The Power of Digital Policy

Hosted by Kristina Podnar

Technology Marketing Management

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Episodes

100

Latest episode

Jul 2026

Language

EN-US

About the show

The Power of Digital Policy is a podcast that teaches you and your organization how to balance the risks and opportunities that come with operating websites, social media, mobile applications, voice assistants, AI and other channels. Through a monthly focus on individual topics, such as accessibility, cookies, copyrights, social media faux pas, data breaches, and data privacy, you will learn how to develop guardrails to maximize digital opportunity and minimize risk. Whether you work for a startup, Fortune 500 company, nonprofit or the government, this podcast will help you get digital right.

Listen to episodes

60 recent

August 19, 2026Episode 831 min

Permission isn't authorization when AI agents move money

What happens when AI stops recommending and starts spending? Rodrigo Coelho, CEO of Edge & Node and a founding member of Ampersand, joins Kristina to talk about agentic payments, where the money is gone the second it moves and the policy which must envelope the transaction. The conversation delves into why permission isn't the same as authorization, why policy checks belong at the wallet level rather than inside the LLM, and who's actually accountable when an agent gets it wrong. If you're thinking about identity, authorization, observability, and governance for AI agents, this one's for you.

July 15, 2026Episode 733 min

Golden records and real governance: Enterprise AI at scale

Thomas Hill, Senior Director of Digital and Commercial AI Enablement at Danaher, joins Kristina Podnar to share what it takes to build an enterprise commercial AI program from scratch across 15+ operating companies. From unifying eight million contacts and three million customers into a governed golden record, to navigating GDPR and cross-company data sharing, to embedding policy directly into the agentic orchestration layer, Thomas explains why the hardest part of AI isn't the AI — it's the data readiness, stakeholder alignment, and work redesign that make it trustworthy and scalable.

June 22, 2026Episode 632 min

AI doesn't fix information problems. It exposes them.

AI is forcing organizations to confront a reality they have often ignored for years: information quality matters. In this episode, Kristina Podnar sits down with taxonomist and knowledge management expert Ian Davis to explore why concepts like taxonomy, ontology, semantic modeling, and knowledge graphs have become critical foundations for successful AI deployment. Together, they discuss how AI exposes weaknesses in fragmented information environments, why metadata and information architecture are emerging as strategic business assets, and what leaders must do to create the governance, stewardship, and organizational discipline needed to scale AI effectively. The conversation also examines the growing importance of human oversight, the role of semantic structures as AI guardrails, and why the long-overlooked professionals responsible for organizing enterprise knowledge may be among the most important contributors to successful AI adoption.

April 29, 2026Episode 525 min

Privacy is the bottleneck: Why your AI strategy is stalling (and how to fix it)

AI isn’t slowing down because of weak models or poor prompts—it’s being held back by something far less flashy: data privacy. In this episode, Kristina sits down with Adam Kamor of Tonic.ai to unpack why organizations are struggling to safely use their own data, how unstructured data creates massive operational friction, and what it actually takes to move from manual redaction to scalable, privacy-first AI systems. The conversation challenges the idea that privacy is just a compliance checkbox—and reframes it as the key to unlocking AI velocity.

April 21, 2026Episode 426 min

Synthetic data, real governance: What enterprises need to get right

Kristina Podnar talks with data and analytics leader Ioana Mazare about why synthetic data is gaining traction, where organizations risk getting it wrong, and why strong governance is still essential. They explore privacy, bias, fit-for-purpose use cases, third-party synthetic data providers, and the leadership, strategy, and accountability needed to make data trustworthy in the age of AI.

March 18, 2026Episode 325 min

Your AI strategy starts with content, not code

AI is no longer just generating content—it’s retrieving, reasoning, and increasingly making decisions. And yet, many organizations are approaching it as if better prompts or better models will solve everything. In reality, AI is only as effective as the content it relies on. The more autonomous these systems become, the more they depend on content that is structured, connected, and governed with intent. In this conversation, Kristina Podnar sits down with Carrie Hane to unpack what that actually means in practice. They explore the difference between formatting and true semantic structure, why duplication and inconsistency quietly undermine AI performance, and how weak or nonexistent content models introduce risk at scale. They also get into a question that doesn’t get asked often enough: who actually owns the content model in an organization—and what happens when no one does? This episode is a reminder that AI doesn’t eliminate the need for structure—it exposes where it never existed. If organizations want AI to perform reliably, content can no longer be treated as a byproduct of publishing. It has to be treated as infrastructure.

February 24, 2026Episode 231 min

Agentic AI: Turning compliance into a revenue engine in 2026

Kristina Podnar reconnects with Brian Bauer to explore what’s changed in just a few months as agentic AI moves from experimentation to execution in banking and other regulated industries. They unpack the “year of reckoning” for AI ROI, why compliance can accelerate innovation instead of blocking it, and how organizations can use AI to reduce costs, increase revenue, and compete at the speed of business—without sacrificing prudence.

February 11, 2026Episode 129 min

Industry is setting the AI guardrails: Are you ready?

In this episode, Kristina Podnar sits down with Camille Stewart Gloucester to unpack what’s durable in today’s AI policy landscape — and what’s just noise. Tune is for why AI governance isn’t about regulation alone, but about infrastructure: decision rights, data access, organizational design, and continuous learning. Camille shares what she’s seeing across industry and government, where organizations are overconfident, and why retrofitting governance gets exponentially harder once AI systems are embedded. If you’re trying to balance speed, risk, and performance without defaulting to paralysis, this conversation is for you.

December 15, 2025Episode 328 min

Shadow AI, boardroom blind spots, and the insurance wake-up call

As AI adoption races ahead of regulation, companies are facing a new and largely uncharted risk landscape. In this episode of The Power of Digital Policy , Kristina Podnar is joined by Russ Fradin, CEO of Larridin, and Michael Levine, Partner at Hunton Andrews Kurth, to unpack the realities of shadow AI, emerging legal exposure, and the quiet but significant shift happening in insurance coverage. From boardroom oversight to operational failures driven by AI systems, this conversation explores why simply “not knowing” is no longer a defensible position for executives.

October 21, 2025Episode 238 min

Agentic AI in banking: How compliance accelerates innovation

Citi’s recent AI agent rollout signals a new phase for banking innovation. But can compliance really make things faster? Kristina Podnar talks with Brian Bauer of Rational Exponent and explores how smart policy and explainable AI can turn regulation into a competitive advantage.