Rethinking Risk: How Strategic Guardrails Can Actually Empower Innovation - Abim Kolawole, Chief Audit Executive at Northwestern Mutual

What if audit wasn’t just a watchdog—but a catalyst for innovation, trust, and long-term growth? And what can education learn from it?

In this episode of The TechEd Podcast, Matt Kirchner sits down with Abim Kolawole, Chief Audit Executive at Northwestern Mutual, to explore how risk management, when done right, becomes a strategic advantage. Abim shares his remarkable journey—from growing up in Nigeria and watching Wall Street as a kid, to becoming a lawyer at the SEC, to now leading audit at one of America’s most respected financial institutions.

But this episode goes far beyond compliance. It’s about how innovation and integrity can—and must—coexist. Abim breaks down how technology can accelerate outcomes only when deployed safely, how AI is reshaping how organizations detect and act on risk, and why relevance is the new currency for both businesses and educators.

Listen to learn:

• Why tech is only an accelerant if you deliver it safely
• How AI helps businesses “listen for risk” and act with foresight
• What schools can learn from client-centric models in business
• How Northwestern Mutual is balancing tradition with transformation
• Why critical thinking—not just tools—is the real superpower

3 Big Takeaways from this Episode:

1. Audit is no longer just about compliance—it’s about enabling innovation. Abim Kolawole views audit as a strategic partner that delivers foresight, insights, and confidence to help a company grow safely. By using data, analytics, and a future-focused mindset, internal audit can help organizations place smarter bets, not just avoid bad ones.

2. Technology only accelerates value when it’s implemented with trust and purpose. At Northwestern Mutual, cloud migration and emerging tech like AI are approached with a “safe by design” mindset that includes cross-functional vetting and intentional guardrails. Abim emphasizes that skipping this step puts long-term client trust—and company relevance—at risk.

3. Education leaders can learn from the client-centric models used in business. Just like Northwestern Mutual redesigned the advisor and client experience using design thinking, educators must reimagine the student and teacher experience before introducing new tools. Critical thinking, not technology alone, is the foundation of a truly transformative education.

Resources in this Episode:

• To learn more about Northwestern Mutual, visit: www.northwesternmutual.com
• Check out the movie Wall Street, mentioned in this episode
• Follow Abim on LinkedIn

Connect with Northwestern Mutual on Social Media:

LinkedIn  |  X  |  Facebook  |  Instagram  |  YouTube

Full show notes

Instagram - Facebook - YouTube - TikTok - Twitter - LinkedIn

Transcript

Matt Kirchner: 0:00

Matt, it's Matt Kirkner on The TechEd Podcast. Welcome to this week's episode talking about, first of all, a company that in my town of Milwaukee, is absolutely ubiquitous, Northwestern Mutual, huge, huge leader here in the City of Milwaukee, tons of philanthropy, tons of community leadership, doing some amazing things. We're going to talk about that today. Really excited to bring that topic to our audience. Also really excited to bring this particular guest, who I'll introduce in just a moment. We're going to talk about risk, but maybe not in the way that you would think about risk. We're going to get into some really interesting angles about how we should think about risk, how risk can even be a strategic advantage for an organization. And we're going to talk about the world of audit as well, which is a world that can kind of scare people away. Sometimes nobody necessarily wants to be audited. We will demystify that a little bit with today's guest as well, someone who I'm really, really excited to have on board with me. He's not only a great community leader, an amazing corporate leader, but he's a great friend as well. I've known ABIM for quite a number of years. ABIM coluoli is the Chief Audit Executive for Northwestern Mutual and ABIM, this is so awesome to have you in the

Abim Kolawole: 1:15

studio. Matt, absolutely. Thank you so much for the opportunity to be on your podcast. It's such a wonderful pleasure. I've been looking forward to this opportunity and really applaud all the things that you've been

Matt Kirchner: 1:25

doing. Well. Thank you. It's going to be great. I love your career journey, which is like, it kind of feels like every three or four years, we connect, and not only do you have, like, a different role at Northwestern Mutual but it's like a 90 degree turn. It feels like, anyway, you've done so many great things. They've all been promotions. They're all taking on increasing responsibility and so on. But talk about that career journey, and how do you end up being Chief Audit Executive of a huge company like Northwestern

Abim Kolawole: 1:48

Mutual? Yeah, no, absolutely. Thanks so much, man for that question. I would say my career has just been a privilege, a tremendous honor to have the opportunity to lead at a company like Northwestern Mutual. But it didn't just happen like that. It started with sort of humble beginnings. A little bit of my background, I grew up in Nigeria, of sort of humble parents, but there were a couple of foundational, fundamental things that really accounted for my success today, and I'll talk a little bit about that. I would say at the core of it was grit and resilience and recognition that opportunity is something you go get so fast forward, I started my career in New York in 1995 I had the opportunity to be a staff attorney at the SEC the Securities and Exchange Commission, a flagship federal agency regulating securities markets. But that story actually connected to I remember I was a young kid sitting on the couch watching the movie Wall Street, yeah, and Gecko gut. And get exactly and somewhere at the end, somebody walked in and said, Hey, I'm from the SEC. And I was thinking, Wall Street. What the heck is this the SEC? Fast forward to 1995 I'm stepping into the into the building at number seven Wall Street Center. And that was the beginning of my career. I had the opportunity to spend three years there. They moved into a couple of law firms as a transactional lawyer, great background, and then had an opportunity to move to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to work for this great financial services company. What year was that? That was 2003 in March of 2003 after practicing in New York for that period of time, Milwaukee is a great community company. Is a great company, proceeded to spend 11 years in the law department doing transaction securities, transactional work. And then, you know, I embarked on what I call personal disruption, which was, again, this sort of opportunity, you know, given to you at North estimator to be the best of who you can be. And that led me to a couple of operational roles. You know, over a couple of years innovation, I had the opportunity to work in client experience. And that has culminated into my current role, being the Chief Audit Executive. So it's been a bit of a long and stored career. But like I said, personal disruption and grit and resilience is at the core of what's propelled me well,

Matt Kirchner: 3:50

and I love the fact that you start with grit and resilience. You and I first met, I think, through our shared love of cycling. That's right initially, and we talk about that actually a little bit more recently, more often, here on The TechEd Podcast, but grit and resilience as important in cycling as they are in life without question. So I just want to connect a dot, because you went really quickly from these humble beginnings in Nigeria to working at the SEC. There's got to be a story there as well. What can you tell us about starting out in this amazing family in Nigeria and finding your way to the SEC here in the United States?

