If the future of business is AI, then these are the people leading the charge.

As artificial intelligence continues its march into the mainstream — generating billions in investment and research — it has gained particular traction in enterprise. Almost two-thirds of organizations say they’re now using AI in at least one business function, up from a third last year, according to a May report from consulting giant McKinsey. And 67% expect their companies to invest even more in AI over the next three years.

The executives in charge of making those deployments are often Chief Information Officers, navigating new terrain with a fast evolving technology full of possibility. These new opportunities mean there may be no job in the corporate C-suite that has changed more in recent years than the CIO. This list honors them and those beyond that title: Chief Information Security Officers, Chief Digital Officers, Chief Technology Officers, and the like.

Now in its fifth year, the Forbes CIO Next list recognizes executives in the U.S. across a wide array of sectors: trillion-dollar tech giants like Google and Microsoft, banks and financial services firms like Visa and Capital One, household brands like Coca-Cola and United Airlines, and even government officials from NASA and the city of San Francisco.

In 2024, generative AI was a unifying trend for many of the organizations honored. Some are using chatbots to help employees conjure up answers for their armies of customer service representatives. Others are using AI models to help train employees internally on company policies, or mitigate cybersecurity threats. Still others are using AI to manage supply chains and handle logistics. For many, the deployments have resulted in tangible gains, like revenue growth, time saved and operations scaled. Not every CIO on the list is pushing their company heavily into AI, but it’s a persistent driving force as workplaces look to adapt for the future.

To compile this list, Forbes sent out a call for nominations and consulted with experts and trade organizations to find worthy candidates. After reviewing hundreds of names, Forbes staffers poured through applications to find 50 standouts that exemplify excellence in the role. Of note, this list isn’t ranked; instead, it’s meant to be a spotlight on the best and brightest in the field. We prioritized candidates who are making big impacts at their companies, with recent accomplishments and tangible successes.

The Forbes CIO Next List 2024

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The pandemic transformed Zoom into one of the most popular video conferencing tools, largely because of its reliability, security and other easy-to-use features. That’s in no small part due to the work of Michael Adams, Zoom’s chief information security officer, who is spearheading the company’s product development and cybersecurity. Adams, who joined the company four years ago as Counsel to the COO and CISO, has overhauled Zoom’s approach to security tools internally and externally, developed new privacy settings for the software and restructured the company’s security data pipeline to result in over $1 million in savings a year. He also played a key role in creating Zoom’s Bug Bounty Program to incentivize additional security testing for new products. The result? In 2024, Zoom was ranked one of the two top companies under the Build Security In Mature Model (BSIMM) initiative, the leading standard for measuring the maturity of a product security program.

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Anu Bharadwaj first joined Atlassian a decade ago as Head of Product for Jira, the company’s proprietary bug-tracking software. Under her leadership, Atlassian has expanded into service workflows, knowledge management and cross-functional collaboration, with the aim of becoming a wall-to-wall operating system for teamwork. Using tech to streamline operations is something the company has implemented in its own workforce. In the past four years, Atlassian has doubled its workforce and transitioned to a fully-remote, office-optional company. Today, 40% of employees live more than two hours from the closest office, greatly expanding its talent pool. Bharadwaj also encouraged early adoption of AI. Its first AI product, Rovo, which includes search, chat and automation functions, was released in October.

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From powering features like Connection-Saver, which helps passengers make connections between flights, to providing real-time flight updates and automatic rebookings when things don’t go as planned, Jason Birnbaum has his hands full as CIO at United Airlines. Birnbaum has transformed United to be a technological leader in the airline industry, leading United’s transition to the cloud and expanding access to technology jobs through United’s Innovate apprentice program, which recruits individuals from nontraditional backgrounds to join the technology workforce. By equipping frontline workers with digital tools, Birnbaum has prioritized how technology can best support everyone – from customers and gate agents to technicians and pilots.

