Join us this Friday at Maggiano’s to welcome Joe Sutherland, PhD, a results-driven technology executive, board director, and bestselling author with an established record of transformational growth through AI, data, and cloud innovation at the world’s top organizations.

Joe brings extensive experience from executive roles at Emory, Cisco, Amazon, three startups, and The White House - leading large 6,000+ organizations generating more than $1B in revenue and exit value. Sutherland currently directs Emory University’s $300MM AI Center, at the head of a nine-figure innovation portfolio, where he reports directly to the President’s cabinet.

Formerly, he led the formation of a retail media business at Amazon, unlocking new monetization pathways for digital advertising, and helped steer Cisco’s cloud transformation, driving platform adoption across millions of endpoints globally. Before that, Joe worked with private investors to build profitable companies that were acquired, like the artificial intelligence startup Peachtree AI (acquired by Further) and the fintech startup Prattle (acquired by Liquidnet). Joe was honored to serve in the White House Office of Scheduling and Advance for President Barack Obama, traveling with the President in support of his policy initiatives.

Throughout his career, Joe has advised and consulted on technology strategy, governance, risk, and compliance initiatives to board members, trustees, and executive leadership (including Goldman Sachs, GlaxoSmithKline, Cisco, Coca-Cola, The Conference Board, and Fulcrum Equity Partners). Joe participates in federal AI policy making as a principal investigator for the U.S. Center for AI Standards and Innovation (NIST/White House). He has served as a director or advisor to several non-profit and foundation boards, including Rowen Foundation, Neuro Challenge Foundation, and the Atlanta Economics Club. He served ex-officio on the Undergraduate Experience Committee for the Washington University Board of Trustees, preparing the university for the establishment of a new residential college system.

Joe’s work has been featured on FOX 5 Good Day Atlanta, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Forbes, Georgia Trend, CEO Magazine, Government Technology, MIT Sloan Management Review, and other top venues. He is the author of Analytics the Right Way (Wiley), an international bestseller on how to build results driven data science organizations. Corporate citizenship is deeply important to him; in addition to his board affiliations, he’s a member of Leadership Atlanta ’26. He earned his PhD, MPhil, and master’s degrees from Columbia, and he holds a bachelor’s degree from Wash. U. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia with his family, where he enjoys golf and tennis.