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Profile summary

Karl Mosgofian is a seasoned tech executive whose tenure as CIO of Gainsight solidified his reputation as a strategic innovator and connector between technology and customer success. With over three decades in IT leadership, spanning enterprise applications, infrastructure, and security, Karl excels at transforming IT from a support function into a growth-enabling catalyst.

His distributed, cloud-native approach at Gainsight empowered a remote workforce, focusing on collaboration, efficiency, and delivering customer-centric technology solutions.

He’s a vocal advocate for democratizing data and sensible AI adoption, ensuring these technologies deliver measurable value in real-world business contexts.

Connect with Karl on: Linkedin

Career highlights 

2025
CIO Advisor
2017
Chief Information Officer
2015
Chief Information Officer
2014
Strategic Consultant
1995
Group Director, Enterprise Applications
1990
MIS Manager
1987
IT Manager
1982
President
1978
Manager

Claim to fame

Democratizing automation

Karl Mosgofian sees automation as a vital tool for driving business agility across teams. By bringing in a robust automation engine, Karl ensured that their business users, not just IT, could connect data and create their own workflows. This approach accelerates innovation, reduces reliance on IT for routine tasks, and frees up the team to focus on more strategic challenges, ultimately making automation a key pillar in Gainsight’s digital transformation journey.

The Data-Driven Strategist

Karl Mosgofian stands out for his disciplined, data-backed approach to IT leadership. Rather than relying on gut instinct or ad-hoc requests, he took internal feedback to align IT investments with executive priorities. His leadership philosophy is simple but powerful: when you know exactly what your stakeholders need and how well you’re delivering, it becomes much easier to put resources in the right place and earn trust across the organisation.

The Shadow IT Realist

Karl Mosgofian has earned recognition for his pragmatic, forward-thinking approach to one of IT’s most persistent challenges: shadow IT. Mosgofian believes that conquering data silos starts with a shift in mindset-from seeing decentralized tech usage as a threat to viewing it as a pathway to empowerment and agility. At Gainsight, this perspective helped him turn shadow IT from a liability into a catalyst for innovation. His philosophy acknowledges the modern reality: distributed tech ownership is inevitable, and CIOs must lead by creating guardrails, not walls.

Karl's AI philosophy

Karl Mosgofian
Ex-CIO, Gainsight

"Artificial intelligence is both under- and over-hyped in that it can be transformative for a business. CIOs should evaluate which processes can be automated in order to free up time for personnel to deliver key insights to the business." Source

“The key to effective AI is structured learning. Just turning an algorithm loose against a dataset may not yield much, but with the combination of AI, human intelligence, and understanding, it’s amazing what we can achieve.” Source

“CIOs are going to have to live with a more federated world where even less technology is within their direct control. We will need to be coordinators rather than owners of technology at our companies – we need to embrace that.” Source

Awards and accolades

Info-Tech CIO Award (2022)
2024 BayAreaCIO ORBIE Awards Finalist

What does it take to be an AI Champion? 

We’re not looking for trophies. We’re looking for trailblazers.

You’re an AI Champion, if you’ve: 
Implemented AI in the real world not a pitch deck.
Driven change across teams, even when it wasn’t easy.
Led from the front, helping your org rethink how work gets done. 
Sounds like something you’re doing right now? 

Tell us about your AI work