I’m in Reno, NV this week for TribalNet 2025. Yesterday I shared my notes from day 1, here are the sessions I attended on day 2 along with key takeaways from each.

C-Suite & CIO Partnership

This session, led by Jessica Dumback, Toni Pepper, and Dawn McGrady, focused on the vital relationship between IT leadership and the C-Suite. They emphasized that a strong partnership is essential for an organization’s success, as technology now plays a central role in every operation.

My key insight from this talk was the criticality of building relationships across all parts of the business and with customers. It’s easy for IT to get siloed, but true success comes from forming strong partnerships. The message was clear: you can’t allow yourself to be put in a box. Partnerships are vital to success.

Real AI

Mike Caputto, Taylor Jolin, and Brett Talmadge cut through the hype to focus on real-world AI implementations within tribes and tribal enterprises. It was fascinating to hear about their applications to the business, but the discussion also raised an important point about the people side of things. It made me consider the need to prepare IT staff for handling AI prompts that might involve very personal or sensitive issues.

Tribal IT Department Structure

Michael Day’s session tackled a big question: is it better for a tribe to have one centralized IT team or separate teams for government, gaming, and other enterprises?

My key insight was how vital an IT leader’s soft skills are for tribes that are trying to create one holistic IT department. This approach is very challenging, and only about 17% of tribes are attempting it. The discussion focused so heavily on soft skills (communication, presentation, and strategy) that it almost took the hard skills for granted. This was a unique perspective for me, as I’ve not always had that experience. It’s clear that to be a CIO of a large, unified IT structure for tribal organizations, you must possess superior communication, presentation, visionary strategic insight, and soft skills.