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Gary J Ahwah, CIO at Molina Healthcare — Navigating change: leadership, learning and innovation in real time
Gary J Ahwah
CIO at Molina Healthcare
31:10
November 27, 2025

From storytelling at Disney to life-and-death systems in healthcare, a veteran CIO on building resilient teams, earning clinician trust and running technology as a business.

About the guest
Gary J Ahwah
CIO at Molina Healthcare

Gary J Ahwah has spent three decades leading technology in healthcare, most recently as CTO at Molina Healthcare. He was previously CIO at PacifiCare, regional CIO at Kaiser Permanente and led advanced technology services at Disney. He holds an MBA from USC Marshall and sits on the board of nonprofit Human-I-T.

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In this episode
00:00 Teaser and intro 01:02 Why Gary returned to healthcare 02:32 Healthcare is life and death 04:33 From care delivery to payers: both sides of healthcare 05:44 Leading diverse teams at Disney 08:03 Lessons from the internet era to the GenAI era 10:17 Why governance matters deeply in healthcare 11:38 Creative freedom vs. Clinical guardrails 13:10 Culture, change & clinician buy-in 14:54 Driving sustainable IT 17:24 Embedding sustainability into teams 19:37 Balancing innovation and trust 21:45 What employees expect today 22:54 The most exciting part of GenAI 24:52 Business and tech are converging 25:59 How Gary's thinking has evolved 27:51 Advice for emerging IT leaders 29:50 Books on high-performance teams

Episode transcript

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