The CTO Lens
A fresh look at what it really means to lead technology in today’s fast‑changing world. Hosted by seasoned CTO and thinker David Crawford, and co‑host, experienced product leader Sophie Valentine, The CTO Lens blends candid conversations with industry leaders, covers the latest tech news, and includes a whole host of personal insights and practical leadership lessons for the modern technology executive. From navigating roles, to understanding team culture, AI, tech strategy, and real‑world challenges, each episode offers both depth and everyday relevance. Whether you’re a current senior leader or aspiring to this role, The CTO Lens gives you perspectives that cut through noise - with clarity, humour, and a human touch.
Episodes
David and Sophie celebrate their 50th episode with a jam-packed week in tech.
They’re joined by Ant Davis, a cybersecurity awareness professional and content creator, who makes the case that the real skill gap in cybersecurity isn’t technical - it’s communication. Ant talks through his journey from an internal security awareness role at Ocado to building a following of over 90,000 on Instagram, why CISOs need comm...
In this week's episode of The CTO Lens, David is back from holiday and Sophie is fresh from the London Tech Leaders Summit, as they tackle a familiar challenge for technology leaders: dealing with non-technical executives and boards.
With technology shaping almost every business decision, is it still acceptable for senior leaders to say they don't understand it? Or is the bigger risk an executive who thinks owning an iPhone makes th...
Sophie continues season three live from the London Tech Leaders Leadership Summit, bringing five more back-to-back conversations with tech leaders on stories and lessons from across their careers - from rethinking the technologist skill set to accessibility as a business imperative to how boards should prioritise change. This is part two.
How AI Is Changing the Technologist Skill Set
Aislinn McBride, CTO at Kainos, on why the...
Sophie closes out season three live from the London Tech Leaders Summit 2026. Part one features four back-to-back conversations with tech leaders on stories and lessons from across their careers. Part two follows on Thursday.
From leading agentic development for 3,500 developers in a large corporation to building hands-on again at a startup
Nathan Luxford, Chief Agentic Officer at Jam 7, on trading responsibility for 3,500 de...
Sophie and David are back for episode 19, and once again there's no guest this week - which means it's straight into the news, followed by two of their own segments.
David and Sophie spend time on two segments of their own for this episode given no guest this week. First, they dig into the idea of the "accidental CIO" - the notion that many of today's technology leaders got there through years of varied, messy, hands-on experience r...
Sophie and David are back for episode 18. This week, they've set themselves a challenge: run through the week's news without mentioning AI once (it does not entirely go to plan) and dispel five leadership myths.
The five leadership myths cover whether digital transformation really belongs to IT, whether titles actually command influence, whether lines of code equal productivity, whether remote teams need micromanaging, and whether a...
Sophie and David are back for episode 17.
This week's guest is Craig Smiley, CPTO at Plandek, a platform he describes as "Strava for engineers" - pulling together signals from across an engineering organisation to show teams how they're really doing. Craig explains why 94% of companies can't connect their engineering output to business outcomes, why the answer isn't a single productivity number but compensating metrics that stop tea...
Sophie and David are back for episode 16.
This week's guest is Dr. Claire Ann Banga, CEO of eMoodie, who speaks with Sophie and David on the human side of leadership. Claire explains how her background in child psychology led her to build both a mental health screening platform and, now, multimodal AI models that read vocal biomarkers to flag when someone is struggling, why early intervention delivers a 600-650% return compared to w...
Sophie and David are back for episode 15.
This week's guest is Sergei Irisov, Head of IT and Digital Transformation at ZeroAvia, the company building the first new type of aircraft powertrain in 50 years - a hydrogen-electric system that has to survive a punishing web of certification requirements before it's allowed anywhere near the sky. Sergei explains how his team went from drowning in test data to using AI to find patterns huma...
A special CTO Lens episode this week featuring two special guests with some fascinating insights.
First, Ben Rudolph, co-founder of Peregrine Technologies, on what happened when he spent two weeks coding alongside his own engineering team again, why AI is brilliant at solving problems locally but much worse at reasoning about a system globally, and the real-world use cases that show what AI can actually do with messy, high-stakes da...
