On this episode of Scouting For Growth, Sabine VdL welcomes Marinela Profi, Global Market Strategy Lead for AI, GenAI, and Agentic AI at SAS, for a sharp, grounded conversation on what’s actually happening in enterprise AI right now—and what leaders need to prepare for next. Together, they cut through the noise surrounding generative AI and focus on what comes after the chatbot era: agentic AI. If generative AI is the talented communicator in the room, agentic AI is the one who not only speaks—but takes action, executes workflows, and delivers outcomes. Marinela puts it simply: Generative AI talks. Agentic AI does. The episode begins by reframing a major misconception: LLMs alone don’t solve business problems. While generative AI chatbots are excellent at answering questions, summarizing content, and producing text, they typically stop at conversation. Business transformation, however, requires systems that can reason, make decisions, interact with data, follow rules, coordinate across tools, and carry tasks through to completion. That’s where agentic AI steps in—combining large language models with analytics, policies, data pipelines, governance frameworks, and real operational logic. Marinela explains that AI agents aren’t a futuristic fantasy—they’re a practical evolution of automation, made smarter through contextual understanding and orchestrated decision-making. To help business leaders and technical teams understand what “agent behavior” looks like in real life, she shares her 5-step lifecycle framework—a clear model for how agents operate end-to-end: Perception – sensing signals from users, systems, or environments Cognition – reasoning, interpreting context, and forming intent Decisioning – selecting the best course of action based on goals and constraints Action – executing tasks across workflows and tools Learning – improving over time through feedback and outcomes But the most important message in this episode isn’t just that agents are powerful—it’s that autonomy must be designed responsibly. Marinela emphasizes that the real leap forward for enterprises won’t come from more impressive demos. It will come from governance, because trust is becoming the true competitive advantage in AI. She forecasts that by 2026, governance boards will increasingly resemble digital oversight committees—not just approving AI deployments, but ensuring agents are safe, accountable, explainable, auditable, and continuously monitored. A critical insight: governance doesn’t end when an agent is launched. Performance and behavior must be monitored continuously, particularly as agents learn from human feedback loops. Marinela warns that learning mechanisms can’t be left unchecked—because allowing an agent to “self-update” in uncontrolled ways is not innovation, it’s operational risk wearing a futuristic costume. The conversation also tackles one of the biggest leadership questions emerging right now: How autonomous should an AI agent be? Marinela’s answer is refreshingly practical: most of the time, it depends on the risk and impact of the task. Low-risk activities may allow higher autonomy, while high-impact decisions demand constraints, oversight, and transparency. As she highlights throughout the episode, autonomy without accountability is a risk multiplier. Ultimately, this episode is a strategic guide for leaders who want to move beyond AI experimentation into reliable execution. The future isn’t just about faster answers—it’s about autonomous, governed intelligence that can explain what it’s doing, why it’s doing it, and who is responsible when it does. If your organization is wondering what comes after GenAI pilots, how to build AI trust at scale, or what enterprise AI will look like by 2026—this is the conversation to listen to. Because the winners in AI won’t be the ones with the flashi

Scouting for Growth

Sabine VanderLinden

Marinela Profi: Building the Trust Frontier or How Agentic AI Is Redefining Enterprise Decision-Making

DEC 18, 202545 MIN
Scouting for Growth

Marinela Profi: Building the Trust Frontier or How Agentic AI Is Redefining Enterprise Decision-Making

DEC 18, 202545 MIN

Description

On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Marinela Profi, Global Market Strategy Lead for AI, GenAI and Agentic AI at SAS, about the rise of agentic AI and how we will move from hype to real, reliable AI. In today’s episode, we’ll discuss: Why LLMs alone don’t solve business problems – and what does, how governance is becoming the new frontier of AI trust, and what leaders should expect by 2026, as enterprises shift from experiments to autonomous, explainable intelligence. KEY TAKEAWAYS A generative AI chatbot is really good and answering questions, generating text, or summarising content. But, it typically stops when it comes to conversation. On the other hand, an AI agent goes beyond that, it can take action, it has goals, memory, reasoning capabilities and can orchestrate multi-set workflows using a combination of not just large-language models but also rules, data and analytics. Generative AI talks, and agentic AI does. The 5-step lifecycle of an agent is a framework I put together to help me and my customers understand what an agent actually does step-by-step in practice. 1. Perception 2. Cognition 3. Decisioning 4. Action, and 5. Learning. Governance boards in 2026 will act more like digital oversight committees, they will ensure that agents aren’t just smart, but they are safe, explainable and accountable.  BEST MOMENTS  ‘Post action the agent learns from feedback from a human operative. It’s important to monitor the learning loops, you cannot allow the agent to “self-update” in ways that are uncontrolled.’  ‘How autonomous should an agent be? 90% of the time it depends on the risk and impact of the task.’ ‘Autonomy without accountability is a risk multiplier.’ ‘Governance doesn’t stop at deployment, performance must be continuously monitored.’ ABOUT THE GUEST Marinela Profi helps organizations move from AI hype to trusted impact. As Global Market Strategy Lead for AI, GenAI, and Agentic AI at SAS, she works with enterprises in financial services, healthcare, and government to build AI systems that don’t just act fast—but act responsibly. With an MBA and a Master’s in Statistics and AI, Marinela bridges two worlds: translating complex data science into clear business strategy. Her work focuses on how agentic AI—intelligent systems that perceive, reason, and act autonomously—can deliver governed, explainable decisions instead of black-box predictions. A frequent keynote speaker at international AI and analytics events, she shares insights on the evolution from generative to agentic AI and the new frontier of AI governance, trust, and human-AI collaboration. Marinela is also an Advisory Board Member for Wake Technical Community College’s Data Science Program, helping shape future-ready curricula that connect classroom learning with real-world AI innovation. ABOUT THE HOST Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet. If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights. And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at [email protected]