AI Risk and Readiness
Agenda
- November 17, 2026
- Javits Convention Center, New York City
12:30 – 1:00 PM
Registration and Networking
1:00 – 1:30 PM
Why AI Is Now a CFO-Level Risk—and Why That Matters to ROI
AI has moved from the IT budget line into the financial fabric of the organization. It is touching controls, vendor relationships and decision-making in ways that land squarely on the CFO’s desk — whether they invited it there or not. As companies invest more in AI, understanding and managing those risks isn’t just about protecting the downside. It’s increasingly part of ensuring those investments deliver the value the business expects. This opening session sets the stakes for everything that follows.
- What changes when AI moves from a tool your IT team manages to a risk your entire leadership team owns?
- Where are CFOs most likely to be caught off guard — and what are peers already dealing with?
- What does AI risk actually cost when something goes wrong — and how can those costs undermine expected returns?
- What controls need to be in place for employees to use AI-generated information to make business decisions, execute business processes and communicate internally and externally?
Glenn Hopper
Author, The AI-Ready CFO
Read Glenn's Bio
Glenn Hopper is a finance and technology strategist with over two decades of experience leading transformation at the intersection of corporate finance, data, and AI. He has served as a multi-time CFO and currently leads AI research and solution development for finance and accounting teams. His work focuses on applying automation, analytics, and machine learning to drive better financial performance and smarter decision-making.
Glenn is the author of three books on artificial intelligence in finance (Deep Finance: Corporate Finance in the Information Age, AI Mastery for Finance Professionals, and The AI-Ready CFO), and teaches AI and finance courses through Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, the Corporate Finance Institute, AICPA, and LinkedIn Learning. He serves on advisory boards for Preql, the Crews School of Accountancy at the University of Memphis, GENCFO USA, and the AI Leaders Council. His insights have been featured in Forbes, Fortune, and The New York Times.
He holds a master’s degree in finance and a graduate certificate in business analytics from Harvard University, and an MBA from Regis University.
1:30 – 2:10 PM
The AI Risk Landscape: What Every CFO Needs to Understand
This session gives finance leaders a clear-eyed view of the specific risks AI introduces into financial operations — from agentic systems operating inside finance workflows to AI-powered fraud that is faster and harder to detect than anything that came before — and the controls needed to stay ahead of them. This isn’t a technology briefing. It’s a financial risk and readiness briefing.
- When an AI system can initiate transactions or approve payments without a human in the loop, what governance and approval controls need to be in place?
- As bad actors use AI to sharpen impersonation and social-engineering tactics aimed at finance teams, what verification controls keep your team confident in what’s real?
- With AI-enabled tools already scattered across the organization, what guardrails ensure financial workflows are limited to the tools vetted to handle them?
2:10 – 2:50 PM
From Experiment to Enterprise: What Your CIO, CISO and GC Need the CFO to Know
CFOs don’t need to become technology or legal experts. But they do need to understand what their counterparts are seeing as AI moves deeper into the organization. This session will look at the controls, accountability and cross-functional coordination needed to deploy AI successfully as it begins influencing forecasts, pricing, operational decisions, customer interactions and other business-critical activities.
- What are CIOs and CISOs most worried about that hasn’t reached the CFO’s desk yet?
- How do you control which employees can access which tools while protecting company information and intellectual property?
- Where are the contractual and liability gaps in how most organizations are procuring AI-enabled tools?
- What questions should CFOs be asking their technology and legal teams before the next vendor conversation or employee rollout?
Melissa Flicek
Vice President, Chief Information and Data Officer, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota
Read Melissa's Bio
As chief information and data officer at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota, Melissa Flicek is accountable for the strategic direction of business technology, cybersecurity, data and analytics, artificial intelligence and facilities. Additionally, Flicek oversees the aligned delivery of technological services and solutions across multiple teams to maximize the reach and impact of data and insights for individual members, group customers and network providers.
