While Adam Rymer’s promotion to CFO at Chipotle might have been accelerated—his planned January 2025 appointment was moved up to October 2024—working a wide variety of roles across the company and having an important mentor prepared him to jump right in, he told CFO Brew.

With 15 years’ experience at Chipotle, he’s touched most aspects of the business at some point. His Chipotle tenure “started at one of our most entry-level positions in our support centers,” he said, and he even “spent a few years in HR,” acknowledging that his journey has “been a little more unique than some career paths, especially in finance.”

For all the variety of his career, “my first role in finance” at the fast-casual chain is the one “I look back at the most.” In that post, Rymer worked in “what we call now field finance,” essentially a corporate finance role. “I spent time in our restaurants three or four days a week,” talking to general managers and field leaders about what was (or wasn’t) working.

Even now, he says those two years were “probably the most impactful time” when it came to learning how to connect the dots between personal relationships, the world of finance, and the front lines of the business itself.

Jack math. Former Chipotle CFO Jack Hartung gave Rymer’s early Chipotle career an important boost. 

For more on how Rymer prepared for his first day as CFO, click here.—NP

Intel longtimer Pat Gelsinger rejoined the company as CEO in 2021 with ambitious plans to build factories that would help it compete with the likes of Samsung and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. But after a year that saw Intel’s stock dip by 52%, the board decided it was time for new leadership.

Gelsinger was given the choice to retire or be forced out, sources told Bloomberg. He chose the former option and stepped down on Dec. 1. CFO David Zinsner and EVP Michelle Johnston Holtaus will serve as co-CEOs until the board appoints a new chief executive.

Intel, once the country’s leading semiconductor manufacturer, stumbled after poor decisions made by Gelsinger’s predecessors, including passing on buying Nvidia and failing to secure a contract to make chips for Apple smartphones, CNBC reported.

Gelsinger attempted to turn things around by investing in new plants, including a $28 billion “mega fab” in Ohio that President Biden touted as a “field of dreams.” Gelsinger also secured around $20 billion in government grants and loans, much of it through the CHIPS and Science Act.

But the company’s still fallen far behind its competitors, particularly in the area of AI. “We don’t believe that Intel has the scale to pursue leading-edge manufacturing on its own given Intel’s absence from AI,” Chris Caso of Wolfe Research told Bloomberg.

Click here to continue reading.—CV

A company wanting to try out the latest AI-powered generator of transcripts, grammar checks, chatbot answers, and marketing materials better also be generating some questions for its AI vendor, experts tell IT Brew.

Questions like: Where is that data being transferred and stored? And for how long?

“Is the company that you’re sending the data to training on your data in any way? If so: What data? How? Are they anonymizing that data before they train on it? Or do you have the option to tailor any of the sort of controls that you have in place for AI?” Whitney Merrill, head of global privacy and data protection officer at Asana, said during November’s IT Brew event “Building an AI-ready data governance strategy.”

We asked other IT pros what questions to consider before buying a third-party AI tool.

Responses have been edited for length and clarity.

Dennis Perpetua, global CTO of digital workplace services and experience officer, vice president, and distinguished engineer, Kyndryl: If you’re making an investment in a vertical AI solution, will it feed experiences across your enterprise in other domains? If you’re bringing something in for an HR purpose, would that then integrate with other AI solutions that maybe an employee is working on?

Click here to keep reading IT Brew’s story on investing in AI.—BH