Today’s CIOs must master a complex balancing act of maintaining operational excellence while enabling AI experimentation, modernizing legacy environments while accelerating innovation, leading workforce transformation while maintaining culture, and communicating fluently across boards, business units, customers, and technical teams alike.
Few leaders understand this balancing act better than former Verizon CIO Jane Connell. Over her career, Connell has helped some of the world’s largest enterprises modernize operations, reduce complexity, and transform how technology enables business value at scale. As a 2026 CIO Hall of Fame inductee, she is widely respected not only for operational excellence and strategic vision but also for her commitment to mentoring, workforce transformation, and preparing the next generation of leaders for a rapidly changing future.
On a recent episode of the Tech Whisperers podcast, we unpacked Connell’s unconventional leadership story and the playbook that has shaped one of technology’s most impactful leaders. In this exclusive interview after the show, edited for length and clarity, Connell shares more lessons from her Hall of Fame journey and why she believes the future of technology leadership will depend less on org charts and more on curiosity, credibility, and human connection.
Dan Roberts: When you think about preparing the next generation of technology leaders, what capabilities or mindsets do you believe will matter most in this next era?
Jane Connell: One is curiosity, or what I call the “why” factor: What do we need to do and why do we need to do it? It’s having a mindset of unlocking the art of the possible. You must be comfortable with what you know, what you don’t know, and asking the question why, because in this era of AI and where technology is going, it’s not about automating things you know; it’s about what you don’t already know, and what that unlocks. AI creates patterns and opportunities and re-engineers through its own intelligence, so there has to be a lot of instinct involved, and you’re going to have to understand and learn what it’s telling you.
I’m on the board of Rutgers, and one of the conversations we’re in with future leaders in education is that you don’t have those entry-level jobs anymore. They’re going to be AI. But those were building blocks for us. We came up the ranks and did those jobs, and that created the knowledge. [Future leaders are] not going to have that, so how do you create the foundation of knowledge — which is that art of asking why or what — to question if the bots or the patterns are biased or wrong. You’re not going to have the experience to rely on and say, “That’s wrong; I know that’s wrong because I did those. I know how this operates.”
Second is having humility and being comfortable in your skin — that you don’t know everything, but you’re going to learn it. You’re going to involve yourself with people. It’s about workforce structure, not organizational structure. Who do you need to talk to, and what do you have to find out?
I also believe followership is going to be huge, because the way work gets done is not hierarchical. It’s going to be engineered based on the process and AI. You have to create followership of people working together, and they’ve got to want to work with you. This isn’t going be “you work for me, do as I say.” Followership is going to be a key skill for influencing and organically having that kind of impact, versus someone with authority.
With that is the accountability to have high integrity, be credible, and be a person someone would trust. Because all this is going to break down the hierarchy of authority, you have to bring that human side and be a really good leader, which means people want to follow you, they trust you, they want to work with you, and they know you’re going to take them to a better place.
One recurring theme throughout your career has been your ability to bridge deep technology expertise with strong business acumen. Why is that combination becoming even more critical in the age of AI and digital transformation?
You can’t impact anything tech-alone. It all resides on having business acumen and then having the technical ability to know how to use tech to solve the problem, not the other way around.
At the root of all this is every company’s Achilles’ heel: the data. Access to data has been a privilege — those who have it, those who don’t. Now you’re bringing structured and unstructured [data] together for these AI models to work, and that’s a new skill set that requires you to know the business inside and outside.
You also have to stay externally relevant and know where innovation is coming from. And you’re going to need to know how to architect that into the way your company goes to market, which requires you to know the business processes, how it runs, and how it could run.
That’s the role of leaders moving forward, immersing yourself in the problems the business needs to solve. There’s no boundaries there. It’s not what department you report in and what process you own. It’s seamless. That’s the duality people need to command and grow into.
Looking back on a career that spans multiple industries with different operating models, cultures, and regulatory environments, what were some of the most important calculated risks you took in terms of your growth?
There were two pivotal moments in my career that were the biggest risks but probably my biggest gains in growth. One was when I went into a full-time tech role and ran infrastructure. I was a fish out of water, and not the likely successor. Part of the reason I did it goes back to a something we talked about on the podcast: Well, why not me? And I want more. That’s just my tenacity.
It was during the dot-com days of the late 90s, early 2000s. It didn’t matter if you were the CEO or a board director, if you didn’t know tech and you didn’t understand how to wield it, you were never going to be successful. I knew that no matter what job I may want in the future, I had to know tech. So it was a calculated decision: I’m going to jump into tech.
Some very senior supply chain leaders who controlled my career told me, “You’re going to fail, and I’ll have a safety net for you when you come back.” Well, I didn’t fail and I never went back. That pressure was there, but I knew why I was doing it. This wasn’t just a job for ego’s sake. This was, I have to know tech. The future is tech. It’s kind of like AI now.
