Join Innovate@UCLA for our first 2026 WIT virtual session led by Amber Senteno, Chief Technology Business Officer at City of Hope.

The Power Pivot: Turning Unmet Expectations Into Strategic Advantage

Every leader encounters moments when expectations aren’t met – being overlooked, unheard, or underestimated. While these moments can drain energy and trigger reactive responses, they can also become catalysts for clarity, confidence, and intentional leadership.

In this session, Amber Senteno reframes unmet expectations not as setbacks, but as strategic openings. Using a practical mindset framework grounded in gratitude, intentionality, and internal grounding, participants learn how to shift from emotional reactivity to empowered clarity. Drawing on patterns familiar to women in tech – such as being talked over, underrecognized, or excluded from key conversations,  the session focuses on reclaiming control, redirecting energy with purpose, and turning disappointment into leadership momentum.

The session is reflective and actionable, offering tools to recalibrate mindset in real time, strengthen presence, and respond with intention rather than instinct – elevating influence and strategic impact.

Open to all: members and non-members are welcome!

About Speaker

Amber Senteno is a senior healthcare technology executive with extensive experience leading strategy, operations, and transformation across complex, highly regulated organizations. Her “why” is personal: she stays in healthcare technology because everyone is a patient, including her – and technology decisions and outcomes shape the patient experience in the communities we live in and serve. She serves as Vice President, Chief Technology Business Officer at City of Hope, overseeing the enterprise business of technology – portfolio management, investment strategy, and value realization, including prioritization, governance, partner strategy and management, and funding and resource models across the Enterprise Technology Group.

Her career spans the healthcare technology ecosystem – health plans, care delivery, PBM, and specialty environments – as well as a health tech company developing and delivering technology solutions. Amber brings deep experience in technology strategy, digital enablement, delivery, and operations (including serving as a CIO for care delivery organizations) and partners closely with executive, clinical, and business leaders to modernize operating models, strengthen governance, and deliver measurable outcomes at scale.

Known for bridging vision and execution, Amber builds high-performing teams and develops leaders by cultivating cultures grounded in clarity, accountability, and continuous improvement.

Join us for the Innovate@UCLA Spring CxO Exchange session, From Innovation to Impact: The Data Storytelling Skill Every C-Suite Leader Needs, led by Timothy Park, MBA, Executive Director of the Easton Technology Management Center at UCLA Anderson. The event will be held on April 8, 2026, from 5:00-8:00 PM at UCLA.

Innovation only creates value when people understand it, trust it, and act on it. Despite significant investments in analytics and AI, many insights stall because leaders struggle to clearly articulate why they matter, creating a growing gap between technical teams and executive decision-makers.

In this session, you’ll learn how data storytelling becomes a leadership multiplier—translating complex insights into actionable business imperatives, unlocking ROI from data and AI investments, aligning technical and business teams, and driving adoption by connecting analytics to outcomes that matter.

Whether you’re championing AI transformation, justifying technology spend, or navigating resistance to data-driven change, this data storytelling skill determines whether your insights gather dust or drive results.

This is an invite-only event. For more information, please contact info@innovateucla.org

About Timothy Park

Timothy Park is a data science and technology leader with deep experience spanning multiple industries including aerospace engineering, entertainment, quick-service restaurants, and educational technology. Recognized as a thought leader in Big Data, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Machine Learning (ML), Tim has published several technical papers and frequently speaks at national analytics and data science conferences.

Driven by a passion for making data accessible and actionable, Tim has taught courses in calculus, statistics, machine learning, data visualization, and AI applications at UCLA, Loyola Marymount University, Cal State LA, and The Aerospace Institute. He remains committed to advancing the next generation of technology leaders through his new role as the Executive Director of the Easton Technology Management Center.

Tim holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and physics from Occidental College and an MBA from the UCLA Anderson School of Management. He’s also a lifelong Bruin sports fan and champion of ethical, human-centered innovation in tech.

About Our Sponsors

Founded in 2019 with headquarters in Southern California, USA. KniTT is a team of industry experts who have delivered world class cloud services for Global 1000 corporations around the globe and now running revolutionary Private Cloud Platform – ELYSIUM.

As artificial intelligence accelerates beyond the pace of policy, markets, and diplomacy, the world faces a defining inflection point. This year’s Innovate@UCLA Summer Solstice brings together industry thought leaders, technologists, economists, geopolitical strategists, and innovators to confront the most consequential questions of our era: Who controls AI? and who gets left behind?

From algorithmic warfare and autonomous weapons systems to AI-driven economic disruption and the race for technological supremacy, the forces reshaping global power are moving faster than any single institution can govern.