Abim Kolawole: 4:20

Yeah. So actually, I had gone to law school in Nigeria, which is an undergraduate degree, unlike here, where it's a graduate degree, right? And I knew I wanted to do something sort of the corporate, transactional kind of field, sure, in Nigeria was not as developed as perhaps it is now. And so I, you know, again, that movie was quite inspirational for me, right? And in connecting the dots, you know, I said to myself, hey, where can I find the opportunity for full fulfillment? And somehow, I just had this bullseye on continuing my legal education. So I went back to law school again. Here, got a JD. Did it twice, essentially, but was really laser focused on how I could build the chassis that enables me to do. A variety of things. And I think the critical thinking, the written skills, verbal communication skills influence and skills are all phenomenal traits. For sure, it really helps you.

Matt Kirchner: 5:09

Yeah, they help you, indeed. And you start to think about, first of all, it's so interesting that you bring up the movie Wall Street, which was in a we it's a weird way, because it was inspirational to me, and it doesn't. I mean, in the end, the protagonist ends up being Charlie Sheen, who kind of rages against the machine created by Gordon Gekko and all of the, I guess, all of the nefarious things that were going on in terms of influences, stock market and insider trading. One of my lines that I still use from time to time is Blue Horse, who loves anacod steel, which is the in that email. So not even knowing you were going to bring that up here, I was a freshman in business school, actually, when that movie came on, and I remember going to see that movie with my roommate at the time, and now still my best friend, Jeff Sherman, and we were both like, wow, this is a this is just amazing. And even though they kind of made in a good way, right? Because insider trading is a horrible thing, you know, they made the antagonists, the business people. It still, in a way, inspired me toward maybe doing that on a legit basis, and took a much different route than than you did to Wall Street. I, you know, I went into, into manufacturing and business, but in the same way, totally, totally inspired me. So it's just fascinating that we were both inspired in some ways, by exactly the same movie, and we'll link that movie, or at least I'll link to it up in the show notes for anybody. That's interested in in checking that out. So amazing career journey, really cool career journey. Found yourself in this little gem of Milwaukee. You're the Chief Audit Executive for this just incredible behemoth of a company, incredibly great company, Northwestern Mutual. You've got that word audit in your title. I was actually an auditor, a bank auditor for a number of years earlier. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And everybody thinks I'm an engineer. I actually started on the audit, accounting and finance side of business. People want to associate that word with innovation, but yet, when you and I have talked about this role, you actually see it as a role related to innovation. So touch on that. How can we reframe the whole idea of what an audit is for our audience, yeah?

Abim Kolawole: 7:01

So maybe I would start just talking a little bit about, for me, the context of audit, yeah. And it actually connects to what we're talking about a little bit earlier on, just in the context of the movie Wall Street. At the core of part of what I was attracted to the movie, and ultimately, the beginning of my career was around this notion of trust, trust and integrity in the securities markets is something that I was privileged to be a part of. Fast forward to audit. At the core of what I do is really to assure trust, confidence and integrity for our clients in the company of Northwestern Mutual, and audit is a phenomenal function that helps to play a role in that trust, confidence and integrity. So I just want to kind of level set in terms of what winning looks like at the end of the day, is that the clients continue to have trust in us, because that's that's the most important currency, that's what we stand for at the end of the day, that we can keep our promises

Matt Kirchner: 7:52

absolutely clients. And I'm just before you go on, and I want to make sure you do just a quick observation. This was something I learned from a mentor of mine years and years ago when it comes to audit when it comes to being able to have trust in financial markets. And we were talking about some of the still some of the same geopolitical things that we deal with today on the economic and financial side. And I was commenting on a specific country and some of the things that they were doing. And do we have to worry about the Americas in the United States position as a financial leader here on the globe. And his answer was, never underestimate the value of secure markets. And he said, we have something here in the US that most people don't recognize, which is that we have regulation, we have security, we have trust in our markets. We have people who, when they buy a security, whether that's a stock or a bond or a derivative or whatever it is, recognize that there's a system in place for making sure that that value is maintained, at least from a regulatory standpoint, making sure people are following by the rules, which is just a, you know, 20 years later, that lesson for me, coming back to exactly what you just said, trust and integrity in markets, which I never really thought about that as a in terms of, you know, an audit rule, but It makes complete sense

