In today’s ever-changing technology landscape, it’s important for IT leaders of every stripe to not only keep abreast of current events and trends affecting the industry, but also know about focus areas and challenges of their upper management peers since the tech function is increasingly viewed as a strategic business partner to the C-suite. One of the best ways for CIOs and IT leaders to absorb information is by tuning in to tech and leadership podcasts. Here, 13 CIOs and heads of IT in a variety of industries speak about the programs they listen to and why.
Risky Business
Risky Business is a weekly cybersecurity news and current events podcast hosted by Patrick Gray and Adam Boileau. I listen to it because they do an excellent job curating the most relevant news and events in cybersecurity that occurred in the previous week. Gray is a journalist with deep cybersecurity knowledge and Boileau is an executive director at a cybersecurity firm, so the presentation is professional and includes insights on threat actors and motivations. Additionally, they have a sense of humor that keeps the show entertaining. Being a midmarket IT leader without a strong background in cybersecurity, this podcast has helped me to better understand and stay current with the threat landscape. – Kevin Hoople, CIO of Lawson Products
Intelligence Matters
This podcast is hosted by former acting director of the CIA Michael Morell, who paints a global picture of the threat landscape with a focus on incidents impacting data privacy and security. He speaks with top leaders in US intelligence who provide further insight into their careers and the roles they’ve played in shaping the national security policies guiding us today. – Kelvin Franklin, field CTO at Illumio
CIO Mind
I find Gartner’s CIO Mind podcast to be especially insightful and relevant to the work I’m doing. It covers a wide range of topics that CIOs are grappling with, from the recession and cost-cutting, to staffing specialized IT roles and employee retention. It keeps me tuned in to what others in the industry care about and what keeps them up at night, and it gets me thinking about ways I can improve my own organization so we can better support our clients. The podcast also shares advice from Gartner analysts and other experts that I can apply to my own organization and leverage to prepare for what’s coming, such as generative AI, workforce trends, research and development investment trends, and more. – Barry Shurkey, CIO at NTT DATA Services
T200Cast
I’m a huge fan of T200Cast, the dedicated podcast for T200: Elevating Women in Technology. This is a newer series that shines a spotlight on female technology leaders paving the way for the next generation. I always find the stories of their journeys—and honest accounts of their successes and failures—inspiring. – Sandy Venugopal, CIO, SentinelOne (and former CIO of Uber)
CIO Leadership Live
There’s some personal bias choosing CIO.com’s own podcast, and one that I was on as a guest. Each episode offers a personal CIO point of view on the issues, tech, and business challenges people in this role face. I learn a lot hearing from my peers on how they carved out success in their sectors. Host Maryfran Johnson is excellent at drawing out those lessons from her guests. – Vishal Gupta, global CTO, CIO, and SVP Connected Technology at Lexmark
Enterprise Ready
This podcast features in-depth interviews focused on building the next generation of enterprise software tools. Its guests really hone in on the challenges involved with running a software-as-a-service-based company, which is quite relatable to me and my colleagues. The show’s guests do a really good job detailing how their backgrounds led them to their current roles, how they’ve gone about building their teams, and how they’re building teams for the future too. – Steve Watt, SVP, CIO at Hyland
The Lex Fridman Podcast
In this podcast, I get to hear from great thinkers in tech who discuss topics such as ChatGPT (Stephan Wolfram) or Python (Guido Van Rossum), while also learning about things like how an FBI agent took down the Silk Road. It spans across so many different industries, but each one of the topics you hear guarantees a useful and interesting perspective on problem solving. – Siddharth Ram, CTO of Velocity Global
Service Management Leadership
Hearing from other experts in the IT space has been very enlightening and even helped me grow in my own role. For example, a recent episode on the Service Management Leadership podcast with Jeffrey Tefertiller featured unique insight directly from Gartner executive coaches, and I learned about using psychometrics to improve the customer experience. It made me reflect on the importance of gaining a deeper understanding of customers’ challenges, needs, and motivations. – Jeremy Rafuse, VP and head of digital workplace at GoTo
Defense in Depth
The Defense in Depth podcast provides perspectives from CISOs on the cyber defense techniques—from proactive to structural—that work, and offers insights on how to implement them within the organization. They also discuss how defense tactics can be done differently, which provide great takeaways for leaders after a cyber incident. – Devin Hamilton, principal tech alliances program manager at Mimecast
How I Built It
This is a captivating podcast that delves into the stories and journeys of successful entrepreneurs and business leaders. Hosted by Joe Casabona, this podcast explores the strategies, challenges, and pivotal moments behind the creation and growth of remarkable businesses. Aside from the joy of listening to the endless capacity of human creativity, I learn a lot about how founders approach problems and turn them into opportunities. – Gil Dror, CTO of SmartSense by Digi
The 20VC
Even though my day-to-day work involves leading the Americas region for a long-established, multi-billion dollar tech company, there are still applicable lessons I learn from this VC-focused podcast. The guests offer a hungrier, risk-taking point of view on new technologies and business practices that’s very inspirational. I always find universal nuggets of wisdom in just 20 minutes that can inform all types of businesses, not just the ones starting out. – Scott Williams president, head of Americas, Orange Business
The Privacy Advisor Podcast
It seems that a new data privacy regulation materializes every day across the globe. For security professionals attempting to keep pace and make sense of it all, The Privacy Advisor Podcast from the International Association of Privacy Professionals is a wealth of useful information. As a former chief privacy officer, I still rely on this podcast to learn the latest about how data privacy and protection issues impact organizations. – Lucia Milică Stacy, global resident CISO for Proofpoint
The ERP Organizational Change Journal Podcast
In my role as a global ERP leader for HB Fuller and collaborative senior IT leader, I often look for outside perspectives on how to educate an organization on their enterprise resource planning journeys. This podcast’s approach of “listen, learn, and implement” gives a leader like me practical examples and skills to leverage from thought leaders in this field. In addition, the principles discussed can be applied to ERP as well as any business software that will support the enterprise. The one main takeaway I gain from this podcast on a recurring basis is that it constantly resets my perspective to look at my deliverables through my stakeholders’ eyes, and what value they bring to the organization. – Nicholas Jackson, global ERP director at HB Fuller
