Stop Slapping AI Tools on Bad Strategy (Here’s What to Do Instead)

Steve Chitwood is a senior marketing, commerce, and technology executive with more than 20 years of experience helping global enterprises turn fragmented customer data, disconnected digital experiences, and underperforming technology investments into modern, customer-centered, AI-ready growth platforms. He is known for operating at the intersection of business strategy, technology, customer experience, and transformation execution to solve complex problems and create measurable enterprise value.  

Steve currently serves as SVP, Interactive Strategy and Consulting – Americas at HGS, where he leads strategic advisory work focused on marketing and commerce transformation. Across executive leadership roles at HGS, LTIMindtree, Capgemini Invent, Marlabs, and Mindtree, he has built and led consulting practices, advised Global 100 and Global 1000 leadership teams, and helped organizations modernize their customer engagement, marketing, commerce, and service capabilities at scale. His experience spans manufacturing, retail, consumer goods, automotive, financial services, and other major sectors, giving him a broad global perspective on how enterprises transform for growth.  

A trusted advisor to CMOs, CIOs, CEOs, and other senior business leaders, Steve brings deep expertise in customer data, enterprise data architecture, customer experience transformation, marketing technology, commerce, identity, advanced analytics, cloud-based platforms, and real-time decisioning. He is particularly valued for translating complexity into clear strategies and practical operating models that align innovation with execution. His work has focused on helping organizations leverage data, cloud, and disruptive technologies to accelerate growth, manage costs, evolve business models, and build more agile, data-driven enterprises.  

Steve is equally comfortable as a strategist, operator, consultant, and builder. Earlier in his career, he owned a $100M P&L across seven B2C and B2B retail ecommerce brands, leading ecommerce technology strategy, digital customer experience, customer acquisition, CRM, retention marketing, and performance improvement across digital channels. He also founded and led digital consulting businesses, giving him an entrepreneurial mindset and a strong track record of building teams, shaping go-to-market strategy, and delivering innovative solutions to difficult business and technology challenges. Over the past 20 years, Steve has built and led consulting teams and digital experience LOBs in large multi-billion dollar global IT services organizations with direct revenue responsibility for $100M+ annually.

Recognized as a thought leader in customer experience and data-driven marketing, Steve is an author and speaker on topics including customer-centered digital enterprise transformation, marketing and commerce modernization, customer data platforms, AI adoption, and the future of data-enabled growth. He combines executive presence, consulting depth, and hands-on transformation leadership with a reputation for building high-performing teams and helping top brands move from vision to operational reality.