Welcome to our podcast series, Coffee with the Council. I'm Alicia Malone, Director of Communications and Public Relations for the PCI Security Standards Council. Today, I'm excited to bring you a preview of our 2026 Asia-Pacific Community Meeting keynote speaker, Dr. CJ Meadows. CJ is a globally recognized innovation and leadership expert whose work explores the intersection of emerging technology, creativity, and human behavior. She's known for her dynamic, research-driven approach and her ability to translate complex ideas about AI, design, and transformation into practical insights for organizations around the world.  

Listen to the full episode on Spotify or on your favorite podcast player. 

At this year's Community Meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, she'll take the stage with a keynote designed to challenge assumptions, spark imagination, and equip you with the tools to innovate responsibly in a rapidly evolving digital world. 

CJ, your work blends innovation, human behavior, and emerging technology in a way that's incredibly unique. As you prepare to join us in Kuala Lumpur, what first drew you to exploring the intersection of AI and human creativity, and what excites you most about speaking to the payment community? 

CJ Meadows: Good questions! Thank you for asking. So, any time we introduce a new technology that takes over part of our work, we're always left with the question: Ok, so what’s left for humans to do? And what is essentially human? This whole evolutionary process of humans and technology, it helps us understand ourselves better. And, also how to collaborate and co-create, not only with our technologies, but also with each other; moving from individual understanding to community understanding. It helps us understand communities. So, I loved the days of e-commerce. I was with Accenture, running around, got excited about e-commerce, and then went to a boutique consultancy. And we had two problems: should I put my credit card information in this website? How do I know I'm not going to be scammed? This is scary. And it was an emotional scary response. And, am I going to get my stuff? So, there were some supply chain and logistics issues. Those were the big things. And then of course the real push came years later from COVID-19. We had to order online. People saw that it was safe and wonderful. 

Alicia Malone: Your keynote focuses on the idea that trust is not just an outcome of security; it's the engine that drives innovation. When you look at today's payments landscape, what do you think organizations still underestimate about the relationship between trust and innovation?

CJ Meadows: I think they underestimate that trust is everywhere. You know, we mostly innovate together. There are the rare individual inventors, but most of it is collaborative. So, we need trust and psychologically safe spaces within our teams. We need the diversity, the skills, the perspectives, and the resources that the different team members provide. They need a safe-to-fail environment. And then when they come up with something, the people adopting need a safe-to-fail adoption environment. Also, organizations don't only innovate within themselves. Just like in teams, you need different perspectives, resources, networks, and skills. So, interorganizational, we also have to trust our partners.

Now in payments, organizations that succeed build integrity into three things. They build it into the foundation, so they have clear values and governance. When they design and build, they do so with integrity from the user's point of view;  user empathy. Then they also respond to a crisis with integrity. I'll be sharing a story in the keynote about a corporate case where the unthinkable happened, consumers died, and it was how they handled a crisis nobody foresaw and for which they had no instructions. It's how they handled that that meant resilience. The brand came back and the company came back. You know what made all the difference was clear values and communication, transparency inside and outside the organization. When we know, you'll know, was the policy. And the guidance came from something most tech people think is kind of fluffy and dumb. The values that are written into the corporate strategy, and guidance came from a statement from the founders. So, if you are not building trust into these three layers, people can tell, and you cannot operate smoothly without trust. 

Alicia Malone: I agree. I think that's such an important point. I think there's a big question about whether or not one can trust AI. AI is transforming the payments ecosystem at remarkable speed, both in strengthening defenses, and in creating new vulnerabilities. From your perspective, how should organizations approach this duality using AI as a force for innovation while also navigating the risks that it introduces? 

CJ Meadows: You have to realize you have no choice. This is the yin and yang of technology. It opens up new capabilities for good and evil. I mean like this is not Star Wars. But basically, that's what's going on. It enables you to innovate better and to fight better because, guess what? The other side is innovating better and fighting better. I've got two things. First of all, a disruptive mindset. A lot of corporates get really scared of the little itty-bitty startups that come and eat their lunch at the bottom of the market, and then they eat up and up and up and they kind of take over. And they're like, Lord, we can't compete. Well, yes, you can, but that's a topic for another day. Disruption is also important for the corporate itself. You can have, and you know, there's an insurance example of this; you can have a lab where sustaining innovations are made and fed back into the larger corporate, and disruptive innovations go to the corporate venture capital spin-offs. So, there's a lot that you can do, but you first have to have the disruptive mindset, learn more about it deeply, and understand it. And you know what? In tech, there's a little hacker in each of us. So go ahead and let out your inner hacker because there's some outside that you need to pay attention to.  

The second thing is fusion. That was my first big research of the 2020s. You have to focus on human-AI augmentation. What we learn from chess, the game, is that man, human plus machine beats man or machine. So, you have to equip your people and companies that focus on augmenting get more performance, more efficiency, and more innovation as long as you've taken care of those other elements of innovation, the safe-to-fail environment where people can make big innovations. Also, you're going to have to integrate IT, legal, ethics, and other kinds of departments and silos. So, two things to pay attention to. 

