Patterns, Not Playbooks: Inside Intel CIO's First 180 Days On The Job

As Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan works quickly to reshape the iconic chipmaker to compete in the AI era, CIO Cynthia (Cindy) Stoddard is leading a parallel transformation internally — rethinking everything from manufacturing operations to hiring with AI in mind. But the first several months on the job were as much about listening as they were about action.

“The experiences that you have give you something more along the lines of pattern recognition versus a playbook. If you come in with a set playbook, it’s harder to build relationships and drive culture change within the organization,” Cindy told CIOnews. “I don’t want to throw past decisions under the bus. I want to understand the land that I'm walking on, understand the big picture, and understand what business partners think of IT,” she added.

After joining in late 2025, Cindy learned where technology was slowing the business down, and how she could accelerate productivity and efficiency in the future. These conversations are fueling work to modernize Intel’s IT foundation, harness the company’s institutional and operational knowledge, and equip users with AI tools that  align with the needs of their individual job.

A 25-year veteran of the technology industry, Cindy talked to CIOnews about the importance of IT basics, why technology modernization starts with process, and building a culture to power the company of the future.

The ‘Pillsbury Doughboy’ problem

Intel’s decades of operations are both a competitive advantage and a challenge for Cindy’s team to navigate. Disconnected IT environments make it harder for AI agents to seamlessly execute tasks or surface intelligence. Now, the mandate for CIOs is simplification, including eliminating silos and consolidating duplicative capabilities.

“There will always be a place for systems of record,” she said. “But in some cases, maybe we’ve overused systems of record and over complicated our business processes.”

For Cindy, modernization starts with process, not technology. This approach helps CIOs avoid the "Pillsbury Doughboy” problem — or when changes to one area of the tech stack inadvertently impact operations elsewhere.

“Just putting technology in different places, you’re not going to get the business value because it ends up not being connected,” Cindy said. “You push it here, and then it might pop out the end where you don't want it to. But if you start with the business process, you can see where the flow and investments should be,” she added.

The AI building blocks

Perhaps the biggest challenge facing CIOs today is building an environment where AI can operate at scale.

Early on, Cindy moved enterprise architecture to report directly to the CIO organization, aligning with Lip-Bu's push for a flatter, faster organization. The change gives her team a clearer view across business, platform, and AI architecture, and has helped accelerate initiatives to create an internal AI “control tower” — a strategic layer that helps plan, govern, and measure AI investments across the company. Rather than isolated pilots, the goal is to give leaders a unified view of AI adoption, risk, and business impact so AI capabilities can scale in a managed and accountable way.

“We have a lot of visibility now into how we should be structuring our business architecture, our platform architecture, and our AI architecture into a cohesive view for the future,” Cindy said.

But architecture is only one part of the AI puzzle. For companies with as much history as Intel, important institutional knowledge tends to be everywhere — in structured data, across unstructured documents, and in the brains of tens of thousands of employees. Cindy’s team is focused on unifying this information. This includes experimenting with using AI to capture decades of experience before it walks out the door.

“If you don't have a solid data infrastructure, you're not going to have a solid AI implementation,” said Cindy. “We have a tremendous amount of institutional knowledge and operational data … but a lot of that is in people’s heads so you have to try to extract it.”

Partner, not preacher

When she was working in the logistics industry, Cindy used to have members of her team ride with drivers. The experience gave them a firsthand understanding of how technology affected frontline workers, and ultimately helped the team build and select tools that solved real operational problems.

Modern CIOs can no longer operate from their IT tower. Technologists can only be effective partners when they understand and empathize with end users. And according to Cindy, that should start with living their reality.  

“You can create an army of agents doing a whole bunch of stuff. But if it isn’t geared at a specific business problem … it’s executing, but not delivering anything of value to the business,” Cindy said.

Living a shared experience can also help IT teams navigate common challenges, like resistance to new processes. Viewed as trusted business partners, CIOs can help employees understand the broader business value to changes that may add friction to their own workflows. But while communication is key, effective CIOs always follow-up with action.

“When you hear people’s voices, you have to act. If you hear and you don’t act, the voices aren’t heard,” Cindy said.

As Intel works to reinvent itself for the AI era, Cindy’s approach reflects a broader shift in the CIO role. They’re now shaping how the business evolves. That means both deploying new tools and earning the trust of the people expected to use them.