Abim Kolawole: 9:01

to me, absolutely. I think what you said completely underscores this. So at the core, like I said, you know, it's about trust, confidence and integrity. And when you think about innovation, for me, I feel like innovation is the jet fuel that enables you to be able to do that in space, you know, in a scalable way. So let me just break that down a little bit. At the core, there are four things that are connected to the purpose of internal audit. I would say the ability to deliver objective assurance, which assurance essentially is confidence. Second is to provide advice to the business in terms of what they can do better based on your observations. The third is unique insights that you may bring because you have the opportunity unfettered access to data, to be able to explore and examine the company holistically, and the last is foresight, trending, what might go wrong? How do you continue to create that assurance that trust and integrity, and when you talked about sort of the larger, kind of macro thing it's about, couldn't. Controls and standards, controls and standards and a structural rule of law to bring all those things to bear. So we have to think very innovatively as a mechanism like said, to be able to deliver on that, on those four things that I mentioned, we recognize that part of innovation is in terms of people, right how you really up skill use people and train them on critical capabilities, data and analytics, the ability to take large data sets and derive unique insights through how you analyze the data that enables you to be able to, like, look for the needle in the hay stock about what might happen. And, of course, technology, your tech capabilities, all those things that capabilities that exist essentially a means to the end we've talked about the end trust, confidence and integrity, for sure, and so innovation is critical. It may seem like it's not the sexiest of things to deploy an internal audit, but my stakeholders, the audit committee and the senior leadership team, the clients, all those people, the external regulators, all those stakeholders, want to make sure that you're leveraging every capability you can to really deeply understand the company and to create the kind of confidence that everyone

Matt Kirchner: 11:06

needs. That's a really fascinating answer. You know, I serve on a few orders of magnitude smaller scale. On I actually chair the audit committee of manufacturing company here in Wisconsin. And one of the things that has been interesting for me to watch is just how the evolution of it in my day of being an auditor, we gave some advice, but it was really around assurance, right? It was about, you know, here's my income statement, here's my balance sheet, go through the numbers, make sure that we can rely on those numbers, right? And we did all kinds of testing and sampling and, you know, and it was really at the end, you were writing an opinion that said, yeah, these financial statements are produced in compliance or in association with standards of the gap, right? And that was 99% of the job. And yeah, there might be a few things on the end and on a management consulting side, as I hear you talk about audit today. Yes, that is no less important, right? We need to have a function that says we can rely on whatever data is coming from, wherever it's coming from, that's really, really important. But when you talk about the second item that you talked about, which is advising the company, you talk about the fourth item that you talked about, which is looking at trends in the data and looking at trends in markets, those aren't things that people would traditionally associate with audit, but it's really that's where, in some ways, where the innovation is taking place. Is that fair

Abim Kolawole: 12:20

to say absolutely, you know, and just to take a step back again, because I am not the most traditional auditor. I just described my background. But

Matt Kirchner: 12:28

what the most traditional anything? You're mad.

Abim Kolawole: 12:31

But what I love about this, because we're beginning to talk about some like just key fundamental leadership skill sets, right? I would expect that any leader has to continue to think about whether you're running a business, whether you're running the function, thinking outside of the box and thinking innovatively to drive a value. And that's no different from internal audit. So your points are absolutely well taken. And you know most people will say you never leave a place the same way you found it. Internal Audit happens to be a great function, and I have to really think about the unlocks that enables us to deliver value. Because, to your point again, I mean, I think you started by saying, hey, you know, most people are not really looking forward to the audit, but I'm trying to flip the narrative through this innovative lens about think about how we might add value. You are placing bets every single day, and you want to make sure that your bets actually yield fruit. Come help me understand my priorities and leverage your innovative capabilities to tell me what are my watch points. How can I actually accelerate the priorities or the, you know, or some of my own strategy to be able to achieve, like I said, you know, the the outcomes you're looking for. So I'm very, very passionate about innovation, very passionate about leadership. Innovation is a competency within overall leadership, but also equally passionate about the role of internal audit in the

Matt Kirchner: 13:51

assurance, yeah, which is, I mean, you're opening my eyes to what it can be. So here's, here's a question that occurred to me, you're leading a team people, obviously, and so you've got, you're working with those people to maybe reframe their perception or their paradigm around what the function of audit is. You have a huge organization like Northwest mutual how many total employees just to put in? We have about 8500 Yeah, so 8500 folks that are in that organization that that you're necessarily interacting with every one of them every day, but you're interacting with divisional leaders and, you know, other senior executives and so on, how much of the job of parent changing that paradigm is helping your team understand that they have to think differently about their role, and how much of it is working with the entire organization to say, hey, we're not just here to look at your data and tell somebody else whether or not it's accurate. We've got all this other value we can add. How do you break that down?

Abim Kolawole: 14:40

It's a great question, and again, I would answer it by underscoring the role of a leader. There's a particular string here that's around leadership the first thing I had to do. So what's the problem to be solved? As an example, the problem to be solved is enabling the enterprise, whatever the enterprise, to see, internal audit among other risk partners. Are the true strategic partner and enabler. That's a problem to be solved. To solve that, you have to think innovatively. And what we had to do, what I had to do, was have a vision. We have a vision called Vision 2028 and the vision 2028 and you build a strategy. So we had a three pronged strategy that ties into so that you're not just like developing like ad hoc initiatives, everything is centered, grounded and rooted in a strategy. And to your point, the first was around elevating the audit experience for all stakeholders, from my team members to the auditees to the audit committee of the board to the senior leadership team. How should they be thinking? How do they think differently about the brand and the perception of internal audit and the tons of initiatives that have to tie to that. The second key strategic outcome was around operational effectiveness and agility, and that's where data and analytics and things like the oil that makes you do your job better comes in. And the third was the fundamental rails around talent and culture upskilling your people so that they're more you do those three things very well, and what you just asked in terms of changing the brand perception begins to happen. People begin to think of you differently, see you differently. You'll be more efficient. You'll be more effective. You're helping to de risk certain areas. People lean on you more, right? Because they begin to truly perceive the value. So I just wanted to frame that again, from a leadership standpoint, there's got to be the vision, the strategy, and then you start seeing the value that you deliver.

