Cinthia Willaman

Part of the IT Leaders 100 - a list of the most influential IT leaders in the UK in 2026.

Cinthia is a strategic initiatives leader with over 20 years of experience navigating the critical intersection of business, policy, technology, and communications. At AstraZeneca, she leads the Enterprise Strategy for Data & AI Literacy, translating complex technology into actionable policy and governing its ethical use.

Drawing on diverse expertise - from academia to cutting-edge technology - she builds the strategic frameworks that enable organisations to thrive.

Her leadership has secured £21 million in funding, established global brand recognition for AI ethics, and earned two external Learning and Performance Institute awards for pioneering capability programmes.

What's the most exciting part of your current role?

Translating theoretical AI governance into operational reality for a global workforce of over 100,000 employees. It is one thing to draft an ethical AI policy; it is entirely another to build the capability and literacy required to embed that policy into the daily workflows of disparate matrixed functions.

I find deep professional satisfaction in bridging this gap between technical data scientists and commercial leadership. Delivering the pharmaceutical industry's first mandatory 'Responsible Use of AI' training and seeing it measurably shift organisational culture proves that robust governance does not stifle innovation; it enables it to scale safely.

What do you do in week one of a new project to avoid pain in month six?

I force radical alignment on the structural realities of the project before any tactical work begins. In week one, I map the competing priorities of all stakeholders - a necessity I refined while managing a €30 million EU/EFPIA consortium of rival pharmaceutical companies and academic institutions.

I establish a single, objective framework for how decisions will be made and how friction will be resolved. If you do not explicitly define accountability and risk tolerance in week one, you will inevitably face misaligned expectations and scope creep in month six.

I also mandate a pre-mortem: asking the team to assume the project has failed in six months and working backwards to identify the systemic blind spots that caused it.

What’s the part of your estate you most want to simplify in 2026?

I am acutely focused on simplifying our legacy data architecture to ensure it is genuinely AI-ready. Large enterprises frequently accumulate significant technical debt and fragmented, siloed data systems.

In 2026, the priority is ruthlessly streamlining these environments into a unified enterprise framework governed by FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) data principles. The goal is to eliminate the friction that technical teams face when trying to deploy predictive and generative models.

By stripping away redundant legacy systems and simplifying the data supply chain, we accelerate time-to-market for digital initiatives and ensure our AI capabilities are built on a trusted, coherent foundation.

Excluding smartphones, what piece of technology could you not live without and why?

I love Natural Language Processing (NLP) and voice synthesis applications, specifically tools like NotebookLM and ElevenReader. My role requires continuously digesting an immense volume of complex information - from the latest iterations of the EU AI Act and NIST frameworks to academic research, policy whitepapers, and current news.

While I do not always need to be the granular subject-matter expert on every external document, I must possess a strong structural understanding of how these macro-trends intersect with our enterprise strategy. By converting dense, open-source reports into highly natural, conversational audio podcasts, I can absorb critical strategic context while commuting or stepping away from my desk.

It transforms passive time into high-yield learning, allowing me to process industry complexity rapidly and safely.

What excites you most about the future of IT?

The normalisation of Data and AI governance. We have spent the last decade accumulating technical debt and fragmented data lakes. The current rapid advancement in AI is forcing organisations to finally confront this reality.

What excites me is that IT is no longer viewed merely as a functional support unit; it is the fundamental architecture of the enterprise. The future of IT lies in establishing FAIR data foundations that make ethical, scalable AI deployment possible.

We are shifting from an era of disconnected technological experimentation into a period of mature, governed, and highly integrated digital ecosystems that will drive verifiable, systemic change.

What talent are you quietly proud of that would never show up on LinkedIn?

My ability to genuinely 'read a room' and build immediate, authentic connections with diverse audiences.

On LinkedIn, leadership is often quantified by budgets managed or frameworks deployed. However, the reality of being a successful leader relies quite a lot on human connection. I am naturally curious and fundamentally fascinated by people: their motivations, their apprehensions, and how they process change.

This empathy allows me to strip away corporate rigidity and communicate complex, often intimidating technical concepts in a way that feels accessible and relevant to the specific individuals in the room. It is the human skill that makes the hard operational metrics possible.

What’s your most-used keyboard shortcut or command that you wish everyone knew?

Cmd + Shift + 4 (the Mac shortcut for a selective screenshot). In a corporate ecosystem that is practically drowning in lengthy, complicated emails, the ability to simply point and say, "look at this specific thing right here" is an absolute superpower.

Instead of writing three paragraphs trying to explain a data discrepancy, a flaw in a governance diagram, or a misaligned slide, I just clip the exact pixel area and drop it directly into a chat. It cuts through the corporate noise instantly.

It grounds the conversation in undeniable visual reality, prevents endless back-and-forth clarification, and, most importantly, it spares my colleagues from having to read yet another wall of text.