Sonia Boije is the Chief Data Officer at nbn Australia and a 2025 CIO50 Australia honoree leading enterprise-wide data and AI capabilities. She established Ericsson’s first global data function and governance framework. In addition to being the Founding Business Fellow at Aalto University School of Business, she is a guest lecturer at Cambridge Judge Business School. Her research, in collaboration with the DigiSAS Lab at UTS, architects “decision products” to scale AI from experimental pilots into trusted, high-value production.
CDBG actively brings together business leaders, academic experts, and companies, and it is this collaborative environment of real-world experiences and rigorous research that drew Sonia to the centre. Sonia sees the center as vital because it translates academic knowledge into insights for practitioners addressing a critical market need. “Many organizations today struggle with strategic alignment and value realization, often lacking clarity on how their digital initiatives link to core business goals”, she says. By bridging academic insights with real-world business needs, “the Center helps organizations harness digital innovation to drive measurable business growth”, Sonia explains.
“In my work shaping strategies and governance for the data and AI world, I’ve seen firsthand how the ‘trust gap’ and legacy operating models can become the biggest risks to scaling enterprise AI.” It is precisely these challenges she hopes to help address through CDBG, translating real-world insights into concrete action for an AI-driven world.