episode 791

Berkadia’s CIO Damu Bashyam on Driving Innovation in the CRE Industry

Damu Bashyam is the EVP and Chief Information & Innovation Officer at Berkadia, as well as a member of Berkadia's Management Committee. Berkadia offers comprehensive commercial real estate services, including mortgage banking, investment sales advisory, and loan servicing, and ranks as the largest non-bank commercial mortgage servicer in the nation servicing a portfolio of $393 billion. Damu's current role is responsible for all aspects of the company's IT strategy, innovation, digital transformation, data, and product development, as well as the head of redIQ's software business unit. Prior to joining Berkadia, Damu served as Chief Information and Digital Officer of Columbia Bank and Managing Director, Chief Technology Officer of JPMorgan Chase's consumer banking business, and previously held CIO-level leadership positions within Verizon. Damu also serves on the board of directors of Goodwill Industries of New York and Northern New Jersey. August 07, 2023

791: Damu sits down with our host Peter High to discuss the various ways he approaches innovation to drive growth, efficiency, and improvements to the digital customer experience. Damu explains the idea behind Berkadia’s Startup Accelerator program BeEngaged and its role in keeping his team on top of emerging trends, building innovative solutions, and integrating new platforms like Blue Suit AI into its ecosystem. Similarly, Damu shares his experience leading the redIQ software business at the company and the way the cloud-based platform leverages AI/ML to help clients visualize data. He also talks about balancing the priorities of both IT and the broader business, building a data strategy, and driving internal technology adoption. Finally, Damu reflects on the keys to his career success and looks ahead at the trends in technology that he is excited about.

Also available on YouTube:

“Innovation is critical for any organization to stay relevant and sustain into the future. Innovation is about solving problems by creating or enhancing our products, services, our processes to drive growth and productivity.”

The World Class IT principles in yellow were the focus of this interview

  • 01 1- People
  • 02 2- Infrastructure
  • 03 3- Project and Portfolio Management
  • 04 4- IT & Business Partnership
  • 05 5- External Partnerships

From strategy to implementation

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