Straight Talk from the C-Suite
AI in the Enterprise.

Host: Dan Veitkus, Managing Partner, Corsica Partners

A conversation with Inna Kuznetsova, an award winning, 3x CEO for PE backed, global SaaS and AI companies, recognized as a top Tech CEO and top female executive in the supply chain industry and an active board member for global public and private companies.

Introduction

The discussion around AI in the enterprise has moved well past strategy decks and board presentations. It is now reshaping how executives lead, how organizations hire, and how the most forward-thinking companies are defining leadership itself. In this edition of our Straight Talk from the C-Suite series, I sat down with Inna Kuznetsova, a C-suite leader who is navigating that transformation from the front lines, bringing her perspective on what AI means for her work, her team, and the talent decisions that will define the next chapter of her organization. This conversation touched on leadership in the age of intelligent machines, and what it takes to be irreplaceably human.

AI & Personal Work Patterns

Walk me through a typical week — where has AI genuinely changed how you personally work, and where do you still insist on human judgment above all else?

AI has compressed the time I spend on synthesis, research, and first-draft work. But I keep human judgment for prioritization, tradeoffs, even the tone of communications for each particular case.

What’s the most unexpected way AI has shown up in your personal workflow in the last year — something that would have surprised even your 2025 self?

As a non-work example, I set an agent to distill news from dozens of news sites in multiple languages, foes and allies, on Iran war to just facts and numbers, while removing the political opinions. So, getting up to speed in a more objective way took just seconds every morning. A more refined way of AI use was writing an application allowing me to add comments to networking records, and this is by someone who has not coded since Harry met Sally.

AI Shaping the Operating Environment

Private equity investors and board-level stakeholders are watching how leadership teams operationalize AI — what does ‘getting it right’ actually look like inside your organization, in concrete terms?

Teams that win treat AI as process redesign, not a tool rollout. I am very supportive of spending a bit on experiments, allowing everyone in the organization to test what they can do and come up with solutions. People who are the closest to the workflow, e.g. implementation team spending hours on data quality or setting customer’s analytics process often come up with the most practical ways to cut time. However, when it comes to a full organizational rollout the measurable productivity gain in core workflows, and controlled risk through clear policies on data, validation, and human checkpoints are important.

Testing for AI Acumen in Executive Recruiting

When you’re evaluating a C-suite or senior leadership candidate, how do you distinguish between someone who genuinely understands and applies AI versus someone who has simply learned to speak the language?

I ask them to walk me through a specific problem they solved differently because of AI no matter how small. People who actually use it can get granular immediately; people who’ve learned the language tend to stay abstract and pivot to strategy. If you vibed a small app or ran a company valuation model together with research on multiples, you will be able to answer the clarifying questions, that is what you did not like in the first draft and how you corrected it.

The Human Value Proposition

As AI assumes more of the cognitive load, what uniquely human qualities are you doubling down on — in yourself, and in the leaders, you recruit and develop?

People who are successful in the AI era think as architects, not coders. I double down on why a certain problem was selected, check for judgment under ambiguity, taste, and accountability. AI makes us leaders before we are ready to lead. So, I look for the ability to frame problems well, set a high-quality bar, approach the answers critically and align people around actions.

What is the one quality you’ve observed in your highest-performing leaders that no AI tool has come close to replicating — and how do you deliberately screen for it when building your team?

Initiative, sound judgment, ownership of hard decisions, and honest reflection are among the most valuable human leadership traits. I look for leaders who can tell me about a moment when they surprised others with a thoughtful strategic move, as well as a time when they looked back on a successful project and still saw a better way it could have been done. Self-awareness is uniquely human and an attribute I prioritize when vetting candidates.

Outlook for the Balance of 2026

If you could prompt your peers in the C-suite right now, something you wish more leaders were paying attention to heading into the back half of the year, what would it be?

Buying Copilot licenses is not an AI strategy. Take one proven use case an employee is already doing and scale it across the function quickly; start small, move fast, because the market is not waiting.

Straight Talk Summary

AI acumen is a required leadership attribute, and the most successful leaders are learning, challenging, recalibrating and pressing forward in real time.

At Corsica Partners, we see this dynamic every day. The organizations pulling ahead are not simply adopting AI tools. They are asking harder questions about the humans deploying them — their judgment, their adaptability, and their capacity to lead through ambiguity without losing their footing.

What distinguishes the executives we most respect — and most frequently place — is not their fluency with technology alone. It is their clarity of thought, their integrity under pressure, and their instinct for what matters when everything is moving at once. Those qualities do not appear on a dashboard. They reveal themselves in the decisions leaders make when the stakes are real.

That is the conversation Corsica Partners is built to facilitate — with investors, boards, and executives who understand that exceptional talent remains the most durable competitive advantage in any market, in any cycle.