Rob Barrosa, President and CEO of Electrify America, joins Russ Fordyce on the Winners' Circle Podcast after winning the Sustainability Leadership Award (Organization) at the 2026 Sustainability Awards. Rob explains why his team built 350 kW chargers before the cars could use them, how battery storage and utility partnerships keep the grid in balance, and how ride and drive events, incentives and workforce training bring first-time drivers into EVs. If you have wondered what really holds EV-curious drivers back, this conversation has answers.

• Guest: Rob Barrosa, President and CEO
• Company: Electrify America
• Award: 2026 Sustainability Awards, Sustainability Leadership Award (Organization)

• [00:00] Welcome and the 2026 Sustainability Award
• [00:53] Inside Electrify America: 5,600 chargers across 47 states
• [02:55] What has changed since 2018
• [03:34] Betting on 350 kW before the cars arrived
• [04:57] Charging for drivers without a home charger
• [07:07] Batteries, the grid and the AI data center comparison
• [08:12] Inside the community-led education program
• [10:09] Ride and drive events and getting people in the seats
• [11:07] Training the next workforce
• [12:38] What really holds EV-curious drivers back
• [14:47] Exchange programs and cleaner air
• [16:17] The hard parts: utilities, permitting and the handshake
• [19:56] Location strategy: amenities, highways, then cities
• [23:33] Measuring what community programs deliver
• [26:00] Families, kids and the moment the lights go on
• [28:36] Where charging goes next: speed, trucks and the grid
• [30:50] Planning with utilities and cities
• [32:49] Wrap-up and thanks

• Build for where the market is going. Electrify America deployed 350 kW charging when many people said it was unnecessary, because the team knew longer range, faster charging vehicles were on the way. Today cars are pushing 400 to 600 kW, and some models charge at a megawatt.
• The hard parts are not just hardware. Utilities, permitting agencies and the car-to-charger handshake took years of education and a Northern Virginia lab with hundreds of thousands of testing hours. The next challenge is the grid, which is why battery storage and energy management matter.
• Awareness and price move drivers. Ride and drive events get people in the seat, incentives like $2,000 to $3,000 off address the price gap, and workforce training builds the people who will support the network.

• Electrify America
• Rob Barrosa on LinkedIn
• Electrify America on LinkedIn
• Nomination video on YouTube

Know an organization doing sustainability work worth celebrating? Learn about the Sustainability Awards and nominate them.

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Zach LaValley, CTO and EVP of Product, Data and Engineering at RapidSOS, joins Russ Fordyce to talk about the 2026 Stratus Award win and how connected phones, cars and smartwatches are reaching 911. Zach explains why RapidSOS adds a fast lane next to existing systems instead of replacing them, and how humans and AI share the work. He closes with two practical tips: enable the emergency health profile on your phone, and ask your vendors whether your car is connected.

• Guest: Zach LaValley, CTO and EVP of Product, Data and Engineering
• Company: RapidSOS
• Award: 2026 Stratus Awards, Solution / Platform as a Service (Product)

• [00:00] Welcome to the Winners' Circle
• [00:50] What RapidSOS does
• [02:46] Software, hardware and the redundancy backup
• [04:22] Why 911 infrastructure is slow to change
• [06:05] What happens when a device is not on the network
• [08:21] Ending the game of telephone
• [09:59] Better responses and the Cass County crash
• [11:52] Layering on top instead of replacing
• [13:58] Synthetic data and privacy
• [15:14] Earning trust with a fast lane
• [20:27] Humans in, on and over the loop
• [23:28] Call metadata and intelligence
• [24:51] Better decision support for dispatchers
• [26:36] The next three to five years
• [28:13] Check your emergency health profile

• The 911 call is only one signal now. Cars, phones and smartwatches can all send location and context, and RapidSOS connects them into 911 and out to responders in the field.
• Add a lane, do not rip out the road. Zach's team layers on top of existing systems so agencies can shift traffic at their own pace and always be able to go back.
• Choose the right human and AI relationship for each use case. Humans can be in the loop, on the loop or over the loop, depending on the job and the comfort level of the agency.

• RapidSOS
• Zach LaValley on LinkedIn
• 2021 911 Profile Database Report
• NHTSA publication DOT HS 809 896
• AARP guide to smartphone emergency info and Medical ID
• Nomination video on YouTube

Congratulations to RapidSOS on winning a 2026 Stratus Award. Know a team that deserves the same recognition? Learn more and nominate at the Stratus Award for Cloud Computing.

Subscribe to the Winners' Circle podcast: www.bintelligence.com/podcast

Jack Zhang, Global Head of AI Transformation and Worldwide eSupport Strategy at Lenovo, joins The Winners' Circle to break down how Lenovo pushed its AI chat agent transfer rate below 5%, an industry leading number that covers every kind of customer issue. Jack shares the eight year journey behind that result, why he believes organizational structure matters more than model quality, and a surprising new signal that AI assistants are starting to act as customers themselves.

Jack Zhang, Global Head of AI Transformation and Worldwide eSupport Strategy, Lenovo

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-zhang-535b4733/

Website: https://support.lenovo.com/us/en

• [00:00] Introduction: Jack Zhang joins the Winners' Circle
• [00:50] Jack's role at Lenovo: 17 years, eSupport across 180+ countries
• [01:49] How the Run AI initiative started three years ago
• [04:38] Rebuilding the workflow instead of copying it into AI
• [07:53] Managing AI with AI: alert, notification, and quality assurance agents
• [09:46] An eight year AI journey, not an overnight build
• [12:53] Why Lenovo still offers a human first option in premier support
• [16:59] The metric that matters: transfer rate under 5%
• [18:12] Inside a touchless service journey, from chat to dispatch
• [20:41] Touchless, partial touchless, and 80% total automation
• [27:06] What most companies still get wrong about AI adoption
• [29:45] Protecting a legacy brand through an AI transition
• [34:27] Closing thoughts

• AI transformation is an organizational project as much as a technical one. Lenovo's leadership consolidated three separate product support teams into a single group on one knowledge platform before scaling its AI agent, and Jack argues that the people and structure of an organization are usually the real barrier to transformation, not the technology itself.
• The numbers behind Lenovo's AI support hold up under scrutiny. A sub 5% transfer rate, roughly 60% fully touchless resolution on hardware issues, and 80% combined automation only work because Lenovo built a chain of specialized sub agents, a knowledge agent, a fulfillment agent, and a dispatch step, rather than one general purpose chatbot, and because every new version is simulated and regression tested before it reaches a real customer.
• Customer service is starting to shift from person to company interactions toward AI to AI interactions. Jack shared that 3 to 5% of Lenovo's survey feedback now comes from customers' own AI assistants rather than the customers themselves, a signal that companies need to start optimizing content and building direct agent to agent connections now, not later.

• Lenovo eSupport: https://support.lenovo.com/us/en
• Jack Zhang on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-zhang-535b4733/
• Gartner: 40% of enterprise applications to feature task specific AI agents by 2026
• Zendesk CX Trends 2026 Report on customer expectations for AI powered service

Jack Zhang won Executive of the Year at the 2025 BIG Awards for Business. Learn more about the award program and see this year's open categories at BIG Awards for Business.

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