Matt Kirchner: 16:29

And it's like anything else, whether I'm serving a customer in a business, whether I'm a teacher serving a student, as soon as you can start to show some of those changes and show where you're adding value, all of a sudden it flips from those people are just here to audit to I need to go find that guy, because he can help me improve doing what I'm doing, whatever my responsibility is in the organization. I know you know all of these ideas and beliefs that you have around leadership, around culture, around strategy, to your earlier point. You know you would think if somebody said, Hey, you got a Chief Audit Executive from a major company coming in to do a podcast, I would just assume immediately that that person studied accounting, and they went to work for one of the now big three, you know, accounting firms. And then you know, whatever that that was their path, right? And in your case, you know, you come at it, as you mentioned earlier, from the legal perspective, and with it, with a background in law. How does that influence the way that you do your job? How does it influence the way that your team maybe thinks about you in that role? And were there any hurdles to get over? Kind of going from, you know, okay, I've got this different background, and now I'm taking on this, this responsibility.

Abim Kolawole: 17:36

No, it's a great question to your point. It's not, it's not intuitive to many people, for instance, like, oh, you know, you expect to have a CPA. But I think at the core, what one has to think about is, what are the skills for success of somebody in this role? Because at the core, you're not blocking and tackling and grinding and doing audits as the Chief Audit Executive, right? You have somebody in the trenches, yeah, of course. So to me, really, I would frame the greatest skill sets as strategic influence and leadership. I am in the persuasion business, in the due diligence business, in the sense making kind of business. And those skill sets heavily derived from my prior roles, particularly in legal and even in operational. I understand operations. I understand controls a first line accountability. You're able to really sense, make you empathetic to the business, right? You're able to sit down with the business leader and understand, but on the other hand, you recognize that the way you frame things, why this is an issue, what the risk severity is, has to make sense and resonate right away, sure. And so the culmination of the legal skill sets and what I've done before, I'm not going to say, made it easy, right? But so much more transferable when you think about that kind of delivery mechanism. So people often know, oh, so are you an accountant? Are you a CP? And, you know, it's like the you know? And so I've been trying to bring my team along also by saying, and actually, one of the key things we're working on is, I believe the auditor of the future has a superpower, and the superpower is the ability to really communicate and influence and break down complex information into simple, digestible things that move somebody to action.

Matt Kirchner: 19:18

Love it, yep. So the first thing, I think, is that we should do a quiz. We should have done a quiz with the audience and said, we have two people in a room. One of them is a Chief Audit Executive of one of the largest companies in Wisconsin, this huge household name. The other one is a education technology executive, runs several ed tech companies and is a podcast host. Which of the two of those is a CPA? And most of them probably wouldn't have guessed that it was me, but actually I would have been the correct answer. You would have been the correct answer. But as you're talking about that, there are a couple more things of BIM that occur to me. I spent time working in county government for a number of years. Then I was in public accounting, then I ran an RFID. Company for improve. I stepped in as controller and ended up running that business. And then I ran a manufacturing company, spin off of Rockwell Automation. Then I spent time running another private equity back manufacturing business. Now I'm in ed tech, and everybody's like, you know, how in the world do you jump from, yeah, from one to one to one to one? And my answer has always been, they're all the same. I mean, the technology and the products and the customers are different. But what makes the businesses successful? Businesses successful, which is culture, talent, treating people well, building a reputation, finding ways to innovate, finding the blue sky in the space that you're in. In other words, do something that nobody else is doing. So you create your own market. I know you know that, but making sure the audience does as well. Those are the things, at least for me, that was like the rest of it is, you know, the product and the technology. You got plenty of people around you to figure that out. That's the importance of having having an amazing team. So speaking of that technology, and learning technology and leveraging it, you know, you talk about technology being a quote, an accelerant, right? So it's literally, I love that word accelerate for a whole bunch of reasons. When you think about that it's an accelerant, but you've also said only if it's delivered safely. So help me understand what you mean by that? What? How is technology an accelerant, but only if you're delivering it in a safe fashion?

Abim Kolawole: 21:10

Yeah. So two quick points on that, technology, obviously is a capability, and I've always expected that tech partners or third party vendors really need to understand the applicability of technology in the context of what you're trying to do. Essentially business enabling technology. And once you dial it in right, like, hey, if we leverage this tech capability, these are the outcomes that you're more likely to achieve on this timeline. So it becomes an accelerant, but sometimes people do that without really making sure that. This is when I say safe like fit for purpose, and you don't have to take steps back because you didn't kick the ties around a couple of things. So I have with my team try to be as close as possible, whether it's software delivery life cycle or whatever the capability maybe, even third parties to make sure that we think about the impact like security as an example is a critical everybody can relate to security and integrity of that particularly if that capability is going to ingest real, confidential or proprietary data, you might be as safe and secure. So the security of tech capability is just using that example is critical, because when it doesn't work, that's the time when you tend to lose the greatest the currency we're talking about. Imagine if there's a breach and your clients are exposed, or the data is exposed just because maybe you didn't kick the ties appropriately or make sure you harden it. It could really detract from tech accelerating your

Matt Kirchner: 22:38

business, for sure, well, and detract from reputation, and especially in a, you know, an organization like yours, where the what was, it was the trust integrity, and yet another was a C confidence in the middle of that. And I mean, especially in that case, right? I mean, where your the trust that your clients have in your organization is really, that's the core of your value, right? I mean, that's what they're, quote, buying us. That's what, that's why they do business with an organization in northwestern like Northwestern Mutual. And there's certainly direct harm that can be done if security is breached, and then the reputational harm that can follow from that is just absolutely, you know, can absolutely crush an organization. So that's why it's really, really important. And it's not as simple as saying, Hey, we're not going to upload someone's financial information to an open version of chat. GPT. I mean, it goes way, way further than that, of really thinking through on the front end, all of the implications of we're engaging in new technology. We're bringing new technology on board. What are all the different aspects of risk? Is that a formal process? Or how do you how do you go through

Abim Kolawole: 23:34

that? It is somewhat formal, but obviously it's something we continue to dial and when I say it is somewhat formal, there needs to be an operating rhythm, or sort of operating model rather that facilitates that. So it starts with business technology partners, understanding exactly what their points of alignment in terms of the capability. Then it requires the leaders again. That's why this is a leadership thing, to take a step back and think, what are the other interdependencies? Who else is within the ecosystem that we need to assure and create the confidence, whether it's legal, whether it's compliance, whether it's risk, the right partners need to be at the table like sort of a SWAT team, because if not done at that point, you run ahead and you deliver the capability and oops, something is wrong. But it really fundamentally, again, it's leadership behavior to recognize those interdependencies and make sure it's working right from the ground floor. And that's something I'm very proud of, that we do a great job at Northwestern Mutual. But again, it's just a real strong leadership competency that's needed for any business.

