Starkhorn

Directing large-scale PE backed IT integration projects across multiple countries, standardising operations, streamlining processes, and managing complex IT infrastructures to achieve significant cost savings and efficiency gains.

Collaborated with C-suite executives on IT due diligence, post-merger integration, and the creation of scalable operating models, delivering measurable synergies and enhanced portfolio value.

Developed and executed bespoke IT strategies for private equity clients, ensuring alignment with business goals, operational scalability, and long-term growth through innovative technology solutions.

Offering consultancy, fractional support, and expertise in M&A, Divestments, Outsourcing and Private Equity.

Founder

Age UK

Non Executive IT Director - Digital and Technology

Jardine Motors Group trading as Lancaster

Spearheaded IT due diligence for a £300m transaction, enabling the seamless sale of Jardine Motors to Lithia & Driveway.

Supported the £400m acquisition of Pendragon PLC, integrating IT systems to establish Lithia UK, driving operational synergies.

Achieved £1m+ annual savings by centralising telephony systems, enhancing customer service.

Designed and executed a cybersecurity framework, achieving a NIST CSF maturity score of 29.

Chief Information Officer

Mothercare

As Head of IT Service Delivery & Infrastructure, I led seamless IT service delivery across 150 UK stores, franchises, head office, e-commerce, and warehouses. Aligning IT with business objectives, I enhanced efficiency and drove innovation.

Head of IT Service Delivery & Infrastructure

IT Service Delivery Manager

IT Technical Services Manager

IT Technical Support Manager

VisitBritain

Technical Support/Infrastructure Analyst

2nd Line Engineer at VisitBritain

Fractional CIO | IT Strategy for High-Stakes M&A | Faster M&A, Smoother Exits | De-risking IT & unlocking value | Author

If IT isn’t creating enterprise value, it’s destroying it. Most firms still treat IT as a cost centre. Growth-focused companies can’t afford that mistake. I help CEOs, CFOs, boards, and investors turn IT into a value-creation engine — accelerating deals, de-risking operations, and boosting EBITDA.

Proven Results

✓ £1.6m in savings within 18 months across 10+ countries
✓ Seamless IT integrations in £300m+ and £400m+ transactions
✓ 40% fewer outages across 150+ retail locations
✓ Cybersecurity resilience with NIST maturity scores above industry benchmarks

Why Clients Choose Me

✓ Fractional CIO flexibility — strategic leadership without full-time overhead
✓ Interim CIO firepower — execution in high-stakes transformations
✓ Board-level insight — translating IT complexity into clear business impact

Whether you’re scaling a mid-sized firm or leading a multi-country enterprise, IT should fuel growth, protect assets, and support scale. If it isn’t, it’s silently eroding value.

I am currently accepting 2 more clients in 2025 (Fractional, Interim, or Advisory).
DM me or book a call to explore how IT can become your competitive edge.

Daniel J. Jacobs

Helen Yu

CEO @Tigon Advisory Corp. | Host of CXO Spice | Board Director |Top 50 Women in Tech | AI, Cybersecurity, FinTech, Insurance, Industry40, Growth Acceleration

As the founder and CEO of Tigon Advisory, I help tech companies of all sizes multiply their growth opportunities by leveraging AI, cybersecurity, IoT, supply chain, and customer experience. With over a decade of technology industry experience, I offer CXO-as-a-service and guidance to organizations through digital transformation, strategic planning, enterprise risk management, go-to-market optimization, and influencer marketing.

I have worked with enterprise clients such as SAP, IBM, Salesforce and Microsoft, as well as B2B SaaS, Fintech, Insuretech, and Martech startups. I also serve as an independent board director and a venture capital advisor, where I bring a unique perspective on technology thought leadership, cybersecurity risk management, go-to-market strategy, and customer experience. I am a certified cybersecurity expert from MIT Sloan School of Management, an MBA from Loyola University of Chicago, and a respected industry thought leader, a Wall Street Journal best selling author, a keynote speaker, and a host of CXO Spice podcast. I am passionate about empowering and mentoring the next generation of technology leaders, especially women and minorities.

