A welcome from the CIO of our host, City of Santa Monica, and a look at how SustainableIT.org is driving sustainability education for technology teams globally.

Research has confirmed that sustainability generates superior financial and competitive impact, and IT contributes significantly to this ROI. In this session, we will present practical examples of IT business value impact and guidance for building business cases for IT sustainability investment.

In many ways, government institutions have more demanding sustainability stakeholders than corporate organizations, and more challenging change management to navigate. Feroz Merchhiya, CIO of the City of Santa Monica, and a veteran IT leader of private sector finance firms, shares his IT sustainability lessons learned and what the public sector can teach the private sector about stakeholder engagement and effective transformation.

Most IT organizations plan for procurement, deployment, and refresh, but treat end-of-life as an afterthought. This session will explore the changes that occur when tech device disposition is built into lifecycle planning from day one, and how retired assets shift from a cost center to a source of recovered value and measurable impact.

This discussion will explore how the shift from traditional workloads such as databases and corporate email to data-intensive models including AI and machine learning training datasets is redefining data storage. We will highlight how organizations can reimagine their storage strategies to dramatically reduce energy consumption, physical footprint, and TCO while strengthening resilience and ensuring long-term data integrity.
 

Our panel of experts will share what is working to deploy AI tools (generative and agentic) in ways that effectively balance speed and innovation with environmental impact mitigation and social safeguards at all stages of the AI system lifecycle.
 

A summary of takeaways from the day's sessions and a set of practical actions for follow through.