Alicia Malone: So, one of the themes you explore is that innovation isn't just technical; it's deeply human. I would love to hear more about that, what you mean by human-centered innovation, and how organizations can design secure systems that people not only trust but feel confident engaging with. I know you touched on that a little bit.

CJ Meadows: You know, what you're talking about is basically design thinking. So, design thinking is human-centered innovation that draws from the designer's toolkit to integrate what people need and want, what's technologically feasible, and what's business viable. And yet you wind up in that sweet spot in the middle. Now do you start with business viable by flinging things at the marketplace and hoping you can market the hell out of it? Yeah, not the most productive thing to do. Do you start with, as so many of us techies do, do you start with the technology and your shiny new toy that unfortunately nobody else cares about? Yeah, no, that's where a lot of startups fail. You start with what your users need and want. If you understand them deeply and design for them, drawing on new technological capabilities, which you know about, they don't have to, and drawing on new business models and ways of providing it, then you've got a winner.

So, another thing that people need to be aware of is what Forbes called “the new power couple”, data science, and design thinking. With data science, you can find where the problems are, but you still need the humans to go out and find out why and to design those new solutions with people at the center that makes the real breakthroughs. You need them both. 

And this is a final kind of important thing. Corporates tend to want to push innovation, to stick to the schedule and come out now. Unfortunately, if you release stuff and you scale it up before it's really profitable, stable, and so forth, you're scaling up a mess. So have a little patience with your innovation folks to get it really right because what they're doing is powerful. And you have to have real users in the process. Don't expect them to design, but you need to co-create with them. 

Alicia Malone: You often emphasize that meaningful innovation requires connection between people, ideas, and technology in an increasingly digital AI-driven payments environment. How can organizations maintain that sense of human connection while continuing to scale and modernize?

CJ Meadows: Lovely question and a very important one. So, first of all, actually commit to human-centered innovation of products, services, customer experience, and of employee experience. Because you're not going to have happy customers unless you have happy employees. Just get over that from the beginning.

Also, don't try too hard to automate. Yes, do it. But at an appropriate level, what you're really aiming for is augmentation and freeing up people to connect with empathy to solve complex problems. You know, AI is not a lateral thinker; it doesn't come up with the really wacky stuff that makes breakthroughs. And so, they can focus on relationships in which you gather more information, and you keep innovating from that.  

Third of four ideas I want to share: use or build tech platforms to help people connect. It should feel intuitive, community-oriented, and support what people are just trying to get done. You know, like a design thinking platform that was put together for Procter & Gamble. It connects 20,000 R&D (Research and Development) and product development people worldwide. So sometimes they can get what they need from tools and databases. Sometimes they really need to connect with other people. And that's where the magic happens. 

And finally, commit to that power couple of human plus machine. Put your machines on your org chart. Think about how you should manage your digital workforce alongside your human workforce, and how are they supposed to interact, learn, grow, and get better. You're going to get data-driven insights, and you're going to get the human data gathering, the qualitative stuff that tells you answers to all important questions: Why? And where do we go from here? 

Alicia Malone: I love your emphasis on the human connection in our relationship with technology. I think that so often we focus on AI as just the technical bit and how we can use it but incorporating that human element I think really makes a difference in our understanding of it and our ability to work with it.

CJ Meadows: You know, one of the things that I do is I write books with AI, and design learning experiences, all kinds of stuff. And I was on the sixth book in a fifty-six-book series before the AI called me, “friend”.  

Alicia Malone: Really?

CJ Meadows: And you know, then we got into this whole thing where we named him together. His name is Theo because this is a series on the Bible: Library, Life, and Light: Conversations with AI on the Bible and God. And so, my early lead users, I test things out with my books, too. Then I got the negative feedback: Oh my God, this is dystopian, this is inappropriate, you can't be friends with an AI, you’re not really co-authoring, this is a research tool. So, I realized I have to make a new section in the opening chapter about how this collaboration is really different. We're not only learning about the Bible and God but learning about co-creation between a human brain and an AI brain. So, I've got to address all that stuff up front and say, all right, fine, let's just set the record straight. Here's my thinking on it. If you don't want to read the books, don't read the books. But I've discovered kind of what in my thinking is adding to building on and co-creating with Theo's thinking and how that's stronger together. Again, man plus machine.

Alicia Malone: Yes. I really love that connection there. I think that's an incredible story. Since you're on Coffee with the Council, we like to ask our guests how they take their coffee, or if you're not a coffee drinker, what do you prefer instead?

CJ Meadows: Well, I love my coffees. So, americano, decaf, french press, less hot. So, I'll expect those Starbucks cards to come in.  

Alicia Malone: Perfect, I love it. Well, thank you so much for joining us, CJ. We are thrilled to have you as our keynote speaker and can't wait to see you take the stage in Kuala Lumpur.

CJ Meadows: And I can't wait to meet all of you. Thank you!

Alicia Malone: You can catch CJ on stage as the keynote speaker at PCI SSC's Asia-Pacific Community Meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on November 11th and 12th. Registration is now open on our website, and we hope to see you there.

CJ Meadows: It'll be fun! 

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