Director Board of Directors

CEC is a security service integrator with focus markets in manufacturing, healthcare, SLED and Corporate Campus.  Customers with complicated organizations and physical plants rely on CEC as extensions of their teams in making strategic investment and management decisions related to their technology and infrastructure. I serve as Culture and Compensation Committee Chair. 

How do you ensure autonomous vehicles are safe when you can't possibly test every real-world driving scenario?

At NVIDIA GTC, I explored AI-powered autonomous vehicles and discovered NVIDIA Halos, a comprehensive safety system that's redefining how we approach this challenge.

Here's how Halos solves this challenge:
✅ Photorealistic virtual simulations generate countless driving scenarios
✅ AI-powered contingency plans activate when anomalies are detected
✅ Continuous monitoring ensures safety and reliability

Three-Pillar Validation Approach:
✅ NVIDIA DGX for AI development with advanced curation workflows that filter out undesirable behaviors before they ever reach the road
✅ Omniverse with Cosmos for photorealistic simulation, generating massive variations in our safety test data
✅ DRIVE AGX for deployment, where modular redundancy ensures safety even when AI models show uncertainty

Industry Recognition:
✅ First AI systems lab to earn ANAB and TÜV certification
✅ Internationally certified technology for end-to-end AV safety

Complete Safety Stack:
✅ A2le-decertified Drive OS and automotive-grade hardware
✅ Modular redundant architecture with third-party validation
Every layer designed to handle critical driving tasks safely

The future of autonomous vehicles is certified and validated safety systems.

#AutonomousVehicles #AI #Safety #NVIDIAGTC #AVDevelopment #Innovation 

To stay current with the latest trends in #Technology and #Innovation, Subscribe to 👉 #CXOSpiceNewsletter https://lnkd.in/gy2RJ9xg Or 👉 
#CXOSpiceYouTube here https://lnkd.in/gnMc-Vpj

What’s Driving AI from the Lab to the Real World?

Bridging the gap between experimental AI models and industry-scale applications became the theme of my time exploring NVIDIA’s presence at Amazon Web Services (AWS) re:Invent; from a VC Startup breakfast at Osteria di Brera to hands-on demos across the Expo floor.

NVIDIA unveiled several breakthrough technologies this week:
✅ NVIDIA DRIVE Alpamayo-R1: The world's first open, industry-scale reasoning vision-language-action model for autonomous mobility
✅ Mistral Large 3: Now 10x faster on NVIDIA infrastructure
✅ Nemotron models on Amazon Bedrock: Bringing specialized agentic AI for text, code, images, and video directly to AWS customers
✅ Cosmos Cookbook: Practical resources for scaling physical AI development

The convergence of cloud infrastructure and AI is accelerating. NVIDIA's focus on open models, optimized performance, and accessible tools is democratizing AI development, making sophisticated applications available to startups and enterprises.

My conversation with Dave Salvator, Director of Accelerated Computing Products, reinforced how NVIDIA is addressing the entire AI lifecycle, from data generation to deployment.

We're witnessing a pivotal moment where physical AI, reasoning models, and open-source approaches are creating possibilities that seemed impossible just years ago.

I am thrilled about the opportunity to interview two startups founders from the NVIDIA Inception program: Diligent Robotics and Distributional, where we'll explore how they're leveraging these technologies to solve real-world challenges.

#Startup #Inception #AWSreInvent #NVIDIAPartner

Stay current with the latest trends in #Technology and #Innovation,
Subscribe to 👉 #CXOSpiceNewsletter https://lnkd.in/gy2RJ9xg
Or 👉 #CXOSpiceYouTube here https://lnkd.in/gnMc-Vpj

What will separate AI leaders from AI laggards in 2026?