Matt Kirchner: 24:36

And it's amazing how often you bring up this idea of leadership, and how much of it comes back to certainly leadership as a noun and as a verb, right? I mean leadership in terms of the leadership team, the senior leadership team of the organization. But also, how are we going about and actively leading migration to new technologies, and doing that in a way that we're mitigating and minimizing, if not eliminating, risk? And then we start thinking about this whole idea of you. Anytime we're talking about risk, it feels like we're on the defensive, right? I mean, we're busy kind of thinking through, how do I prevent something bad from happening, and whether that's, you know, workers comp insurance, whether it's property and casualty insurance, whether it's health insurance, whether it's finding other areas of risk in our business and mitigating those, that's defense, right? You've got a whole theory about using risk offensively and actually using it to drive value and to improve your organization. Talk about

Abim Kolawole: 25:28

that. Yeah, great points again, two points that I have, or maybe three perspectives. The first is there's still a behavior and operating rhythm aspect of it that I think is number one, and that's for the business, thinking about whatever the initiative is, inviting the risk partners to the table, because risk as a strategic enabler is what I continue to say, hey, help us understand what we might not be seeing as a starting point right here, where we're placing our bets, the vision, the strategy for the business. Then risk partners like myself helping to point out things that we may have seen in the past from prior audits, is a second step. But the third step really is and organizations need to mature around defining your risk appetite, okay, risk tolerance and understanding what the watermark is when you're outside on the line or below your risk. And that's where you really begin to with all the things I talked about. You can understand that, wow, I am within appetite. Maybe I may be able to lean in a little bit more, because you helped me design the key risk indicators that now tells me if I'm within appetite, if I'm clearly outside of appetite, I can go on the offense I need to, or maybe I can. It just depends. Right eyes wide open. Yep. So there's an aspect of risk tolerance and risk appetite, and also a framework for risk acceptance, because it does cost money sometimes to sort of shore up, and sometimes you might just say, hey, you know what? Eyes wide open, we actually going to tolerate this risk for us, it depends on what the severity of the risk. Right? You know, you can never do it in perpetuity. You have the right conversations, but at least you know management of business is doing this. Eyes wide open. So again, risk tolerance, risk appetite, risk acceptance, bringing the right parties to the table as strategic enablers, having those conversations, all those things working very well, enables the business to say, Wow, thank you so much. Actually, we can lean in a little bit more here based on these guardrails that we've put in place. In the absence of that. To your point, the perception continues to be that you're just defense, and to a certain extent, sometimes you're just the party that says no, right, as opposed to

Matt Kirchner: 27:33

enabling, Yep, absolutely. That was when I was leading an accounting team. This goes back years and years ago. That was my whole thesis, for better or for worse was that we're not going to be the organization or the part of the company that stands in the way of progress. We're going to be here to facilitate it. We're going to make sure that we're doing it responsibly and honestly, and we're going to hold ourselves accountable, but we're not going to be the roadblock that prevents the organization from moving forward. You know, I think as you were talking about risk tolerance and appetite for risk, I think you make some great points, and it's really that answer isn't the same for every organization. And I'll tell you a story where I learned that, not even the hard way, every once in a while, we have people that kind of set us straight in the conversation. And I was, I was in a in a meeting, and it was without going into too many details. It was an organization where we were advising a large client on basically a business endeavor. And I was like, myth, this is my company. I would make this decision tomorrow. We would just go and somebody was like, You know what? That's fine for you to say that, but you've got 1000s of shareholders on the other side of this relationship in this company that are counting on us to make really, really good decisions. And if you're doing that with your own money, and you're making that decision, and you're the one that's going to live or die by that decision, that's fine, but this is totally different. We're here responsible. This isn't our company. We're here, you know, protecting the investment and really being the caretaker for this incredible value. And it's a totally different way of looking at risk. And so I think part of what I took away from that last answer, which was eloquent, as can be expected, was that risk and risk and risk tolerance is different for every organization. We have to be intentional about that. We have to think about that. You know, I was also thinking about, you can correct me if I'm wrong. But does our mitigation of risk and really being thoughtful and careful about it? Does that become a value proposition to customers sometimes too? And I'm thinking about, we do in one of our ed tech companies, a lot of E learning work, and we actually picked up several years ago, one of our partners picked up their entire they were all on site service, on prem servers that were running an entire e learning library for customers. And one of the things that that organization did with our support was pick that whole thing up and put it in the cloud. And in that case, they partnered with AWS and lots of options, but that was one they chose, and the whole idea was, now it's a value proposition for customers. We're mitigating this risk. For you, here's how we're doing it, as a way of tightening that relationship. And I've got to believe that. In fact, I know that's got to Don't tell me, don't say anything that you can't but that's got to be a huge part of how Northwestern Mutual thinks about. De risking whatever it is for your clients is that it's one more reason for folks to do business with you.

