At McKinsey’s 2026 Women in Technology Conference, one theme surfaced repeatedly across conversations with enterprise leaders, founders, and AI innovators: The next generation of leadership will not be defined by technical expertise alone, but by understanding where AI creates real value and how to rewire operating models around it.
Few leaders embody that transition more than Julia Stewart. After spending nearly two decades leading Dine Brands Global and driving growth at some of America’s most iconic consumer brands, Stewart made a bold pivot into health tech by founding Alurx. A tech visionary, she’s building the company’s next-generation AI platform, Alura AI, a first-of-its-kind voice-activated wellness coach. At the conference, Stewart moderated a panel on “Architecting the AI-first organization,” exploring how CEOs and technology leaders can partner with start-ups and speed decision-making to scale impactful AI solutions across their organizations.
In this follow-up interview with Ann Carver, McKinsey partner and co-convener of the Women in Technology Conference, Stewart reflects on what large organizations still misunderstand about innovation and how operators need to become critical AI architects. She also shares why preventive wellness could be one of the most consequential applications of AI—reflecting McKinsey research that leveraging tech to foster healthy workplaces could spur up to $11.7 trillion in annual economic value.1
Ann Carver: You built and transformed some of the world’s largest consumer brands and then made a deliberate pivot into health tech. What gave you the conviction to move from public company CEO to founder?
Julia Stewart: What gives me conviction is not technology itself; it’s decades of operational experience listening to customers and team members in the trenches. When you run thousands of restaurants, you develop pattern recognition around human behavior. You see how stress, sleep deprivation, burnout, poor nutrition, lack of exercise, and mental fatigue affect performance, retention, healthcare costs, and ultimately business outcomes. And it is painfully obvious that our current healthcare systems are not solving the root causes of those problems.
What gives me conviction is not technology itself; it’s decades of operational experience listening to customers and team members in the trenches.
Your research shows that the opportunity related to employee health and well-being is massive and many companies already understand this. They just aren’t sure where to start. I agree that it’s the practical interventions, embedded into the natural flow of activity, that will deliver the most effective health and business outcomes.
At Alurx, we’re taking what I learned operating large-scale consumer businesses and applying it to preventive wellness, based on behavioral science. AI now gives us the ability to personalize guidance at scale in a way that simply wasn’t possible before. That’s why we’re building Alura AI to help individuals adopt healthier habits across all dimensions of wellness. We are starting with sleep, nutrition, stress management, and movement, which are the pillars of well-being and essential preventive care. Alura AI will not only personalize your own wellness program as a user, but also the corporate wellness program that you may want to implement for your workforce, thanks to a customized B2B application, the first of its kind.
Ann Carver: Why do you believe preventive wellness represents such a significant AI opportunity?
Julia Stewart: Because healthcare systems today are structurally designed to treat illness, not prevent it. AI provides the opportunity to change that equation and focus on preventive care, for daily well-being and longevity. For the first time, we can personalize preventive, science-backed wellness at scale while avoiding the traps of health “slop” on the internet. We can identify behavioral patterns earlier, encourage healthier habits daily, and help individuals make incremental improvements before problems become health crises or chronic conditions. We also track and measure progress through continuous feedback loops.
In short, Alura AI is designed to be your lifetime wellness coach. To be clear, it does not replace your medical specialist or therapist. But we are building what we believe is the first interactive wellness operating system, combining AI technology, behavioral science, and physician-curated expertise into one ecosystem that bridges healthcare and self-care for individual users and for enterprise.
The vision is simple: Wellness should not be a luxury. It should be accessible, personalized, and integrated into everyday life, both at home and at work. And from an enterprise perspective, the implications are significant: Burnout, disengagement, stress-related absenteeism, and rising healthcare costs are now strategic business issues that we can solve over time.
Ann Carver: You’ve operated on both sides, large public companies and start-ups. What do large organizations still get wrong with innovation?
Julia Stewart: Large organizations often approach innovation like a budgeting exercise instead of a learning process. In start-ups, you operate around hypotheses: test, learn, iterate, kill what doesn’t work, scale what does. Large enterprises tend to overindex on governance layers and committee approvals before enough learning has happened. Now AI is forcing organizations to compress decision cycles dramatically. The companies that will win are the ones willing to move from “pilot culture” to “capability culture.” Many organizations are experimenting with AI, but very few are redesigning their operating models to evolve with AI.
My advice to CEOs and HR leaders is simple: Prioritize AI projects that solve real operational pain points identified by the people closest to the work. Don’t start with technology. Start with the friction. The people in the trenches usually know exactly where productivity is breaking down, where burnout is happening, and where inefficiencies exist. AI should be solving those problems first.
My advice to CEOs and HR leaders is simple: Prioritize AI projects that solve real operational pain points identified by the people closest to the work. Don’t start with technology. Start with the friction.
Ann Carver: During the conference, there was also a lot of discussion about start-up speed versus enterprise complexity. What have you personally had to unlearn as a founder?
Julia Stewart: I had to unlearn the assumption that scale equals certainty. In large public companies, you often have decades of historical data, established operating systems, and layers of expertise. In a start-up, the business model and infrastructure are an evolving ecosystem. That requires a different mindset. You need people who are comfortable with ambiguity, adaptable to rapid change, fast learners committed to a strong mission. At Alurx, we’ve built our road map around flexibility and resilience. We know technology evolves quickly.
I also learned the importance of strategic partnerships. You don’t need to own every capability internally. Some of the most effective AI ecosystems are built through collaboration among domain experts, technologists, behavioral scientists, physicians, academics, and enterprise operators. Our advisers and tech team are making the difference for us at Alurx.
Ann Carver: Another topic that resonated strongly during the conference was leadership. How should leaders think differently about AI over the next decade?
Julia Stewart: The next generation of AI leadership will be less about having all the technical answers and more about having the judgment to ask the right questions. The best leaders will focus on a few key things: where AI creates value; how to align teams around purpose; how to build ethical guardrails; and how to create cultures that reward experimentation without losing accountability. That last one is particularly important, because when employees believe in the mission, they can better navigate uncertainty. They become more resilient, more collaborative, and more innovative. And with the pace of AI, resilience becomes one of the most valuable capabilities of all.
The next generation of AI leadership will be less about having all the technical answers and more about having the judgment to ask the right questions.
Ann Carver: What mindset shift would you ask every enterprise leader to make today?
Julia Stewart: Move from asking, “How do we use AI?” to asking, “What human problem are we trying to solve?” The organizations that succeed with AI won’t necessarily have the biggest budgets. They’ll be the ones that combine technology with deep operational insight, behavioral understanding, and a clear sense of purpose. That’s where sustainable innovation happens. And that’s where the future of enterprise leadership is heading.
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