The other pivotal moment was changing industries. I left Johnson & Johnson at a great time. We had gone through a huge transformation, started our global services organization, and the perfect moment happened for me to retire early there. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. It was the first time I took a break in my career to let the world come to me instead of me planning it. Do I want to open a business? Do I want to consult? Do I want to stay retired? I was fortunate enough that I could, but I got bored.
The financial industry wasn’t on my radar. Coming out of healthcare, with the purpose and the connection with saving lives, helping people, it’s easy to connect to. Financial wasn’t, for me. But one of the executive search firms said to me, when you interview, the biggest question hanging over your head is going to be, could you be successful elsewhere because you grew up in J&J. You had advocates, you had influence, you knew the industry. It’s like your deck was stacked for you. Could you do all that when you’re a nobody coming off the street?
So when the CIO role opened at State Street, I interviewed — and talk about being your authentic self. I had already done all this transformation, I already knew the outcomes, I knew everything I did was always enterprise and always end-to-end transformation. And because I wasn’t really vying for the job, I was having this conversation with the CFO and saying, “Here’s what your organization is lacking, here’s the noise you’re going to hear, do you really have the appetite for it?” And “I’d like talk to the COO and see if they’re ready to hear this about the value chain. I may not know your problem yet, but I guarantee it’s one of these three things.”
I was testing their advocacy of, do you really want to transform? Are you ready? Because you have to own this. I can’t take accountabilities for your organizations. I can help you get there. I’m an enabler for you, but you have to own it. And it was a very different interview. By the end of it, I loved Ron [O’Hanley, State Street Chairman and CEO] and his whole team. I took the job on the leadership and the person more than the industry, and it was very successful.
I followed the same recipe when I went to Verizon. Those were big growing moments. They were risky, they were very uncomfortable, but it was the biggest growth that I’ve ever had.
Whether it’s a tough message to the C-suite, a difficult conversation with peers, or helping teams make sense of uncertainty and change, you tell people the truth in a way they can hear it. How can other leaders develop that ability to take people on the journey, especially when the message isn’t easy?
Skirting a problem is not the way to solve it. I’ve never been the person to say what you want to hear. I’ll tell you how you get there, and I’ll get you the results you want, but I’m going to be super honest because I want to manage the expectations of what we have to achieve.
What I’ve learned as a leader is to take accountability. Say what you’re going to do, then do it, and if you hit a roadblock, be the first to call it. That gets you access, because people see it as a calculated risk. Anybody in the C-suite has resources and budget, but the earlier you signal and don’t waste money and resources, the more access to people and resources you will have.
The greatest lesson I learned from one of the leaders in my path was: If you can’t say it in an elevator, and you can’t say it on one slide, you’re talking too much. So, think about it as one slide: What is it you need? What are you going to achieve? What are the risks? What are you taking accountability for? How will you measure it? It doesn’t matter what the message is when you can be that succinct. You’ve got them laser-focused on what it is. You gave them just enough of the periphery to know how you got there, and then it’s their belief in you that you can do it if they give you the money and resources, because that’s what you’re looking for.
It sounds so simple but putting things together succinctly is hard work. You have to take all the unnecessary noise out, and keep the conversation focused. You don’t want their mind wandering, wondering where is she going, or what are they doing? Give it to them upfront and tell them what you need.
You’ve spoken about entering corporate environments early in your career feeling intimidated by people with more traditional credentials or educational backgrounds. What advice can you give rising leaders about battling imposter syndrome?
Take the time to figure out what makes you uncomfortable, what makes you feel like an imposter, or what in that meeting you dread going in where you’re not acting like yourself. Are you more quiet than usual? Are you not asking the question you’d normally ask? Figure out what those issues are, and then address the things that make you uncomfortable. I went to college later because that bothered me. Those credentials do matter. So I addressed it and got my degrees and certifications.
The other thing is to find people you trust, people whose opinion you respect, and bring them on the inside of what you’re working on. Maybe it’s dealing with a difficult business partner. You may not particularly want to be friends with them, but you’re going to have to work with them. Find the people that work effectively with them. You do this with high integrity — this is not about talking about that person — but find the allies that work with them. Nine times out of ten, they feel the way you do, but they found a way to work with the person. Pick their brain. Bring them in the fold and say, “I need this alliance. I can’t get there, and quite frankly, I know I’m resisting because maybe I just don’t like them. How did you get there?”
People are generous. Ask their opinion, ask how they’re showing up. “Am I creating the trigger? Is there something I’m doing in that meeting or in that room that I’m not coming out with a decision or whatever I needed?”
The greatest gift is feedback. There’s feedback you do something with, and there’s feedback you don’t, but either way, it’s a gift. Somebody’s giving it to you. It’s not personal; it’s business. And those things really help build your confidence and leadership style.
In an era increasingly shaped by automation and disruption, Jane Connell believes the most enduring competitive advantage may come from something deeply human: the ability to inspire confidence, curiosity, resilience, and possibility in others. For more advice from this Hall of Fame CIO, tune in to the Tech Whisperers podcast.
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