Abim Kolawole: 30:05

Yeah. You know, at the core, Matt, we are the policyholders company. We have policyholders, and we have clients, and we exist for the benefit of our policyholders. Principle of mutuality, which basically means that we have to keep the company in fighting shape for generations, right? We have this notion of a multi generational compact that we're making decisions on a long term basis so the company can be around. That is probably the greatest, most resounding example of why we need to think about how to maximize policyholder benefit, but also keep the company in fighting shape and risk. And the lens we have from a risk perspective, is a great way of thinking about it. And I just so love that, that everyone is looking for decades, looking ahead decades, and saying, if we don't do the right thing today, this company will not be there for the next 167, plus years. So risk is fundamental in creating value for the policyholders. But that's not to say that the points we're making earlier on, that we recognize that sometimes you might be able to you should lean in, because, you know, you're also creating value by like, entering into new frontiers of things that present risk. And so there's an aspect of the offense, I would say it's sort of an and the offense and the defense at the end of the day, like encapsulate what we talked about policyholder value and keeping the company in fighting shape for the long term. But just wanted to double click on the prior conversation. Those things always require that operating rhythm about bringing your risk partners or other sort of people within the ecosystem to bear, because if you don't, you're going to overlook what you don't know and just run ahead, yep and deliver on things that may come back to bite

Matt Kirchner: 31:44

you as we're having this conversation, I'm reflecting on comments that were made to me by actually two different fortune 500 CEOs, the first one being Tom linebarger, who, at the time was the Chairman and CEO of Cummins. And he talked about he was just maniacal about this. And I met him through a close, close friend of mine. Then he had this big job, right? Cummins is a huge company. I don't know how many 10s of billions of dollars of revenue they were at the time. This goes back probably five or so years. And he said, I'm not the chairman and CEO of Cummins. He said, I am a steward of this incredible asset for the benefit of Yeah, that was the way he looked at it. He's like, this company's been around before me. It's going to be around after me. I'm a steward of this, and that's my job, and I've got an obligation to your point, make sure that you know whether it's 167 years or whatever that period of time is that, how long Northwestern Mutual has been around? Yeah, about 167 I mean, that's crazy. I mean, awesome. Obviously you're doing things right, and so you're this incredible steward. The other one is Todd wanick, who's the CEO of Ashley Furniture industries and Todd talks about having to what he says is rebirth your company every seven years. He's like, we live in a changing world, and what worked 10 years ago isn't going to work 10 years from now, we have to revision the future of our organization every seven years, and that requires leaning in and being willing to take a certain amount of risk. So I think, you know, just kind of putting those two together. I'm assuming you kind of see it somewhat the same way.

Abim Kolawole: 33:03

No question, no question. It's so far so good. It's proven to be a great approach to complement the business model and ensure success of the multi year strategy and all that just sort of, you know, goes back to the first point we made about, sort of value, in terms of value delivery and preserving this multi generational comeback we

Matt Kirchner: 33:21

talked about, absolutely. So it's value and relevance both, right? And so you know, one of the things you're serving, you know, policyholders, I'm assuming, you know, I'm more more familiar, frankly, with kind of the typical corporate model where we have a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders, your fiduciary responsibility, and, in other words, your your obligation to act solely in their interest, or at least, you know, largely in their interest, never against our interest. To your policyholders and you also have clients, it's important to remain relevant to both of those groups of people, right? Yes. And so talk about how you're leveraging technology to make sure that you're continually relevant to both stakeholders, your policyholders, to whom you have is fiduciary responsibility, and your clients whom you're serving.

Abim Kolawole: 33:58

Yeah, no, it's a very good question for a company like I said, that's been around for 167, plus years, you have to be able to remain relevant to grow, and growth is very important. And a couple of dimensions where technology plays a role. A key aspect of that business model is having trusted advisors, financial advisors, who are on the front lines of engaging their clients and their specific tools that they may use in understanding you, your hopes, ones, dreams and aspirations, and being able to sort of model what your financial future may look like. That's the first set of frontier of relevance. And there's specific technology capabilities that we leverage the other technology capabilities that makes the life of an advisor easier, so to speak, so they can do their jobs and essentially scale it so a you need the right tech capabilities to attract the right people into the system, to make them, when I say them, the financial advisors, as efficient and as effective as possible. That is really being able to know your clients. So third is the technology capabilities to tailor a personalized plan that's really dialed in to fulfill your hopes and aspirations. And then third, or a critical part, is how we then service those clients over a lifetime, the technology capabilities that we need to have within the home office, whether it's in the servicing or underwriting or claims processing, or name, any of the operational area, all those things combined, continues to create relevance for our clients. They see us as relevant because we're in the business of helping, showing them how we're fulfilling the hope streams and aspirations and hopefully making it easy for advisors to be able to do their jobs a lot easier and have the insight. So the landscape of tech capability is never over, right or not, right? It continues. But relevance is something that is of paramount importance. In fact, a CEO, new CEO,

Unknown: 35:52

Tim Garand, I was just with him a couple weeks ago. Is that right? Okay, so you shared with you some of these focus areas. We just

Matt Kirchner: 35:58

chatted briefly. We were actually at a charity event for a local, local school here in Milwaukee, and had a chance Mark Mone, who's the now almost to be former chancellor of UW University of Wisconsin. Milwaukee, introduced him and I so super, super person, yeah,

Abim Kolawole: 36:12

very, very, just a great visionary. We're really enjoying having him leading the company. And he spoke to four key focus areas, okay? And one of them was around, growing our relevance. We have to continue to think about relevance and like, say it again, there's people, there's processes, but technology plays a huge role in how we can be relevant to our clients.

