Today’s guest is Adam Zalisk, Chief Strategy Officer at Amplify — a pioneer in K–12 education since 2000. Today, Amplify serves more than 10 million students across all 50 U.S. states, delivering next-generation curriculum and formative assessment in ELA, math, and science.

In this conversation, Adam reflects on what changes when strategy becomes a formal role inside a growing organization. Rather than treating strategy as a static plan, he frames it as a set of clear commitments tied to an explicit end state — and explains why ambiguity around those commitments is often what causes companies to struggle as they scale. He also introduces a practical framework for understanding why strategy offices emerge in the first place, helping leaders distinguish between different strategic needs and translate strategic thinking into real organizational traction.

Things we’ll cover:

• How Adam defines strategy in growth-stage companies
• The four distinct reasons organizations create a strategy office
• What leaders are actually looking for when they say, “we need strategy”
• How a strategy office avoids becoming an internal order-taker
• Where strategy functions most often lose — or earn — credibility

This episode is a practical guide for CSOs navigating growth, ambiguity, and rising organizational complexity. If you’re wrestling with focus, alignment, or execution as your organization scales, this conversation will sharpen how you think about the role — and the impact — of strategy.

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Today’s guest is Michael Drexler, Chief Strategy Officer at Brightstar Capital Partners, a private equity firm that invests in closely held, middle-market businesses and helps them scale into professional, process-driven organizations.

Michael’s career spans leadership roles across investment banking, global strategy, and private equity—from Barclays to the World Economic Forum, and Brightstar Capital Partners—giving him a rare perspective on how strategy functions evolve as companies mature from founder-led to institutional scale.

In this conversation, we unpack lessons from Michael’s career leading strategy functions and explore how the head of strategy role transforms along a company’s growth journey.

Things we will cover:

• How strategy evolves from a “chief of staff” role in founder-led companies to a full-fledged internal consulting function
• The mindset shift from advising a single CEO to influencing a broader leadership team
• How to build and sustain an effective strategy team—including Michael’s “2-to-4-year rotation” and “no bad news for two weeks” rules
• Why private equity firms view internal strategy functions differently—and how to reposition your team in a PE environment
• Michael’s four-step framework for prioritizing projects that’s “never failed him once”

From developing consulting-style skillsets inside corporations to balancing neutrality among competing executives, Michael brings clarity and practicality to what it means to be an effective CSO.

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In this episode, Cisco’s Chief Strategy Officer Ammar Maraqa joins host Kaihan Krippendorff to discuss how one of the world’s largest technology companies is evolving its strategy to lead the next wave of AI and digital infrastructure.

From building AI-ready data centers to fostering intrapreneurship through Outshift, Cisco is reimagining how strategy, innovation, and execution come together. Ammar shares lessons from his experience leading Cisco’s strategy organization and shaping its innovation portfolio across build, buy, partner, and incubate pathways.

Topics Covered

• Cisco’s strategy for the AI and digital infrastructure era
• How the Strategy Office connects long-term vision with execution
• Building AI-ready data centers and enabling digital resilience
• The meaning of agentic AI and its impact on enterprise productivity
• How Cisco’s Outshift incubator drives internal innovation
• Cisco’s approach to build, buy, partner, and incubate innovation
• The difference between a “push” and “pull” model in corporate strategy teams
• Why resource allocation is the truest test of strategic clarity

Key Quotes

Resources Mentioned

• Cisco Outshift (https://outshift.cisco.com)
• Cisco’s Digital Resilience framework
• Outthinker Networks (https://outthinker.com)

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In this special in-person conversation recorded at Adobe’s global headquarters, Kaihan continues his discussion with Malte Bernholz, Vice President of Corporate Strategy and Incubator at Adobe.

In Part One, on our sister show Outthinkers, Malte explored the macro trends transforming creativity, technology, and business in the age of AI. Click the link below to watch part 1 if you havent already. https://youtu.be/pYoIvvb0SGc

Now, in Part Two, we go deeper—inside Adobe’s strategic engine—to learn how this global innovator designs its own future.

Malte shares:

• How Adobe has reorganized around three audience groups—business professionals and consumers, creative professionals, and marketing professionals—to better align innovation with customer needs
• How his team leads corporate strategy and incubation, balancing “looking around the corner” with accelerating high-priority initiatives
• How the Adobe Incubator fosters entrepreneurship within the company, empowering small internal teams to build the next generation of product – and the early outcomes of that work, from Firefly Boards to Project Pulsar and beyond

Part one on OUTTHINKERS: https://youtu.be/pYoIvvb0SGc

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In today’s episode, we speak with Oreste Donzella, former Chief Strategy Officer of KLA, a global leader in semiconductor process control and inspection. Oreste brings over three decades of experience in the semiconductor industry — a sector that quietly powers every technological advance we see today.