Pleased to contribute to the 2026 DATAcated Trends & Predictions Report, and the insights from 14 data and AI leaders point to a transformative year ahead.

My prediction? AI agents evolve from tools to true workplace teammates.

In 2025, we saw AI become multimodal - processing text, images, and voice simultaneously. Agentic AI systems began handling complex multi-step tasks autonomously, with reasoning models showing dramatic problem-solving improvements.

Here's what I see for 2026:
✅ AI agents as colleagues - Independently managing projects and workflows end-to-end
✅ Real-time data processing becomes critical - AI systems require continuous learning from live streams
✅ Synthetic data generation explodes - Addressing data scarcity for specialized training
✅ Federated learning scales - Training across distributed datasets without compromising privacy
✅ Data governance intensifies - Lineage tracking under regulatory pressure
Organizations treating data as dynamic fuel will be the ones that thrive.

Special thanks to Kate Strachnyi and DATAcated for assembling perspectives from Cassie Kozyrkov, Marinela Profi, Bernard Marr, Lara Sophie Bothur, Stijn (Stan) Christiaens, Christina Stathopoulos, MSc, Serena H. Huang, Ph.D., Helen Yu, Pascal BORNET, Jess Ramos ⚡️, Kristen Kehrer, Andreas Kretz, Sadie St Lawrence.

👉 Download the full report FREE: https://lnkd.in/eMevgwDH

What are you most excited about for AI in 2026?

#AITrends2026 #CIO #CTO #CEO #BoardDirectors #Data #AI

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2026 AI Trends & Predictions

How do you deploy AI infrastructure before the AI systems even arrive?

Schneider Electric's new reference designs, co-engineered with NVIDIA, provide the answer.

Industry-First Controls Framework Bridges OT and IT systems through standardized MQTT architecture, enabling seamless interoperability between power management, liquid cooling, and NVIDIA Mission Control. Real-time optimization across every layer of the stack.

NVIDIA GB300 NVL72 Reference Design Supports rack densities up to 142 kW with validated frameworks for the next-generation Blackwell Ultra architecture. Digital twin capabilities through ETAP and EcoStruxure IT Design CFD enable pre-deployment simulation.

The focus on redundancy, power quality monitoring, and validated engineering directly addresses the industry's deployment bottleneck.

I look forward to attending Schneider Electric's Innovation Summit in Las Vegas next Tuesday and Wednesday, touring their switch data center and examining these solutions firsthand.

Watch the keynote: https://lnkd.in/gxuRQGjm
#Energy #Tech #AI #Grid #Automation #DataCenter

To stay current with the latest trends in #Technology and #Innovation, Subscribe to 👉 #CXOSpiceNewsletter https://lnkd.in/gy2RJ9xg Or 👉 #CXOSpiceYouTube here https://lnkd.in/gnMc-Vpj

How prepared is your organization to bounce back when an AI-driven disruption hits?

That’s the focus of my latest CEO newsletter, following Commvault Shift Virtual, where I outlined why AI resilience is becoming a top priority for executive teams and boards.

AI is accelerating decision-making, increasing identity complexity, and tightening the margin for recovery. Resilience is a strategic imperative.

In the newsletter, I break down the shift toward Commvault Cloud Unity and Resilience Operations (ResOps), and why unifying security, identity, and recovery is essential for organizations building on AI.

👉 Read the full newsletter for the board-level perspective and what this means for the years ahead. Watch the replay here: https://lnkd.in/gN6WmZ9C

What’s the biggest AI-resilience concern on your radar right now?