Matt Kirchner: 36:31

For sure, you know, I It occurs to me, I was reading the study not too long ago. I think it was delight. But don't quote me on that. Talked about Gen Z and what's important to Gen Z in a career. And it said 80% of Gen Z want to work in tech, which I thought was really interesting. I spent a lot of my time in manufacturing, right? 80% I spent a lot of my time in manufacturing. We don't think about, like, if somebody's going to think about, all right, what's a tech career? Well, that's going to work for SpaceX, or that's going to Tesla, or that's going to Facebook or or meadow, and whatever we call it. Now that's what they think of when it comes to tech. They don't think of manufacturing. They probably don't think of finance and insurance either, right? And Investment Management. But in truth, those are tech careers. And as you were talking about attracting advisors and attracting talent and being relevant, so much of that is telling the story about how tech is transforming the world that you're in, right? And, I mean, am I right that the careers at Northwestern Mutual, in a lot of ways, are tech careers, or there's plenty of them

Abim Kolawole: 37:27

available. Yeah. I mean, there are lots of opportunities, lots of positions, jobs in Northwestern Mutual that obviously are tech related. No question. But I much prefer that our tech partners employees really attuned to the business what needs to be delivered, because tech in itself has a standalone capability. To me is, I mean, it does the job, but how do you know if you're delivering on the outcomes? Right? So there's certainly lots and lots of opportunities, and not system. You should be able to do that. But at the end of the day, for me, the most important thing is, are people in better financial shape? Do they go to sleep at night? Do they have peace of mind? That's the outcome for people. Peace of mind. Can they live their best lives now and then? Let's think about how tech can enable that. So I feel like needs to be a connected thing to maximize your success, as opposed to just thinking in terms of tech in search of the business

Matt Kirchner: 38:21

outcome, right? Yeah, exactly. A solution in search of a problem, right? Exactly. And we talk about, again, going back to my experience in manufacturing, a lot of folks, for a long time have been doing continuous or improvement or Kaizen events, yes. And we always talk about, to what end, right? It's great to do continuous improvement. What's the goal? Let's go doing kaizen. For the sake of doing Kaizen is a fool's errand. It's, let's pick a problem. Let's find a problem. Let's bring that to bear. To solve the problem. We're doing the same thing with industry 4.0 technology in manufacturing, which is, yeah, you can have smart sensors and devices on the edge. You can be feeding all this data up to the cloud. You can use AI to find patterns. And what problem are you trying to solve correct and you know, the same thing is true for technology, which is, in the end, you have a value proposition for your clients and your policyholders. That is, it's not how much tech can we load into this business and brag about it's, how are we leveraging that to the end of improving people's lives and question lines. So I really like the way

Abim Kolawole: 39:16

you can, yeah, there was some sort of, you know, and people have different perspectives, sure, debates or discussions about whether nothing special is a tech company or a tech driven company or tech enabled company, whatever the case may be, the truth is somewhere in there, I'd like to believe it's a tech enabled company, because we talked about tech and the need to build those capabilities to really accelerate, you know, optimize, the business outcomes that you want. So tech is fundamental to how we create relevance.

Matt Kirchner: 39:44

Yep, for sure. And I love the way you answered that question, and I think that's a really great way to think about the the other thing I want us to think about here for a moment a BIM is the education sector, and I know just from being in and around the orbit of Northwestern Mutual how involved you are in. In education, certainly great things going on in partnership with organizations like my alma mater, Marquette, University, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, I know you have a ton of endeavors around k 12 education, I'd be interested in this. And as much as we have a lot of educators that listen to this podcast, what do you think they can learn from Northwestern Mutual when it comes to anything related to risk or technology and morphing that client experience. What could they learn from the work that you're doing?

Abim Kolawole: 40:27

Yes, I just very much appreciate the role that Northwich mutual plays in terms of its footprint within the Milwaukee and Wisconsin area. I mean, these things are very, very important taking a step back. I think we need to rethink, or maybe folks are thinking about that just in terms of what I would call transforming the student experience. And it all starts with design thinking. What does that student experience look like, 345, years from now? Because in the absence of design thinking, like, you know, which is more contextual, like, what is the role of student? How are they going to learn? And how does tech enable that. I think it fundamentally starts from there, building that vision, and then what must happen? I analogize that to kind of what we did with the advisor experience or client experience. We need to write, get into the heads of the clients and understand what transforming that experience looks like. So I would say a key takeaway would be, maybe those studies have been done already in terms of the design thinking, like, what's the problem to be solved, you know? And then what are the capabilities that need to be built? And even maybe the teacher experience? How do we rethink and transform the teacher experience? And then, where does technology play a role? But you have to understand what outcomes you're looking for now, based on that design thinking,

Matt Kirchner: 41:38

absolutely I wasn't expecting the last question to be such a perfect tee up for the one that you just answered, but the truth of the matter is that it's really the same thing. It's let's not do education for the sake of education. What's the end? What are we after? And then, how do we align all of our resources to produce that empathy? That's a great way of thinking about education, and great way of thinking about the work that you're doing at Northwestern Mutual. Got two final questions for you, and one and the ones that we ask of them every one of our guests here on The TechEd Podcast, and we always, we get great answers, and we, I love the different variety of answers. I know this first one I'm gonna I'm fascinated by your answer already, and you haven't even started answering the question. But your education experience obviously much different from mine, much different from a lot of the folks that are listening to this podcast. Growing up in Nigeria, going to law school there as an undergrad degree, and then coming here to the US and continuing that education, you've got some really interesting perspectives on education as a result of that. Is there something that you believe about education that would surprise our listeners?

