Technology Leadership Decoded

Deepa Soni is the chief information officer for The Hartford. She is responsible for leading technology strategy, vision, and execution for all businesses and corporate functions. Soni, who joined the company in 2019, leads a team of 7,000 technology professionals across business applications, infrastructure, architecture, data analytics, data science, and information security.
Soni has more than 20 years of executive leadership at the intersection of business and technology – driving business outcomes that leverage innovative and differentiated uses of technology and data. Her expertise includes digital transformations, agile product delivery, cyber, data analytics, and process design.

She is also the executive sponsor for Women in Technology and the Young Professionals employee resource group.

Before joining The Hartford, Soni was U.S. chief information officer for BMO Financial Group in Chicago. Prior to that, she was senior vice president and head of application development at M&T, leading technology strategy and delivery for the bank’s business lines. Earlier, she was head of the enterprise architecture group at KeyCorp, where she oversaw enterprise-wide technology standards and governance, strategic technology planning, solution architecture, and process re-engineering.

Soni holds a bachelor’s degree from Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology, India, and a master’s in science degree from Missouri University of Science and Technology. She has completed executive management programs at the University of Michigan and Wharton. Soni also holds a patent for systems-driven process innovation.

Could you provide an overview of your role and responsibilities within the company?

I joined The Hartford in 2019. As Enterprise CIO, I have a multi-faceted role in delivering transformational technology solutions to support the company’s $24B revenue, accelerating the delivery of business capabilities, building The Hartford as a destination for engineering talent, and leading a high-performing and engaged team of 7000+technology professionals. My teams span business applications, infrastructure, architecture, data analytics, data science, and cyber. I am responsible for leading technology strategy, vision, and execution for all businesses and corporate functions. I am also the executive sponsor for Women in Technology and the Young Professionals employee resource group.

What are some of the key challenges you face?

When we look at the world around us, the pace of change is unprecedented. In the insurance industry, customers, brokers, and agents are expecting and demanding digital experiences and differentiated products and services. These changing customer needs, combined with exponential changes in technology, create the need to embrace this magnitude of change at scale across the organization. Technology organizations, specifically, need to change not just constantly but faster than ever. The biggest challenge for us in these times is to ensure technology organizations can adapt and change at this pace and scale and implement it as part of our business transformation journeys.

The talent aspect of these journeys is always the toughest part of the change equation. We are on a large-scale talent workforce upskilling/reskilling and capability buildout for technology employees, as well as our vendor resources. Competencies need to change at the fastest pace they ever have.

With technology now being part of the core that helps bring competitive advantage to businesses, with this pace of change, there is a huge onus on the technology organizations to sift through everything that’s available to understand what’s relevant for business outcomes. It’s equally important to ensure constant education at the executive and board levels on what some of these emerging technologies mean for us as an organization – not just now but also five years in the future so that we can think about how to future-proof our businesses.

What would you say are some of the futuristic trends that will have an impact in the next 18-24 months?

As mentioned above, the pace and scale of change—both around customer needs and exponential changes in technologies—and our abilities to embrace these changes will impact how the future looks for us.

You must be curious, get out of your comfort zone, and continuously evolve to be relevant to the organization. Your ability to deal with ambiguity and gray spaces has to be pretty high if you want to succeed in this field.

Companies will continue to modernize by leveraging the cloud. Decision-making will be much easier and faster through smart workflows, machine learning, and advanced analytics. Data, digital, and AI will drive how processes are re-imagined. We will execute tasks with assistants/co-pilots leveraging Gen AI, rendering a very different experience of how we work and enhancing employees’ capabilities. Many organizations are doing these now, but the traditional levers of implementing technologies to solve for automating parts of the value chain or modernizing parts of the technology stack will not be enough. The future will differentiate leaders that maximize the value of all of these trends together, and not in silos, to maximize value for their customers and create a competitive advantage. This will necessitate transforming the workforce, providing them with platforms to enhance how they can create more value, and aligning to an operating model that enables collaboration at the scale and pace needed.

What advice would you give to young professionals who are interested in pursuing a similar career, and what qualities do you think are essential for success in this field?

I learned early in my career that continuous learning is essential to remaining relevant in the technology world. At the time, I worked in consulting, where employees who did not constantly learn had to sit on the sidelines when their skills and knowledge were not relevant to new projects.

Continuous learning also means that young professionals can love the technology profession, but they should not love specific technologies. The longevity of a technology profession is directly related to how many technologies a person can learn.

Other qualities for success include being curious and getting out of one’s comfort zone. You have to continuously evolve to be relevant to the organization. Your ability to deal with ambiguity and gray spaces has to be pretty high if you want to succeed in this field.