Flicek joined Blue Cross in 2024, bringing more than 20 years of experience in leading technology development and business transformation strategies. Flicek comes from United HealthGroup where she served as chief technology officer, consumer experiences for Optum, overseeing product and engineering for enterprise initiatives like identity, marketing technology, mobile, improving the user experience and other digital businesses. She has also held long-term leadership roles at Medtronic, where she had global accountability for digital capabilities, including direct sales tools, digital marketing and establishing an eCommerce and inventory management platform; and at Target Corporation, where she served as a director in Technology Services overseeing cross-channel digital experiences for target.com, mobile apps, social media collaboration and in-store digital.
Flicek is the Vice-Chair for CIO’s Against Cancer and was recognized as a Notable Leader in Health Care by Twin Cities Business magazine in February/March 2026. She also sits on the board of the Minnesota Technology Association.
Flicek obtained her B.A. in English and communications at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota.
2:50 – 3:10 PM
Networking Break
3:10 – 4:00 PM
Tabletop Exercise: When an AI Investment Goes Off Track
This is where the afternoon becomes real. Working through an evolving scenario involving a deployed AI finance automation tool, attendees will make the decisions that matter when an AI investment doesn’t go according to plan. The scenario is realistic by design: a vulnerability surfaces, a vendor disclosure raises questions about data use, and the AI tool has already made recommendations that affected financial controls and vendor payments.
- Round 1: What do you know — and what do you need to know immediately?
- Round 2: Who owns the response — CFO, GC, CISO, CIO or audit committee?
- Round 3: What do you disclose, pause or escalate — and in what order?
- Round 4: What should have been in place before this tool was ever deployed?
4:00 – 4:20 PM
Building the Foundation to Deploy and Scale Agentic AI
The tabletop exercise surfaces the gaps. This session closes them. Translating the scenario into a practical framework, we’ll examine what organizations need to have in place before deploying agentic AI into critical finance workflows, how to monitor it once it’s operating inside the business, and what accountability, documentation and escalation mechanisms become essential as usage scales.
- What are the non-negotiables before any AI tool touches a mission-critical finance workflow?
- What does effective monitoring look like when AI is not just generating information, but taking action?
- What does an escalation trigger actually look like in practice?
- How do you determine whether an agentic AI deployment is operating as intended, financially and operationally?
Mitchell Troyanovsky
Co-Founder of Basis
Read Mitchell's Bio
Mitchell Troyanovsky is the co-founder of Basis, an agentic AI company recently valued at $1.15 billion and backed by BTV, Khosla Ventures, Accel, and GV. Basis builds AI agents for accountants, including some of the longest-running agents deployed in real financial work today.
4:20 – 4:50 PM
What's Coming Next: The Horizon Every CFO Should See
The technology decisions you make today will be (or should be) shaped by what’s coming in the next 24 to 36 months. This session looks ahead at the developments that could change the economics, security and operating environment for finance leaders, and, in turn, what CFOs should factor into the technology investments they’re evaluating right now.
- How will quantum computing affect the security of financial data and the tools built to protect it?
- What happens as agentic AI moves further into finance workflows — and how do you build controls for something that can act autonomously?
- How are AI-powered cyber threats evolving — and what does that mean for the tools and vendors you’re evaluating today?
4:50 – 5:00 PM
Closing: The CFO’s AI Readiness Checklist
The forum ends where the real work begins. This closing session distills the day into a practical checklist of questions every CFO should be asking — of their technology vendors, their internal teams and themselves — before an AI-enabled tool is funded, procured, deployed or scaled.
- What business outcome are we trying to achieve, and how will we know if the investment is delivering it?
- What data will this tool access — and what will it do with it?
- What happens when it is wrong — and who is responsible?
- What risks stay with the vendor — and what risks transfer to us?
- What do we need in place internally before this tool touches a critical workflow?
- What would cause us to scale, pause or stop the investment?