Evolving Your Leadership for Hybrid Teams (Danielle Gifford)

Agentic AI is pushing leaders to rethink roles, processes, and governance far beyond another automation wave.

In this episode, Andreas Welsch speaks with Danielle Gifford, PwC Managing Director of AI, about how organizations should prepare for agentic AI. Danielle draws on frontline experience with enterprise pilots and deployments to explain why agents require new infrastructure, clearer role boundaries, and fresh approaches to governance and workforce design.

Highlights from the conversation:

• Why agents are different from classic rule-based automation: they’re goal-driven, context-aware and can act with autonomy, which creates both opportunity and risk.
• Where companies (especially in Canada) are on the adoption curve: pilots and POCs are increasing, but full-scale deployments need better data, guardrails, and change planning.
• How leaders should approach agent projects: start with the business problem, map processes, and decide where human + agent collaboration delivers the highest value.
• Workforce design and the “digital coworker”: practical advice on defining role boundaries, delegation rules, and how to evaluate outcomes when humans and agents collaborate.
• Multi-agent orchestration and governance: how to prevent agents from converging on weak solutions and how to build review, control, and accountability into agent systems.

Key takeaways:

1. Business first: define the problem before choosing technology. Agents aren’t a silver bullet — they must solve a real, scoped pain point.
2. Move from experimentation to implementation: Canadian enterprises are ready to progress beyond proofs of concept and invest in production-ready agent solutions with proper controls.
3. Agents ≠ automation: treat agents as goal-based collaborators that need explicit boundaries, evaluation metrics, and workforce redesign.

If you lead teams, product strategy, or AI initiatives and want practical guidance for turning agent hype into measurable outcomes, this episode is for you. Listen now to get the full conversation and actionable next steps.

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Disclaimer: Views are the participants’ own and do not represent those of any participant’s past, present, or future employers. Participation in this event is independent of any potential business relationship (past, present, or future) between the participants or between their employers.

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