This event examines the collision of three tectonic forces:

• The rise of generative AI and autonomous system
• The fracturing of the global economic order
• Intensifying competition between nation-states for technological and informational dominance

Attendees will engage with real-world scenarios at the intersection of Silicon Valley and the geopolitical stage: How do technologies born in defense and space programs migrate into the commercial enterprise? When information itself becomes a weapon, deployed on battlefields and in corporate boardrooms with equal precision, what does that mean for the organizations and leaders in this room? And as autonomous systems move from concept to operational reality, what are the implications for every industry that depends on infrastructure, data, and trust?

Through the keynotes, curated panel discussions, and networking sessions, attendees will grapple with these stakes firsthand — and be challenged to think beyond the algorithm toward the human, economic, and ethical consequences of the choices being made right now.

What to Expect:

Event Chair

Ghalib Kassam
Programs Event Chair, Innovate@UCLA
EVP CIO & CISO, Los Angeles Times

Join Innovate@UCLA Career Exchange for our second virtual session on Tuesday, June 9, 2026, from 12:00 – 1:00 PM.

“Modern Career Progression (and Transition) Tactics” with Christine Sandman Stone, CEO, Deliver At Scale.

30+ years leading tech teams in the Fortune 500, award winning content creation, and a hobby of getting women in tech new roles and promotions… Christine brings her pragmatic (and tested) advice to our group.

You’ll leave the call with new tactics – tactics to be a top performing manager, identifying and getting time with a sponsor, navigating a restructure or layoff, redefining yourself into a new role, telling your story simply and powerfully and more.

Company goals are agile, team workplaces in many cases are hybrid, and we all have complex company environments to navigate. The modern working landscape has changed. To directly address these issues, join us to learn about creative, modern tactics for career progression. We guarantee you will leave this event with at least one new tactic to use right away.

And… Bring along your toughest, most hard-hitting questions and prepare for an insightful discussion as we focus on elevating your career.

Moderated by Beth Apillanes, Manager, Enterprise Information Technology Services, Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL), Executive Chair, Innovate@UCLA and Marina Kernes, Deputy Chief Technology Officer, Metrolink

This is an invite-only event. For more information, please contact info@innovateucla.org

About Our Sponsors

Platinum Sponsor

For more than 25 years, IMPEX Technologies has helped organizations navigate technology transformation and modernize their IT environments. What began as a systems integration company has evolved into a trusted technology partner serving Fortune 100 companies, government agencies, healthcare providers, and educational institutions across the country.

Today, IMPEX delivers end-to-end solutions across infrastructure, cloud, cybersecurity, data, and managed services. As trusted advisors and resident experts, the team guides clients with integrity through every stage of modernization. By combining deep technical expertise with industry-leading technology partners, IMPEX helps organizations reduce complexity, improve operational efficiency, and build secure, future-ready IT environments that support long-term growth.

Networking Sponsor

Starburst delivers enterprise intelligence at scale by giving organizations secure, governed access to distributed data across on-premises, cloud, and hybrid environments. Built on open standards with Trino and Apache Iceberg, Starburst helps enterprises power AI and analytics with complete, trusted data without unnecessary consolidation or vendor lock-in. Learn more at starburst.ai.

“The Nonlinear Career: Thriving in the Age of Agentic Work” with Nadia Hansen, Digital Transformative Executive, Global Public Sector at Salesforce.

The career ladder is dead — and AI just finished the job. For decades, professional advice assumed a straight line: pick a lane, climb it, retire from it. But as agentic AI reshapes what “a job” even means, the people who thrive won’t be the ones who climbed the highest — they’ll be the ones who moved the smartest.

This session is for anyone standing in the middle of a pivot: students entering a job market that barely resembles the one their parents knew, professionals watching their industries get rewritten by AI, and founders building companies with tools that didn’t exist two years ago. Drawing on a career that moved from art school to computer science to 12+ years as a public-sector technology executive to founder and AI strategist, this talk makes the case that nonlinear paths aren’t a liability to explain away — they’re the actual training ground for adaptability, the one skill AI can’t replace.

Attendees will leave with a practical framework for auditing their own skills against where the job market is actually heading, reframing “gaps” and pivots as assets on a resume or in an interview, and building the kind of career resilience that doesn’t depend on any single job title staying static.

About Speaker

Nadia Hansen is a keynote speaker and AI strategist who helps executives and organizations navigate the future of work. She serves as Global GTM AI Strategist at Salesforce, focusing on the public sector, and is adjunct faculty at UNLV and Nevada State University. Before joining the private sector, she served as CIO of Clark County, Nevada, overseeing a $300M+ technology portfolio serving 2.3 million residents. She’s been recognized as a Top 50 AI Leader, spoken at CES 2026 and Dreamforce, and been featured in Inc. Magazine. She also publishes Hack to the Future, a newsletter reaching 3,400+ leaders on AI and the future of work.