Executive Panel: Using Failure to Succeed Without Being Reckless

Every organization says it embraces failure. Far fewer can say what that means when the bet is expensive, the stakeholders are many, and the ground shifts under work already in flight.

Josh, Jonathan, Holly and Sabina get past the slogan and into the mechanics. How do you protect space for innovation against competing priorities? What does it actually take to move a bet forward before anyone has given you permission? How do you match the size of a potential failure to the size of the potential learning? And how do you keep people safe enough to take real risks while still holding them to results?

The best leaders are not the ones who avoid failure. They are the ones who know what to spend it on.

Meet our Panelists!

Jonathan Hemnes is EVP of Engineering at AdCellerant, where he leads engineering, data, and compliance for a Denver-based digital advertising technology company. He has matured the organization's delivery practice toward continuous deployment, rebuilt its analytics platform and the metrics the business runs on, and led technical diligence through a private equity transaction. He holds an MBA and a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Denver.
Holly Hinze currently serves as VP Digital Marketplace at Spectrum, driving innovation in video, streaming, and the Spectrum App Central platform. With 20+ years in telecommunications spanning Residential, Business, and Enterprise portfolios, she champions customer-first strategies and growth-minded leadership. A dedicated mentor and accomplished tech leader, Holly holds patents in Wi-Fi and Voice technologies and is committed to leading with authenticity and empowering others to grow and succeed.
Josh Maletz is a transformational software engineering leader with deep experience delivering high-stakes systems in highly regulated industries. He is a hybrid of executive strategist and hands-on principal engineer specializing in cloud-native distributed systems, legacy-to-cloud migrations, and the practical application of Domain-Driven Design (DDD) to solve complex business problems. He is currently supporting the Core Lending transformation program for Ford Motor Credit Company and operates out of Denver, CO.
Sabina Andersson is the Chief Product Officer at the Colorado Department of Early Childhood. She leads product and platform efforts focused on making it easier for families to access early childhood services and for child care providers to do their work. Before stepping into public service, Sabina spent years building product at Zapier, AWS, and Vevo, and she now applies that private-sector product discipline to modernizing how government serves people.