Daniel Kendzior — Chicago, IL

Building $1B+ businesses at the AI frontier.

Senior transformation executive who builds and scales high-growth businesses at the intersection of AI, cybersecurity, and enterprise resilience. I have rebuilt practices to $1B+ in annual sales, carried P&L for $135M+ flagship engagements, integrated companies through complex M&A, and shaped the global conversation on AI through the World Economic Forum, NIST, and tier-1 media.

AI Transformation Cybersecurity Business Resilience P&L Leadership M&A Integration
Daniel Kendzior portrait
i. Impact at a Glance

Three years of transformation, in numbers.

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Annual Practice Sales
Scaled global business unit from a stalled portfolio to $1B+ in annual sales.
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Flagship Engagement P&L
Led both Data and Security towers on a post-incident Fortune 500 spinout build.
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Global Team Led
15 direct reports across five continents; sustained <5% attrition of key talent.
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Three-Year CAGR
Two-time fastest-growing offering in Accenture Cybersecurity.
ii. About
Equally comfortable as the operator behind the numbers, the strategist setting the agenda, and the public voice shaping the narrative.

For over 15 years, I have led the work of integrating cybersecurity into how enterprises actually run — not as a compliance overhead, but as a strategic enabler of growth. Today, that means leading Accenture Cybersecurity’s Global AI Reinvention practice, where I have built the firm’s commercial and technical foundation for AI-driven security from inception.

Before that, I rebuilt and scaled the global Data & AI Security practice into a $1B+ annual sales, $850M+ revenue business unit with 35%+ CAGR, recognized by IDC as a market leader and named Global Partner of the Year by both Securiti.AI and Microsoft Purview.

My career has been a study in transitions: leading the Americas product-security organization for Siemens (8,000+ employees), advising CISOs through complex transformations at PwC, delivering identity programs onboarding 400,000+ users at a top-five US bank, and stewarding pre/post Day-1 cybersecurity for multibillion-dollar mergers and divestitures across regulated industries.

Beyond the operating role, I am a member of the World Economic Forum AI & Cyber Initiative and the NIST AI Safety Consortium, primary author of Accenture’s State of Cyber Resilience research, and a frequent voice in the AP, CBS, Axios, MIT Sloan Management Review, and the Ivey Business Journal.

iii. Career

A long arc of building, integrating, and scaling.

  1. 2025 — Present
    Global AI Reinvention Lead, Cybersecurity
    Accenture · Managing Director
    Defined and operationalized the firm’s AI-driven cybersecurity strategy from inception. Delivered $977M in H1 bookings and a $1.3B+ qualified pipeline at 94% YoY growth, with 87% leadership validation on $5M+ pursuits. Built a 300–500-practitioner global Community of Practice in under 60 days.
  2. 2023 — 2025
    Global Data & AI Security Practice Leader
    Accenture · Managing Director
    Rebuilt and scaled a global business unit to $1B+ in annual sales and $850M+ in annual revenue at 35%+ CAGR. Led 350+ practitioners across 15 direct reports. Architected the $135M+ flagship engagement for a Fortune 500 medical-technology spinout in a post-incident environment. Sponsored Accenture’s first Generative AI Security Studio as a CEO-priority initiative.
  3. 2019 — 2022
    North American Life Sciences Security Practice Leader
    Accenture · Managing Director
    Led security strategy and delivery for the firm’s largest concentration of life-sciences and healthcare clients, including pre/post Day-1 cybersecurity for multiple multibillion-dollar mergers and divestitures.
  4. 2018 — 2019
    Product & Solution Security Officer, Americas
    Siemens · Smart Infrastructure
    Led an 8,000+ employee, customer-facing cybersecurity organization across the Americas. Defined the operating model, governance, service strategy, incident response, and vulnerability-management programs from the ground up, integrating cyber into commercial offerings as a business enabler.
  5. 2012 — 2018
    Strategy & Transformation Advisor — Cybersecurity & Privacy
    PwC
    Senior leader in PwC’s global cybersecurity center of excellence; advised CISOs and C-suite on multi-year transformations across financial services, retail, manufacturing, utilities, and technology. Delivered identity programs onboarding 400,000+ users; led incident-driven IAM transformation at a Fortune 25 retailer.
  6. 2008 — 2011
    Software Configuration Management Engineer
    Motorola
    Two-time Motorola Mobility Think Tank winner; foundational work in software configuration and security architecture.
iv. Signature Plays

How I create compounding value.

