] Making “spray and pray” direct mail obsolete by focusing only on in market households

[18:10] Using AI to interpret URLs, infer product interest, and score propensity in real time

[22:30] Why AI should be the hygienist and marketers the dentist in always on campaigns

[24:10] Automotive and service case studies driving more leases, ROs, and lifetime value

[29:50] What surprised Amol about self service vs managed service usage on the platform

[34:50] Common AI mistakes and why AI powered architecture plus human intelligence wins

Links and Resources:

Full Throttle AI: https://www.fullthrottle.ai

Business Intelligence Group: https://www.bintelligence.com

BIG Awards for Business: https://www.bintelligence.com/awards/big-awards-for-business

About The Winners Circle:

The Winners Circle is hosted by Russ Fordyce, CEO and founder of Business Intelligence Group. Each episode features leaders and innovators recognized through BIGs annual award programs across AI, innovation, sustainability, cybersecurity, and more. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Nominate your company or team for a BIG award: https://www.bintelligence.com