As the CIO of Jabil, May Yap leads IT operations and digital transformation across more than 100 sites by using technology as a tool to solve business problems and connect the company's 140,000 employees.
Julie Colwell
Principal Strategist
Workday
With a tenure of more than 10 years at Jabil and a background as a corporate strategy consultant, May Yap approaches the CIO role from a business-first perspective. She sees her team of approximately 1,000 people as the glue for the organization, a partner that understands how every function works. For May, technology is not the end goal, but a tool to solve business problems and connect a large, complex organization.
May has embedded her team so deeply into the organization that they function as a key part of the enterprise. "It's not a support function. It's a partner to the business," she says, noting they engage directly with potential customers to understand their challenges and design solutions. This unconventional approach, where IT actively partners with business and operations, ensures that the technology Jabil builds is directly tied to customer needs, revenue, and operational efficiency.
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As one of the earliest adopters of generative AI in the manufacturing space, Jabil has been proactive in exploring its potential. This pioneering spirit is also reflected in the company’s innovation and quality-focused ethos in its vision to be the most technologically advanced and trusted manufacturing solutions provider in the world. In addition to leveraging partner technologies, her team has developed its own Jabil agent to orchestrate tasks and integrate systems.
"We have collective ownership of our own AI evolution."
Three years ago, she helped establish a Data and AI Council, a cross-functional group of senior leaders who collectively own and brainstorm AI initiatives for the organization. "It's a breakthrough because now we have collective ownership of our own AI evolution," she explains.
The council focuses on solving specific business challenges. One key initiative is creating a "brain for the organization" by capturing the knowledge of experienced engineers. "We collect all this tacit knowledge from our top engineers and put it into an explicit knowledge bank," May says. The result is a chatbot that junior engineers can query, and use to preserve expertise and accelerate problem-solving.
Jabil is also deploying AI agents to handle manual jobs like processing emails and consolidating research. The company is also participating in an early pilot to create a system of record with Workday for agents.
Success isn't measured by traditional ROI alone. May has her team track two additional key metrics:
Speed to deliver: The time from the initial idea to a deployed solution.
"Everything that we do needs to put people at the heart of that transformation."
May understands that change can be unsettling. "Transformation by itself can be a scary word," she acknowledges, stressing that "everything that we do needs to put people at the heart of that transformation."
She often shares a story about her son, who once wanted to be a YouTuber. Her initial concern gave way to a realization about how naturally the next generation integrates technology into their lives. This perspective shapes her view on AI in the workplace.
"We have to coexist with the machines," she says. "It's not about machines replacing us." The goal is to augment human capability, freeing people from mundane tasks to focus on more strategic work.
Outside of her role at Jabil, May finds balance in her creative pursuits. She is an avid painter and a certified museum guide, where she introduces visitors to Asian civilization and art. She enjoys exercising her "right brain," seeing these passions as a vital complement to the analytical demands of her day job. This blend of creative and strategic thinking gives her a unique, holistic perspective on leadership and problem-solving.
With a clear-eyed view of AI's risks, May has put a robust framework in place to ensure responsible use. The Data and AI Council has established strict policies that every employee must acknowledge through training in Workday. For example, loading company data into public AI models is strictly forbidden. Jabil's legal and cybersecurity teams actively supervise and audit AI algorithms to ensure they are secure and function as intended.
Looking ahead, May is focused on the opportunity to reimagine how traditional manufacturing will evolve. Her leadership—a practical mix of strategic vision, cross-functional collaboration, and a deep respect for the human element—is preparing Jabil to meet the challenges of the future.
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