wellnessfitpro 
Skift Data + AI Summit 2026
John Sturino, Senior Vice President of Travel Products and Engineering, American Express Global Business Travel
THE ARGUMENT
The session’s premise: Money is pouring into AI, but ownership is what decides which projects reach production. Zheng said the move from pilot to production starts with accountability, and that pilots stall when the team that built them cannot hand ownership to the domain experts who use them daily. Sturino shared a rule: building an agent is like hiring an employee, so whoever builds it is accountable for what it does. They come at it from opposite directions: Zheng runs a decentralized portfolio across TUI’s verticals; Sturino orchestrates AI centrally at Amex GBT. Neither treats ownership as optional.
THE SO WHAT
If your AI pilots keep stalling before production, this session argued the fix is not better models but a named owner accountable for each agent. Before funding another model, test whether your failures are data problems being blamed on AI, and decide who holds the right to pull a model once it gets too costly or risky.
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