Alex Czurylo, Chief Strategy & Operations Officer at Gen3 Marketing and former analytics and operations leader at Rakuten Advertising, joins the AI Lab to break down what it really takes to build a successful AI program inside an organization—long before ChatGPT made AI mainstream.

In this episode, Alex and Ryan unpack why the most effective AI strategies don’t start with tools, but with clearly defined business problems, strong governance, and internal capability-building.

• Why starting with a single, measurable business problem is the key to AI ROI

• How Rakuten Advertising built one of the earliest enterprise AI programs—years ahead of the curve

• What the “VP of AI Strategy & Operations” role actually owns (and why vision matters more than hype)

• How to approach AI governance without slowing down adoption

• Why AI training should be treated as a core employee benefit

• The hidden risks of outsourcing AI agents without internal ownership

• What Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) means—and how AI is reshaping marketing discovery

Alex shares hard-earned lessons from leading analytics, data science, and AI initiatives at scale, including how to balance experimentation with operational rigor, and why companies that delay AI enablement risk falling permanently behind.

Alex Czurylo is Chief Strategy & Operations Officer at Gen3 Marketing, where AI sits at the center of how the agency drives performance and innovation for clients. Previously, Alex spent over a decade at Rakuten Advertising leading analytics and operations, where he helped pioneer early enterprise AI use cases focused on automation, insight generation, and measurable ROI.

Known for his pragmatic, outcome-driven approach to technology, Alex has been an early adopter of language models and AI systems—long before generative AI entered the mainstream. His work bridges data science, strategy, governance, and organizational change, helping companies turn emerging technology into real business impact.

→ Connect with Alex Czurylo on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexczurylo/

We also dive into:Guest BioResources

Nate Nichols, an early builder in machine-generated content and now a product leader shaping “agentic” analytics, joins host Ryan Kurt for a candid conversation on how generative AI evolved, what we gained, and what we risk losing along the way.

We also dive into:

• How early AI systems differed from today’s agentic models and why that matters

• Why many modern AI breakthroughs were discovered, not deliberately designed

• AI as a clarity engine: structuring messy thinking into plans, writing, and decisions

• The risks of optimizing AI for engagement and uncomfortable parallels to social media

• Where agentic AI creates real value today, and where caution is warranted
  

Guest Bio: Dr. Nate Nichols is a product leader focused on generative and agentic AI for analytics. He previously spent over a decade building machine-generated content and data storytelling systems, and he earned his PhD in Artificial Intelligence from Northwestern University, where his research centered on machine-generated content.

Resources → Connect with Nate on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nate-nichols/

Jen Stave, Launch Director at the Digital, Data, Design Institute at Harvard Business School , joins the AI lab to share expert insight into the most common mistakes in AI transformation, and practical steps for how to avoid them.

• What is The Digital Data Design Institute at Harvard Business School, and what are their goals

• Why companies need to rethink their operating model to harness AI tools

• How to measure the ROI of a major AI transformation

• How AI is disrupting data science

• The role leadership plays in shepherding AI innovation in an organization

Jen is an AI expert, specifically in the landscape of business, and launch director at Digital, Data, and Design Institute at Harvard.

The Digital, Data, and Design Institute is an environment motivating cutting-edge faculty research. They include 12 labs, each designed to explore and solve problems that our world faces today. The Institute also works with leading companies to adapt and secure AI and emerging technologies to transform their organizations.

→Connect with Jen on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jen-stave

→ ⁠Learn more about Digital, Data, Design Institute at Harvard: https://d3.harvard.edu/