Abim Kolawole: 42:38

How do we enable the best critical thinking, in my opinion, is something I'm really passionate about. I do this for my kids. I mean, there all kinds of capabilities to the engine, AI, but not losing that critical thinking, because that's the continuum, even after leaving school, that carries through and with my department, with my auditors, I continue to talk about the value of critical thinking. So I would emphasize so maybe that's not a surprise, necessarily, but what do we need to do to really continue to drive that critical thinking, that depth of curiosity is what I would say is, that's a thread that I've carried through my entire education

Matt Kirchner: 43:16

Absolutely. And I agree with you, and I will tell you that, you know, we talk a lot here on the podcast about how education is going to be disrupted, already is being and will be continued at an increasing pace. And one of the things I'm a huge believer of is exactly what you talk about. What does education need to look like when a student can get the answer to any question in seconds using Gen AI or just even going to Google? And so we really have to rethink that, that it's not necessarily about rote memorization. It's not about the sage on the stage just, you know, imparting wisdom to the students, which was necessary in the days of Aristotle, because that was our only way to convey information. We got all kinds of ways to convey information now. So we're believers that you know what's going to happen is that, in the past, you went to school to kind of learn and gain knowledge, and you went to Home to practice. That's going to flip and flip, yeah, and we're going to we're gonna, we're gonna stay, and we'll still go to school to learn, but we can learn in time. We can, like, there's bazillions of ways. You got LinkedIn learning. You've got all kinds of E learning platforms. You have YouTube, you have tick tock. You can, I mean, you can consume information any way that you want. Anything that you want to learn at any time is available to you, if you're, you know, at least in in the technological world, there's, there's just no question about that. But then when we go to school, how do we apply what we learned? How do we solve problems? How do we troubleshoot? How do we think critically? I'm also just to add on, as somebody who was produced by a liberal arts education, and I went to Marquette, and there were some things I think you miss out and not having some of the hands on. At least back then, I know that's changed, but certainly some of the huge benefits I had, we were required to take nine credits in Theo and nine credits in philosophy and in addition to the business classes and everything else I was taking in the number of history credits as well as we started thinking about the world of AI, in human responsibility in the world of AI, there was just an article in the Wall Street Journal this morning about the risks. Of just letting AI go without any guardrails around it, we have to really think about what it means to be truly human and what it means to be in the position in the world that we're in, so that if we are engaging in AI and creating like agents, which are different than just software programs, agents think for themselves. They make their own decisions. We got to make sure that we're understanding our role in AI and all

Abim Kolawole: 45:23

that. Yeah, I just, I just feel like people are gonna go on to different walks of life, and let's just take business leaders. Yes, you can leverage AI. You can leverage Gen AI. But how do we leverage the power of the unlock that comes from the ability to process information exactly you're standing you're delivering a presentation, you're in a boardroom, or whatever the case may be, you don't have your computer to be able to like, query for Gen, AI, what do you do in that moment in terms of the ability to process information, process things, you know, just and that's why I feel like that is probably the most fundamental thing. I call it sort of unlocking the ability to just process information.

Matt Kirchner: 46:00

I think it's totally true. Really a super, super important skill, whether you're in a boardroom, whether you're making a presentation, whether you're sitting in a podcast studio, not knowing what question is coming in necessarily, and being able to process that question and answer it in a way that's interesting to the audience, that's honest and also doesn't cross any regulatory boundaries and so on that I know you have to comply with in a role like yours. One final question for vim colawale, as we wrap up our time on The TechEd Podcast, I love this one as well. I know you as a 15 year old, your life, you know, was probably different than mine was as a 15 year old, probably different than everybody's. But you talk about your humble beginnings, you talk about grit and resilience. You talk about being, or think about being, a 15 year old young man who had any idea you'd have this incredible career ahead of you if you could go back and give that 15 year old the BIM cola wole, any piece of advice? What would it

Abim Kolawole: 46:47

be? There'll be two things. But in particular, the first will be no fear. No fear. Just lean in and do it. You know, I am who I am today, but there were moments in my career where sometimes you just don't lean into, you don't grab onto that opportunity, because you're afraid of failing, right? So I would say to myself, no fear. And the second would be, travel more, yeah, all right,

Matt Kirchner: 47:14

yeah. That's great advice. Seeing the world really, really important. And then the other part of it is just not being afraid, recognizing, you know, just dive in and you just have a life has a way of putting the right resources in front of you at the right time that you'll figure it out, but you're gonna take a little bit of risk, calculated risk, but you have to take a little bit of risk. So glad that I took the risk in reaching out to you the year or two ago. BIM just to start putting together this time together, as our audience now knows you have just this incredible background that your journey to the role, that you have, your philosophy around risk mitigation, audit, your role in an amazing company like Northwestern Mutual so so thankful that you took the time to be with us.

Abim Kolawole: 47:54

Absolutely want to say thank you also, Matt and to your audience members for listening to me. I hope that the items I shared today were impactful in some way, shape or form, but also wanted to say thank you for all the things you do. This is a wonderful opportunity to be able to engage the community, engage your audience members leave some great nuggets that people can take and, you know, actionable things, my thing is just wonderful what you and your team does

Matt Kirchner: 48:16

well, I appreciate that. And when we're on a journey to secure the American Dream for the next generation of STEM and workforce talent like we are. It's amazing the great people such as yourself that say, Wow, I want to be a part of that. I'm willing to take some time out of an incredibly busy schedule and help send that message. Because it's not our message, it's the message of our guests, and it's it's the folks in the audience that listen to that message and then go out and work the magic in the classrooms and the labs across America. So super, super happy that we had this time together with a BIM cola wole. I knew he was going to be an amazing, awesome guest, and he certainly was. We covered a lot of stuff. We'll link some stuff in the show notes. You know, we have the best show notes in the business. We'll put some information about Northwestern Mutual and about a BIM in there. Check those out when you're done. Then go see us on social. You can find us all over. We're on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Tiktok, wherever you consume your social media, you will find The TechEd Podcast. By the way, those show notes we'll put at TechEd podcast.com/ I'll make it easy on the audience. We'll say a BIM. So TechEd podcast.com/a B, I m is where you'll find the show notes. You will find me right back here in the studio of The TechEd Podcast next week. Hope you'll join us. Then thanks for being with us this week. I'm Matt Kirkner, and this is The TechEd Podcast. You.