#CommvaultSHIFT #CyberResilience #CISO #CIO #CTO #CEO #BoardDirectors

Stay current with the latest trends in #Technology and #Innovation, Subscribe to 👉 #CXOSpiceNewsletter https://lnkd.in/gy2RJ9xg Or 👉 #CXOSpiceYouTube here https://lnkd.in/gnMc-Vpj

A Message from Sanjay Mirchandani, CEO, Commvault “The question we’re addressing today is simple: how fast can you recover in a world where breaches a

Open article: Commvault Shift Virtual: The Dawn of AI Resilience by Helen Yu • 4 min read

Commvault Shift Virtual: The Dawn of AI Resilience

What's it like watching the Las Vegas Grand Prix qualifications from the T-Mobile Magenta tower?

Unforgettable.

Huge thanks to T-Mobile for hosting such an incredible experience—the views from the Sphere Magenta Club were unmatched, and the magenta glow fit right in with The Sphere's spectacular light show. Started the evening with my first-ever aura reading, then tried on a racing suit and helmet. My AI-generated racing persona? Nano Banana 🍌.

Finished the night watching qualifications light up The Sphere while hanging out with a creative bunch—turning online connections into real ones, surrounded by the T-Mobile team and fellow F1 fans.

Sometimes the best experiences come from saying yes to the unexpected. 🏎️

#LasVegasGP #F1 T-Mobile For Business #SphereMagenta 

To stay current with the latest trends in #Technology and #Innovation, Subscribe to 👉 #CXOSpiceNewsletter https://lnkd.in/gy2RJ9xg Or 👉 
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Who are the AI thought leaders shaping how technology meets business and society?

I’m grateful to Thinkers360 for creating a vibrant community of thought leaders, analysts, and influencers, connecting brilliant minds and enabling real impact worldwide.

These thought leaders provide insights across AI, Generative AI, Agentic AI, AI governance, quantum computing, digital transformation, and sustainability. They help us navigate the fast-moving world of technology and business innovation.

Follow these leaders to stay inspired and ahead in AI, Generative AI, Agentic AI, AI governance, and digital transformation: M. Nazri Muhd Ronald van Loon Bill Wong Dinis Guarda Andreas Welsch Kathleen Walch Noelle Russell (Microsoft MVP, AI) David Sweenor Mark Lynd Amenallah Reghimi Kashyap Michael Fauscette (GK) Ganes Kesari Prof. Marek Kowalkiewicz Tom Davenport Dr. Sunil Kumar Vuppala Greg Verdino FAISAL HOQUE Jair Ribeiro Usman Mustafa Pradeepta Mishra Helen Yu Tim Cortinovis Dr Djamila Amimer Seth Earley Pascal BORNET Nicolas Babin

Full list here: https://lnkd.in/gzDMfnMB

#AIThoughtLeadership #ArtificialIntelligence #GenerativeAI #AgenticAI #Innovation #DigitalTransformation #Governance #Quantum #Sustainability

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Can AI infrastructure be both sovereign AND scalable?

NVIDIA and Amazon Web Services (AWS) proved it can.
At #AWSreInvent, they announced a partnership that redefines enterprise AI:
✅ NVLink Fusion on Trainium - massive model training, unleashed
✅ AWS AI Factories with Blackwell GPUs - your data, your control, infinite scale
✅ Nemotron on Bedrock - serverless agentic AI, no infrastructure headaches
✅ GPU-accelerated vector search - Amazon OpenSearch + NVIDIA cuVS = 10x faster indexing at 25% of the cost
✅ Physical AI at scale - NVIDIA Cosmos world foundation models now on AWS for robotics and simulation

I will be hosting Dave Salvator, Director of Accelerated Computing at NVIDIA, to unpack what this means on CXO Spice.
We're talking:
✅ Why sovereign AI infrastructure just became enterprise-ready
✅ What 20K+ Blackwell GPUs unlock
✅ How to protect your models while scaling fast

The AI infrastructure conversation just got rewritten.

