Helen Yu
Founder and CEO, Tigon Advisory Corp; host of CXO Spice
Executive career in enterprise software
Helen Yu is a technology executive and entrepreneur with more than 20 years of experience scaling technology companies[1]. She has held senior executive positions at technology companies including Oracle, Adobe and Marketo[1]. Her publisher notes that her global customer success experience came from Oracle and Adobe[2].
She is founder and CEO of Tigon Advisory Corp[1][3]. BBN Times describes the firm as a CXO-as-a-service growth accelerator for organisations from start-ups to large enterprises[3]. Its website offers CXO, customer success, technology and cybersecurity services[4]. The firm's message to start-ups is that strategy-to-execution gaps separate where a company is from where it needs to be[4].
Yu sits on the boards of KeenFolks and Communications Engineering Company (CEC)[5]. She is also Vice Chair of the Global Cybersecurity Association[1].
Ascend Your Start-up
In May 2021 Made For Success Publishing released her book Ascend Your Start-up: Conquer the 5 Disconnects to Accelerate Growth[2]. The book draws on her 15 years of first-hand experience in tech start-ups[2]. It sets out five growth disconnects that hold start-ups back, and it poses 26 questions founders and CEOs can ask themselves in order to scale[2].
The book also covers turning an idea into a product, bringing the product to market and then scaling it[2]. Its narrative compares growing a start-up with a promise she made to her grandmother to climb Mount Everest[2].
The National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) states that the book has won three awards and is a Wall Street Journal bestseller[5]. Her own website lists the book's awards, including first place at the New York Book Festival and first place in the entrepreneurship and small business category of the American Book Festival[4].
Speaker and host of CXO Spice
Yu hosts the CXO Spice podcast[4][5]. NACD lists her among the Top 50 Women in Tech[5]. It also lists her as a speaker at SXSW, TiECon, Money20/20 and the FinTech Summit[5].
Her speaker agency lists keynote topics on cyber resilience, digital transformation, and the intersection of AI and customer experience[1]. Among its videos is a 2019 TiECon talk called Start-Ups, Cure Your Disconnects![1].
In a 2023 interview with expert.ai, she said that "AI is biased to begin with, so humans have to be in the loop to take that bias out of the data"[6]. In the same interview she gave an example from insurance: "AI doesn't know the regulatory requirements for insurance until you build that into your algorithm"[6].
Writing on agentic AI in 2026
Yu writes regularly for BBN Times, where her bio says she has collaborated with Intel, VMware, Salesforce, Cisco, Qualcomm, AT&T, IBM, Microsoft and Vodafone[3]. Many of her 2026 articles there cover AI agents in business[3].
In The Autonomous Service Workforce Is an Operating Model Shift, published in October 2026, she writes that the trade-off between customer experience and the cost of delivering it has begun to shift[3]. Her October 2026 piece The AI Ecosystem Advantage reports on NVIDIA GTC Berlin, including a conversation with Julie Linn Teigland, EY Global Vice Chair for Alliances and Ecosystems[3]. That article argues that the ability to connect capabilities is becoming a defining source of AI advantage[3]. Another October piece looks at how OneTrust brings an organisation's governance rules into AI decisions, starting from the point that every AI agent acting across enterprise systems exercises delegated authority[3].
Known for
- Founder and CEO of Tigon Advisory Corp
- Author of Ascend Your Start-up (2021)
- Host of CXO Spice
- Vice Chair of the Global Cybersecurity Association
Sources
- Speaker Agency: Helen Yu biography and keynote topics — checked 8 Nov 2026
- Made For Success Publishing: Ascend Your Start-up — checked 8 Nov 2026
- BBN Times: Helen Yu author page and 2026 articles — checked 8 Nov 2026
- Tigon Advisory Corp — checked 8 Nov 2026
- NACD: Helen Yu speaker bio — checked 8 Nov 2026
- expert.ai: Setting the stage for AI success with Helen Yu, December 2023 — checked 8 Nov 2026