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In Bradley Bolivar’s four years at Fannie Mae, he has rapidly risen to the role of CIO and changed the way the organization utilizes technology. The tech division composes 40% of Fannie Mae employees and is key to the company’s mission of increasing access to affordable homeownership and rental housing. In 2023, the enterprise provided assistance to more than half a million very low and low income renters and homebuyers. As CIO, Bolivar led the push over the last year to move the majority of Fannie Mae’s operations to the cloud and create an automated backup and recovery system for cloud assets. For 2025, he is focused on expanding risk management tools, completing the cloud migration and increasing Fannie Mae’s use of automation.

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Joy Chik leads the engineering side of the Microsoft Secure Future Initiative – a task the CEO named the company’s top priority. It is the largest cybersecurity operation in Microsoft’s history with 34,000 engineers working on the project. In addition, Chik is the president of the company’s multi-billion dollar Identity and Network Access security business, safeguarding customers across all their devices. Since she began, that organization has grown its revenue more than 200% and expanded to include eight products. Her work has been essential in helping Microsoft prevent identity theft, the top driver of cyberattacks, through the creation of the Zero Trust identity and access controls for its software products.

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Growing up above her family’s restaurant in Philadelphia, Debra Chrapaty knows firsthand how important reliable technology is to running a successful business. As CTO at Toast, a point of sale and management software made for restaurants, Chrapaty is focused on improving customer experiences and restaurant efficiency. Last year, Chrapaty and her team led the launch of the Toast mobile app, which allows restaurant managers to access key metrics and reporting features on the go. She was also integral to creating Toast’s improved point of sale system that streamlines restaurant workflows and speeds up service, crucial on a busy Saturday night. Plus, she’s the executive sponsor of Toast’s LGTBQIA community, Multigrain.

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Broadcom acquired VMware in November of last year and as CIO in charge of the Global Technology Organization, Alan Davidson was key to the integration of the two companies. Within three days after the acquisition closed, Davidson’s team completed the onboarding of thousands of new employees. In just over five months, his team had consolidated applications, eliminating 1,800 redundancies and improving efficiency. During that same period, he led the creation of a new company, Omnissa, out of a former VMware division. His team is on track to complete the infrastructure consolidation by January, just 14 months after the acquisition. The end result will be a 65% reduction in legacy VMware infrastructure and an estimated 90% increase in efficiency and utilization.

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As CIO of the Department of Energy, Ann Dunkin is responsible for a $6 billion budget that tackles not only technological innovation but also cybersecurity for the nation’s nuclear stockpile, power grid and national labs. Prior to her current job, Dunkin served as CIO of the Environmental Protection Agency, city of Santa Clara and CTO of Dell, giving her a long history of leveraging strategic partnerships to usher in digital transformation and growth. At the DOE, Dunkin has published department-wide guidance for responsible AI usage, developed a supply-chain risk management program, created a playbook for scaling IT modernization and developed organizational digital strategies.

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Sastry Durvasula heads up technology at the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America (TIAA), a private financial retirement services company for those in government, academic or research fields. Since Durvasula launched the company’s AI platform, called TIAA gAIt, which helps associates answer complex customer questions and improves customers’ search experiences on the TIAA website, the company is on track to reduce TIAA’s call center operating budget by 30% over the next five years. With experience at McKinsey, Marsh and American Express, Durvasula is also on the Board of Directors for Girls in Tech, a global nonprofit dedicated to addressing the gender gap in technology.

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At Intel, Motti Finkelstein leads digital innovation for the chipmaking giant. Finkelstein’s crowning achievement has been helping to establish Intel’s IDM 2.0 Acceleration Office, which will allow Intel to standardize processes across its design, manufacturing and business teams; he has also mobilized IT support to improve supply chain management and decrease costs. Finkelstein leads his team with a “think like business owners” mindset, which has allowed the IT department to focus on restructuring its operations and deliver more than $1.5 billion........

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