Learn more: https://lnkd.in/gTUeW_hy
What's holding back your AI deployment—compute, sovereignty, or both? 👇

#NVIDIAPartner #AWS #AI #Blackwell #Enterprise

Stay current with the latest trends in #Technology and #Innovation,
Subscribe to 👉 #CXOSpiceNewsletter https://lnkd.in/gy2RJ9xg
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Are your AI agents still stuck in slideware or earning trust in production?

At Amazon Web Services (AWS) re:Invent, I spoke with Scott Clark, CEO of Distributional and an NVIDIA Inception startup, about “agent analytics”; the third pillar of enterprise AI: build the models, run them, and truly understand them.

In this special CXO Spice edition, we explored:
✅ Distributional’s origin story
✅ A customer’s “firehose” moment from POC to production
✅ How NVIDIA Inception and the NeMo Agent Toolkit close the confidence gap for AI agents in regulated industries

If you’re building or deploying AI agents, it’s time to move beyond demos and gain real-world confidence. 

Learn more about what NVIDIA Inception can unlock for your next growth stage: https://nvda.ws/48xgtEh

Watch our conversation here: https://lnkd.in/gz-edhPv

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At Amazon Web Services (AWS) re:Invent, I spoke with Scott Clark, founder and CEO of Distributional and a featured NVIDIA Inception startup, to talk a

Open article: Agent Analytics: The Third Pillar of Enterprise AI by Helen Yu • 3 min read

Agent Analytics: The Third Pillar of Enterprise AI

What happens when the world’s most advanced AI hardware meets the industry’s most powerful cloud platform?

This week at Amazon Web Services (AWS) re:Invent, the answer was unmistakable; and the NVIDIA presence was impossible to miss.

From packed keynotes to buzzing expo-floor demos, it’s clear we’re entering a new era where AI infrastructure is a catalyst. The conversations all pointed in the same direction:
✅ Accelerated computing is now table stakes.
NVIDIA GPUs powering AWS instances are enabling companies to build, train, and deploy models at speeds that felt impossible just a year ago.
✅ Partnership is the multiplier.
AWS × NVIDIA is empowering enterprises to scale AI workloads globally, securely, and efficiently.
✅ GenAI moved from concept to production fast.
Autonomous systems, enterprise agents, real-time LLMs, next-gen developer tools - NVIDIA’s ecosystem had a gravitational pull all week.

But what stood out most were the PEOPLE who bring that innovation to life: listening, guiding, inspiring, and elevating every moment.

The 1-minute clip captured something deeper than product demos; it showed a team showing up with energy, expertise, and genuine passion:
✅ Conversations that sparked curiosity
✅ Seamless collaboration across teams
✅ Visitors energized by every interaction
✅ A polished, human experience delivered with pride

Because in the end, hardware accelerates AI… but people accelerate possibility.
And this week at re:Invent, NVIDIA showed exactly what that looks like.

#NVIDIAPartner #AWSreInvent #Inception #AI #Robotics

Amy Kaplan Dave Salvator Scott Clark Adam Allevato Jess Ramos ⚡️Jean Kang Megan Lieu Daman Oberoi Hanako Tonozuka Viktoria Semaan Linda Haviv

Is your marketing strategy treating AI as a persona?

At the Schneider Electric Innovation Summit in Las Vegas, I sat down with Abby Gabriel, CMO of Schneider Electric North America, and this shift in thinking became crystal clear.

As Abby explained: "We now look at AI as one more persona. How does AI as an influencer take our information and ultimately provide a recommendation to our customers?"

Think about that. Not optimizing FOR AI tools. Not using AI to automate. But marketing TO AI as a decision influencer.

Here's what else stood out from our conversation:
✅ Energy tech redefined – After more than 135 years in North America, Schneider is leading the convergence through three pillars: electrification, digitalization, and automation.
✅ Digital dominance – Digital now represents 65-70% of Schneider's marketing mix, with AI strategy at the forefront. Their MySchneider portal serves more than 100,000 customers monthly.
✅ Sustainability as strategy – Serving 40% of the Fortune 500 with end-to-end decarbonization solutions—consulting, hardware, software, and services that turn strategy into results.
✅ Ecosystems over egos – With 1,500+ customers, partners, and suppliers at the Summit, Schneider proves success comes from elevating the entire ecosystem.