Season 3: Episode 13 - CTO Confessions: How to Survive a Million Line Codebase Build at 20x Velocity
The CTO Lens Podcast is back with Episode 13 of Season 3. Sophie is recovering from a Tough Mudder this week - 15 kilometres, 23 obstacles and yes, electrocution. And David is in need of another holiday, just 8 weeks after his last one...
Our main segment this week sees our hosts take part in a terrific discussion with Greg Detre, CTO of Mindstone, for one of the most honest conversations about AI-powered engineering the podcast has...
Season 3: Episode 12 - PureGym's Engineering Director on AI, Scale & Why Every Engineer Is a Manager
The CTO Lens Podcast is back with Episode 12 of Season 3, and this week David and Sophie are deep into another packed agenda - rogue AI agents, disaster recovery, recruitment bias and a Wheel of Wonder that nobody saw coming.
For our main segment in this episode, Sophie and David sit down with Gordon Lucas, Group Software Engineering Director at PureGym - the UK's largest gym chain with over 600 sites and now expanding into the US -...
The CTO Lens Podcast is back for Season 3, Episode 11. This week David and Sophie are joined by Richard Tworek, CTO at Riverbed Technology, for a wide-ranging conversation on observability, tool consolidation, and why enterprise AI still needs a human in the loop. Plus the Flip Side makes its return, decided for the first time by the toss of a Nicaraguan coin.
This episode covers the fallout from private Claude conversations turning...
The CTO Lens Podcast is back with Episode 10 of Season 3, and this week David and Sophie have a double guest special — two brilliant conversations with senior technology leaders, a packed news agenda and no Flip Side, which means it will be back with a vengeance next week.
This episode covers the UK's new AI minister Kanishka Narayan — and why everybody in the know seems to think he's exactly the right person for the job...
The CTO Lens Podcast is back with Episode 9 of Season 3, and this week David is fresh from his daughter's wedding, throwing caution to the wind and thinking about a curry. Normal service has resumed.
This episode covers Andy Burnham's first day as Prime Minister and the rumoured scrapping of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology - and whether that's actually as bad as the headline suggests. The San Francisco mayor ha...
The CTO Lens Podcast is back with Episode 8 of Season 3, and this week David and Sophie are recording through what appears to be the hottest summer on record - though neither of them has air conditioning, so they're making do.
This episode covers Satya Nadella's five point plan for enterprise companies to stop giving away their most valuable asset every time they use an AI model - and David asks whether it's a bit rich coming from t...
The CTO Lens Podcast is back with Episode 7 of Season 3, and David and Sophie are recording in what appears to be the hottest summer on record - and as it turns out, that's actually relevant to the news agenda.
This episode covers the impact of extreme heat on critical technology infrastructure - from the Eiffel Tower closing early due to a transformer blowout to NHS trusts declaring critical incidents because their scanners and lab...
The CTO Lens Podcast is back with Episode 6 of Season 3, and David and Sophie are both back in the hot seat - tanned, reunited and ready to dig into a packed agenda.
This episode covers Trump's threat to impose a 100% tariff on any European country that introduces a digital services tax on American tech giants - and asks whether it's time for tech leaders to start buying homegrown. RAM prices are rising in what some are calling Rama...
The CTO Lens Podcast is back, and this week Sophie is taking a well-earned break. David is joined by the returning Mal Minhas for a packed episode of news, a fascinating guest conversation and a debut Flip Side argument that ends - as these things often do - somewhere in the middle.
This episode covers the G7 summit where the world's most powerful AI bosses told world leaders in no uncertain terms to stop leaving governance to the l...
The CTO Lens Podcast does something a little different this week. David is away, and Sophie has taken the opportunity to bring together three brilliant women working at the sharp end of AI for a conversation that is honest, practical and long overdue.
Joining Sophie are Hema Purohit, founder of Lotus Advisory and Consulting and a veteran of Microsoft and Google with three decades in tech; Stephanie Stacey, founder of Miss AI and the...
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