When we ask leaders to step away from building their businesses for our annual CXO Summit, our main goal is to give them space to learn from each other, think bigger, and ultimately leave better equipped to lead their teams.
Ahead of this year’s Summit in Chicago, portfolio executives told us what was occupying their attention: growth and the stakeholders who unlock it, proving AI is actually paying off, and building teams that can keep up. Those concerns shaped conversations across two days, with a core question running through them: as AI changes how healthcare (and company building) works, where do people still make the difference?
Valtruis Managing Director Tracy Bahl offered an answer in his opening remarks. For all the advances AI has made in the past year, true creativity still has to come from us.
Our leaders certainly have more powerful tools at their disposal than they did a year ago. Yet, they still have to decide what is worth building and how to make it work.
Making Room for Ideas
Duncan Wardle, former Head of Innovation & Creativity at Disney, began his keynote workshop by asking executives to do something outside their usual expertise: interview one another as authorities on the make-believe subjects of parachutes for elephants and invisible clothing.
The room had no shortage of ideas. Yet few adults, Wardle noted, readily describe themselves as creative. Somewhere between childhood and the boardroom, people learn to dismiss ideas before they have had a chance to develop.
His example idea-killers are familiar: we tried that already; there’s not enough time. In an exercise that replaced those responses with “Yes, and,” participants experienced how quickly a conversation could open up.
“If you know the answer, you’re iterating. If it scares you, you’re innovating.”
Wardle’s challenge to Summit attendees extended beyond the exercise itself. He encouraged leaders to bring different experiences into the room, give quieter colleagues a way into the discussion, and resist the urge to ask an idea to prove itself before it has had time to become interesting.
Building Care That Costs Less
Conversations about healthcare’s future repeatedly returned to affordability. Better technology creates possibilities; turning those possibilities into care that people can access and afford will require changes to delivery, payment, and incentive structures.
In her conversation with Valtruis Managing Director Karey Witty, Gita Deo, whose responsibilities span CMMI and clinical SuperIntelligence (SI) at CMS, outlined four priorities for clinical SI: public trust, interoperability, market access, and reimbursement. She described the need for oversight that accounts for a tool’s level of autonomy and the acuity of the care it supports; technology that works across systems; and coordination between federal and state regulators.
On reimbursement, Deo highlighted a central challenge: if AI expands the volume of care that can be delivered, paying for each additional service could drive spending higher. Payment tied to outcomes and total cost of care could help align those new capabilities with better, more affordable care. Her broader ambition centered on patients and providing easier access to their information, more choices, and fewer obstacles to getting care.
That discussion continued in a panel moderated by Valtruis SVP of Platform & Operations, Callie Patel, with Shoeb Sitafalwalla of Advocate Health, Rushil Desai of Gainwell Technologies, and Caroline Pearson of Peterson Philanthropies.
Sitafalwalla described Advocate’s work to design care around patients beyond the hospital, including virtual primary care that can support additional services over time. Desai discussed opportunities for companies to work with states and providers as the landscape of potential buyers evolves. Pearson brought the affordability conversation back to price and utilization, and the potential for clinical AI to expand access.
Together, the discussions raised a demanding question for builders: when a solution claims savings, whose costs actually fall, how do we distribute those savings to patients, employers, and tax payers?
Conviction and the Work of Execution
Mike Pykosz, co-founder and former CEO of Oak Street Health and now a partner at Portage Park Partners, brought the perspective of someone who has built, taken public, and sold a healthcare business.
Speaking with Valtruis Managing Director Anna Haghgooie, he reflected on the conviction required to stay focused through those stages. New tools have accelerated how quickly a company can build. The need to develop a care model that works, fund its growth, and demonstrate its value remains critical.
His advice on partnering with incumbents was grounded in the difficulty of making change inside a large institution. Buyers receive an overwhelming number of pitches. A company has to make its relevance clear and understand the practical constraints of implementation, including existing payment structures and systems.
Pykosz also spoke candidly about selling Oak Street and the complicated experience of stepping away from a company he loved. The conversation acknowledged both the pride of that achievement and what it feels like as an entrepreneur to miss a company you built from the ground up.
The Decisions Leaders Still Own
In smaller functional breakouts, executives worked through the choices already arriving on their desks.
Technology leaders discussed employees building their own applications with AI, sometimes faster than the organization could establish consistent data, security, and support. They compared approaches to technical hiring, where candidates’ ability to use AI now sits alongside the need to question its outputs and understand the fundamentals.
Clinical leaders had differing views about how much decision-making AI should eventually take on. They also explored how it could make care more consistent and give clinicians more time for meaningful patient interactions. The discussion kept returning to trust – which interactions require a person, where technology can and should help, and where we should still be cautious.
People leaders examined what their management teams actually needed as their companies grew. A title or an org chart could only tell part of the story. Teams also needed people who could set direction, execute, build systems, and sustain trust through difficult periods.
These were useful conversations because executives could bring unfinished problems and hear how peers were approaching them. That exchange continued in the closing Table Talks, where attendees reflected together on the day.
Leading Through Uncertainty
Tracy Bahl’s opening remarks to the Summit encouraged our portfolio to “Be offensive with uncertainty, not defensive.” Throughout the Summit, leaders explored what that actually requires. Whether they were testing a new approach to care, questioning a familiar assumption, or asking a peer executive for help, they left with ideas to carry back to their teams and with a clearer sense of the decisions that remain solely theirs to make.
Thank you to the portfolio executives, speakers, and advisors who made our Summit possible.