Ep. 83: Christina Shuffield, CIO at Speedcast

Christina Shuffield’s path to the CIO seat was anything but traditional. She began studying psychology before discovering an unexpected aptitude for technology, eventually building a career across ERP, enterprise applications, product development, transformation, cybersecurity, and global IT leadership. Along the way, she learned that the skills that move technology leaders forward aren’t always the most technical ones. In this episode, Christina joins Cesar Jimenez to unpack what it really takes to lead technology through constant change. She shares why communication, business knowledge, adaptability, and stakeholder trust are essential at the CIO level, and why successful change management starts with bringing people along for the journey. Christina also dives into the realities of leading in the AI era, from using AI to multiply productivity to building governance, protecting company data, managing risk, and creating guardrails that can evolve as quickly as the technology itself. Her approach: don’t wait for perfection. Put the right foundations in place, learn, mature, and pivot as needed. For the next generation of technology leaders, her message is simple: keep learning, strengthen your communication skills, stay open-minded, and commit to seeing things through.