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ABOUT THE SPEAKER:
Alet Blanken is Vice President of AI Engineering at Workday, where she leads the strategy, development, and deployment of Generative AI solutions that transform analytics across Looker, BigQuery, and large-scale databases. With over 15 years of experience building and leading high-performing engineering teams at Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services, and ACI Worldwide, she operates at the intersection of Generative AI and data analytics to deliver scalable, secure, and production-ready systems. Her work spans LLMs, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), anomaly detection, and predictive modeling to unlock actionable insights and automate complex analytical workflows. Alet holds degrees in Information Technology and Industrial Psychology, along with a PMP and AWS Solutions Architect certifications, and brings a rare blend of deep technical expertise and human-centered leadership to the TMLS stage.
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ABSTRACT:
Every software company claims to be becoming an AI company. In practice, most are re‑running the wrong playbook: treating AI like another infrastructure migration instead of the current shift in how products are designed, shipped, and operated. In this talk, Alet Blanken, VP of AI Engineering at Workday, shares a practitioner’s playbook for that transition, grounded in Workday’s journey building agentic systems in HR and finance at scale. She’ll cover why AI is not analogous to on‑prem → SaaS, how product design must start from the first demo and traffic patterns, and why code is now the cheapest part of the stack. Attendees will see how Workday structures its architecture around durable systems of record and action, fast iteration loops on real usage data, and a culture that treats reliability, latency, and trust as first‑class metrics. The goal is to leave with a realistic picture of what it takes for a software company to truly operate as an AI company.
WHAT YOU’LL LEARN:
Business Leaders: C-Level Executives, Project Managers, and Product Owners will get to explore best practices, methodologies, principles, and practices for achieving ROI.
Engineers, Researchers, Data Practitioners: Will get a better understanding of the challenges, solutions, and ideas being offered via breakouts & workshops on Natural Language Processing, Neural Nets, Reinforcement Learning, Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), Evolution Strategies, AutoML, and more.
Job Seekers: Will have the opportunity to network virtually and meet over 30+ Top Al Companies.
Ignite what is an Ignite Talk?
Ignite is an innovative and fast-paced style used to deliver a concise presentation.
During an Ignite Talk, presenters discuss their research using 20 image-centric slides which automatically advance every 15 seconds.
The result is a fun and engaging five-minute presentation.
You can see all our speakers and full agenda here