What are your top strategic priorities for 2026? How have factors like economic conditions, workforce challenges, or stakeholder expectations forced you to recalibrate your strategy compared to a year ago?

We are also a high-growth company, and in the tech space, AI is our number one priority. Looking ahead to 2026 and 2027, our focus is on really getting the ROI out of our AI investments. We are spending a lot of time on what we call our “big bets”, our strategic initiatives. We have six use cases across the company that we are focusing on to drive value into the business and to reimagine what we are doing by leveraging AI. Not only are we enabling AI, but we are also measuring the value it provides, which is absolutely critical for us.

We are in a unique position. Traditionally, our business is not high margin, so over time, as the business has ebbed and flowed, there has not been significant investment in IT. When I joined a little over 18 months ago, there was a desire for IT to become more strategic and scalable, which was great. As I started formulating that vision, the business took off. It has doubled and is expected to double again. Our business essentially makes and services power plants, and all of this is being driven by data, AI, electrification, and onshoring of manufacturing. The challenge is building a foundation for scale that did not previously exist, while also moving quickly to support growth. We are also working to deliver on some exciting initiatives around AI. I am working across foundational elements as well as high-value, innovative projects. It has been a challenge, and we are trying to hire as many people as possible to support the business. From an engineering perspective, the talent pool is very small, so we are being creative and looking into other areas to help with knowledge transfer. It is a good problem to have, but it is difficult to be strategic when you are just trying to keep up with the pace of the business.

Currently, we are not in a growth mode; instead, we are in a period of tightening the belt and buckling down, especially in healthcare given the many recent changes. Legislatively, we are seeing a reduction in overall health insurance membership across the board, which impacts our revenues. With that in mind, we need to continue operating at a high level, but this situation squeezes budgets for some of the more forward-looking investments we would like to make in areas such as AI and others. It is a tightrope to maintain our maturity model and continue reducing costs, while also keeping our focus on the future and ensuring we do not get left behind.