On the 52nd episode of Enterprise AI Innovators, host Evan Reiser (Abnormal AI) talks with Sastry Durvasula, Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Operating, Information, and Digital Officer at TIAA. Serving the investment and retirement needs of over 5 million customers, TIAA is a Fortune 500 financial services company with 40 billion dollars of revenue and over 1 trillion dollars in assets under management. In this conversation, Sastry shares his perspective on how AI enables large-scale transformation within a 100-year-old institution, why everyone should have a secure AI assistant, and the cultural components that will unlock the next wave of enterprise AI adoption.

While AI headlines are dominated by hype and flashy demos, Sastry is focused on what matters most: real-world business impact. For him, the goal isn’t chasing the latest trend; it’s solving foundational problems at scale, especially inside institutions built long before the digital age. And despite the industry buzz, he believes most organizations are still at the starting line. “We have overachieved on the hype side for sure,” he says. “There’s a lot of sizzle and less steak.” Rather than build speculative experiments, Sastry and his team at TIAA are focused on AI initiatives that create operational value. This includes accelerating research in asset management and streamlining decades-old retirement contracts to improve customer service. “We created a research buddy… an AI-powered assistant that does a lot of this work,” he explains. “It synthesizes it in a generative style… like how you do it in ChatGPT.” Even deeply embedded legacy processes are being reimagined. “Now imagine AI applied to it… where all these documents are securely synthesized, and the customer care professional is getting input… that is so customized and tailored,” he says. These use cases aren’t flashy proofs of concept but real systems deployed to reduce manual effort, improve response time, and ultimately modernize the customer experience from the inside out.

Sastry isn’t just exploring how AI can improve business processes; he’s rethinking how it can reshape the day-to-day experience of every employee. His vision is ambitious and straightforward: every worker at TIAA should have their own secure AI assistant. “That is my ambition for TIAA,” he says. “We started TIAA GATE… and said, okay, we're going to give you a MyGate.” MyGate, TIAA’s internal generative AI platform, is being rolled out to thousands of employees to deeply personalize their productivity tools. Sastry believes that employees understand their workloads better than anyone, and allowing them to train and interact with an AI assistant on their terms will unlock a new level of operational efficiency. “How cool would it be to have your own AI assistant… You can just work with that assistant, train the assistant, and name it whatever you want.” But his thinking goes beyond internal optimization. Sastry envisions a future where startups scale with more AI agents than employees, challenging larger firms to rethink what workforce efficiency looks like. “Now you have companies with more agents and fewer humans competing with companies with a lot more humans and some agents,” he explains. The implication is clear: the next competitive edge may not come from headcount but from how well organizations integrate intelligent agents alongside human teams.

While building secure platforms and deploying useful AI assistants is critical, Sastry argues that transforming culture is the real challenge and opportunity. Adopting AI in the enterprise requires proactive effort. “Culturally, how much access do you give to colleagues to AI in an unintimidating way so that people get comfortable?” he asks. At TIAA, one answer to that question is the Guild Network, a set of internal communities where employees can explore emerging technologies, learn from peers, and even shift their career paths. “It doesn’t matter what you do in your day job; you can join the AI Guild, learn, and even change your craft,” Sastry explains. The network already boasts over 4,000 members, with AI being the most popular guild by far. His approach promotes what he calls citizen innovation: a model where access to tools and education empowers employees at every level to contribute to transformation. That philosophy also shaped the launch of MyGate, ensuring employees have a safe, secure way to use AI without fear or friction. “The more we can give them the tools,” he says, “the more we will foster… almost like a citizen innovation culture.” For Sastry, success isn’t just about how many models are deployed but how well the organization adapts to work alongside them. “At the end of the day,” he reminds us, “we could talk all about AI, but the human element of leadership... there’s nothing more important than that.”

At TIAA, Sastry is taking a pragmatic approach to AI transformation. From modernizing research workflows and contract analysis to rolling out secure AI assistants across the workforce, his focus is on solving real problems that improve how people work. And while technology is critical, Sastry makes it clear that the more important work lies in reshaping culture. “Every company will have AI in their core,” he says. “AI or ain’t. There is no try.” As enterprises move past experimentation and into scale, Sastry’s perspective offers a valuable roadmap: focus on meaningful use cases, give employees the tools and training to explore AI safely, and build systems that elevate both performance and people. Because the future of enterprise AI won’t just be defined by models and platforms but by how effectively humans and machines are enabled to work together.

Listen to Sastry's episode here and read the transcript here.