You know, every strategist planning for AI's future is charting a course on assumptions about computational power, cost curves, and technological capability. But few are examining the foundation on which all of it rests: semiconductors. Without understanding where chip technology is headed—and the geopolitical forces reshaping its landscape—you're navigating without checking what lies beneath the waterline. Oreste is a veteran strategy officer with decades navigating the complex semiconductor stack, and here we explore the dynamics shaping foundational technologies—from manufacturing processes to geopolitical tensions—so you can better anticipate the forces that will enable or constrain your AI ambitions.

In this episode we get into:

• Why AI’s rise is really a story about semiconductors — and how the industry’s “emotional revenge” is unfolding.
• The hidden complexity of the semiconductor supply chain — and how a few specialized companies shape global innovation.
• How geopolitics, national strategies, and power consumption are redefining the industry’s future.
• The movement toward modular, heterogeneous chip design — and what it means for strategy leaders in every sector.
• Oreste’s model for the three timeless pillars of great strategy execution: Collaboration, Innovation, and Execution.

Oreste’s perspective reminds us that strategy doesn’t live in isolation — it operates often within vast, interconnected systems. And those able to think at the systems level, able to understand how they are evolving, will be the ones able to understand where value is truly pooling and therefore where to play.

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What does a banana have to do with data strategy? In this episode of the Chief Strategy Officer Podcast, we sit down with Claudio Finol, Chief Strategy Officer at Fyffes, one of the world’s oldest and most recognized produce companies. Fyffes bananas, pineapples, and melons may be a familiar sight in your grocery store, but behind the scenes the company is navigating some of the most complex strategy challenges of our time—climate change, global supply chains, digitization, and the disruptive power of data.

Claudio shares how Chief Strategy Officers across industries can learn from agriculture—a sector as old as civilization—about using data to push Michael Porter’s productivity frontier, transform traditional business models, and even create new revenue streams. From John Deere’s reinvention into a data-driven platform company to the strategic tension between optimizing your core and monetizing aggregated data, this conversation uncovers lessons every CSO should hear.

Things We Will Cover in This Episode:
- How Fyffes is blending tradition with transformation in the global produce industry.
- Why data is no longer just supporting products—it is becoming the product.
- Michael Porter’s productivity frontier and its relevance in the AI era.
- How companies like John Deere turned data into a competitive advantage and 95th-percentile growth engine.
- The two strategic paths with data: optimizing the core vs. creating new data products.
- What CSOs must do today to prepare their organizations for digitization, AI, and data-driven business models.

Why Listen
If you’re a Chief Strategy Officer, innovation leader, or executive thinking about the future of business, Claudio’s insights will challenge you to rethink what business you’re really in. Whether you’re managing physical products, digital platforms, or services, this episode shows how data strategy, AI readiness, and organizational culture can define the competitive frontier in the years ahead.

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In this episode, we sit down with Rachel Credidio, Chief Innovation Officer at Aster Group, to explore how restorative practices can be a powerful lever for culture change, innovation, and organizational performance. Having held the previous role of Chief Transformation and People Officer, Rachel has been at the forefront of embedding inclusivity, trust, and accountability into the DNA of Aster Group. Her leadership has helped make Aster Group most impactful non-profit groups in the UK as they help tackle the UK’s housing shortage by providing affordable, safe, and inclusive housing options, while offering wraparound services to support vulnerable communities.

In this episode we cover:

• Why restorative practices reduce conflict and boost engagement across complex organizations
• How inclusive culture lays the foundation for innovation and decentralized leadership
• What it means to shift from managing people to empowering them through fair process and shared accountability
• Why building a culture of voice and trust is a strategic investment—not a “nice to have”
• How Rachel restructured policies and embedded principles into systems for long-term impact

Whether you're navigating transformation, scaling innovation, or building a more inclusive workforce, this episode offers practical tools and inspiration.

• Learn more about Outthinker's community of chief strategy officers - https://outthinker.com/
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In this episode, we sit down with Todd Cassler, Chief Growth Officer of Cerity Partners, to explore the growing role of corporate venture capital (CVC) as a strategic tool for driving innovation and growth. With decades of experience in asset and wealth management as a chief strategy and growth officer, Todd is a trusted partner with a front-row seat to how Fortune 500 companies are using CVC not just to diversify financially, but to shape their strategic futures.

Things we cover in this episode:
- Why CVC programs often fail without CEO and board-level buy-in
- How to design a governance model that avoids being pulled back into “business as usual”
- The hidden benefits of CVC, from M&A pipeline generation to competitive intelligence
- What it takes to align siloed innovation efforts with core business objectives
- How to measure the strategic—not just financial—value of your venture investments

• Learn more about Outthinker's community of chief strategy officers - https://outthinker.com/
• Follow us on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/outthinker-networks