The future of energy technology is electrified, digitalized and automated. It turns watts and servers into intelligence, ecosystems, and sustainable outcomes.

Watch our full conversation: https://lnkd.in/gJT37MFs

On this Thanksgiving, I'm grateful for leaders like Abby Gabriel who are pushing us to think differently about the future of technology and sustainability.

#EnergyTech #AIStrategy #Sustainability #B2BMarketing #Innovation #Sponsored #SchneiderElectricInnovationSummit #ISNA2025 #InnovationSummitLasVegas #EnergyTechLeaders

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At the Schneider Electric Innovation Summit North America, hosted in Las Vegas, I sat down with Abby Gabriel, CMO of Schneider Electric North America.

Open article: The Future of Energy Technology: A Conversation with Schneider Electric's Abby Gabriel by Helen Yu • 4 min read

The Future of Energy Technology: A Conversation with Schneider Electric's Abby Gabriel

Is your next AI breakthrough just a search away?

Amazon Web Services (AWS) Marketplace now hosts 2,332 AI Agents & Tools; spanning from software development and data analysis to customer experience and security. Whether you're building, scaling, or transforming with AI, there's a solution trusted by enterprises worldwide.

From 646 software development tools to 489 data analysis solutions, the breadth is remarkable. And I'm excited about the innovation happening at the intersection of infrastructure and AI applications.

I'm going deeper tomorrow on the NVIDIA-AWS partnership and exploring how this collaboration is reshaping what's possible with AI at scale.

What AI challenge is your organization tackling right now? The answer might already be on AWS Marketplace.

👉 Explore the full AI Arsenal: https://lnkd.in/g7qitunD

Stay tuned for insights from my conversation with NVIDIA highlighting their partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS).

#AWSMarketplace #AI #awsreinvent #aws #AWSPartners #NVIDIAPartner 

Stay current with the latest trends in #Technology and #Innovation,
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Is your organization treating AI governance as a barrier to innovation or as the foundation for it?

As we head into 2026, the AI landscape is shifting dramatically. The era of "move fast and worry about governance later" is ending, and a new reality is emerging: trust and innovation are inseparable partners.

The organizations that will thrive won't simply be those that deploy AI first. They'll be the ones that recognize governance makes sustainable innovation possible.

Here's what the data tells us:
✅ CFOs are demanding real ROI, not just AI buzzwords
✅ Companies that can't show concrete results in 6-12 months risk seeing initiatives shelved
✅ With inconsistent government regulation, corporate self-governance must step up
✅ The winners will be those who build AI with accountability baked in from day one
✅ Governance accelerates growth by building the trust that allows AI to scale.  ✅ Shortcuts create technical debt. Discipline creates competitive advantage.

As Reggie Townsend put it: "Governance isn't a restraint on innovation, it's a necessary companion."

Want to see what other shifts are coming in 2026? SAS data and AI leaders have released their predictions on the AI reckoning ahead, from agentic AI accountability to the synthetic data arms race. https://lnkd.in/gdZ5UV5Z 

 Check out the full report: https://lnkd.in/ggkTYwZg

What's your take? Are you seeing the governance-first mindset take hold in your organization?

You should also take a look at what Smriti Mishra had to say about the SAS predictions. She shared her thoughts about the need to mop up the AI slop and rebuild on solid, accountable foundations.

#AI #AIGovernance #ResponsibleAI #Innovation #DataScience #TechLeadership #SASVisionary Brij kishore Pandey 

Stay current with the latest trends in #Technology and 
#Innovation, Subscribe to 👉#CXOSpiceNewsletter https://lnkd.in/gy2RJ9xg
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