The American Swiss Foundation (ASF) hosted an ASF Alumni Event: Successful Stories, Impulses for Today's and Tomorrow's Leaders: Building Adaptive Organizations for the AI Age on Monday, 22 June 2026, at the beautiful UBS Schalterhalle at Münzhof on Bahnhofstrasse in Zurich. The evening was hosted by Valeriya Pavlicheva (YL 2024) and Sunnie J. Groeneveld (YL 2019), both members of the ASF Alumni Committee, and was generously supported by Twinner, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and UBS.
The event was opened by Andrew Hutchinson, Co-Chair of the Alumni Committee, who paid tribute to the late Alex Pieper, his fellow Alumni Committee Co-Chair. Alex had played an important role in bringing the event to fruition.
The program featured a fireside chat with Phil Le-Brun, Amazon Web Services (AWS) Executive in Residence, former CIO of McDonald's, and co-author of The Octopus Organization, published by Harvard Business Review, and Markus Bierl, Chief Information Officer of Franke Group. The conversation was followed by a flying dinner and networking. Guests also had the opportunity to test Twinner bikes along Zurich's iconic Bahnhofstrasse.
Despite the hot summer evening, the event drew a full room of engaged guests, who brought lively questions and energy to the discussion. Phil and Markus offered highly complementary perspectives on transformation in the age of AI: Markus brought the perspective of a Swiss industrial leader, drawing on 25 years of leadership at Franke, while Phil reflected on his experience driving technology centralization across 38,000 McDonald’s locations and his current global vantage point as an AWS Executive in Residence.
A central theme of the conversation was that AI will not replace humans, but that organizations must empower their employees with the autonomy to innovate and shape the future in today’s fast-paced environment. The speakers explored why so many transformation initiatives fail, what leaders can learn from distributed intelligence, and how to lead when certainty no longer exists. Phil’s book, The Octopus Organization, served as a guiding thread throughout the evening, illustrating how adaptive, decentralized organizations are best positioned to thrive in an era of continuous change.