01
Built and scaled a global AI & security practice.
Defined the firm’s AI-first cybersecurity strategy, replaced legacy time-and-materials models with a platform-driven, outcomes-based commercial framework, and stood up the operating model and deal-governance discipline behind it.
$977M H1 Bookings $1.3B+ Pipeline 94% YoY
02
Accountable executive for a Fortune 500 post-divestiture build.
Deployed into a post-incident environment, replaced incumbent leadership, and assumed accountability for both Data and Security towers — securing migration of 40+ data/AI platforms and 7,000+ data products under a regulated build with 45+ resources.
$135M+ Engagement 40+ Platforms 7,000+ Data Products
03
Operated and scaled an 8,000-employee Americas security org.
Led the customer-facing cybersecurity organization for Siemens Smart Infrastructure across the Americas. Owned the operating model, service strategy, incident response, and product-security programs across an 8,000+ employee user base.
8,000+ Employees Americas-Wide Operate & Scale
v. Selected Publications

A long-form record of shaping the industry conversation.

Beyond the operating role, my writing and speaking is where I codify how AI changes what “good” looks like in cybersecurity, M&A integration, and enterprise resilience. Below are the works most cited by clients and peers — spanning the World Economic Forum, NIST, MIT Sloan Management Review, Ivey Business Journal, and the AP / CBS / Axios pickup that followed.

Featured · RSA Conference 2025

AI Is Changing Everything for Security — Except the Hard Problems

RSAC 2025 Keynote & Companion Essay

The hard problems in security are still the hard problems. AI accelerates the easy work, exposes the brittle work, and forces us to be honest about what we never solved.

A grounding take on what AI actually changes in enterprise security — and the harder, organizational problems it cannot solve. Anchored Accenture’s #1-ranked Share of Voice from RSA 2025 and remains the most-cited single piece of thought leadership in the practice.

Companion to the WEF position paper on AI & Cyber Risk and Accenture’s State of Cyber Resilience 2025 research.

Agentic AI · Architecture

Three Essentials for Agentic AI Security

Practitioner Brief · 2025

The minimum viable controls for organizations standing up agentic AI at scale: identity, action governance, and observability for non-human actors.

Read on LinkedIn
AI Governance

Setting Guardrails for AI Security in Enterprises

Practitioner Brief · 2025

A pragmatic framework for boards and CISOs to translate Responsible AI principles into operational guardrails that don’t throttle innovation.

Read on LinkedIn
Identity · Agentic AI

Strengthening AI Agent Security with Identity Management

Practitioner Brief · 2025

How identity becomes the new control plane when autonomous agents start making decisions, calling tools, and acting on behalf of humans.

Read on LinkedIn
World Economic Forum

AI & Cyber Risk — WEF Position Paper

World Economic Forum · Co-author

Multi-stakeholder guidance for senior executives on how to adopt AI technologies in a secure manner across the enterprise stack.

View Publication
Accenture Research

State of Cyber Resilience 2025

Accenture · Primary Author

Flagship annual research on how the world’s largest organizations are building (or failing to build) resilience in an AI-saturated threat landscape.

View Publication
Long-Form · Strategy

Redefining Resilience: Cybersecurity in the Generative AI Era

Featured in MIT Sloan Management Review & Ivey Business Journal

A board-level framing of why generative AI changes the unit economics of resilience — and what to do about it before the next incident.

View Publication
vi. Industry & Public Service

Trusted to set the rules, not just follow them.

Member · Since 2023
World Economic Forum — AI & Cyber Initiative
Executive member of a global multi-stakeholder community of senior executives across the cybersecurity and AI fields, developing actionable guidance to help leaders adopt AI technologies in a secure manner. Executive sponsor of WEF working groups on AI Security & Resilience.
Member · Since 2024
NIST AI Safety Consortium (AISIC)
Thought-leader member of the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute Consortium, contributing to federal frameworks for trustworthy AI deployment.
Public Voice
Tier-1 Media & Conference Stages
Featured in the Associated Press, CBS, and Axios. Primary speaker or author for 10+ media appearances, 6 conferences, and 12 analyst briefings annually. Drove Accenture Cybersecurity’s media prominence to 2× firm average and #1 Share of Voice from RSA.
Education & Credentials
Stanford · University of Illinois · CISSP, PMP, AWS
B.S., Systems Engineering & Design, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Responsible AI Program, Stanford University. Certifications: CISSP, PMP, AWS Certified Solution Architect, ISO 22301 Lead Implementer, SAFe 4 Agilist, LEED AP O+M.

Let’s talk about what comes next.