Stacey Caywood (Wolters Kluwer): ‘AI gives us new energy’

Your career at Wolters Kluwer now spans over thirty years. What attracted you back then, and what motivates you to stay to this day?
‘Given all the changes over the past year, both for the company and for me personally, I have thought a lot about that question. What initially drew me was the incredibly deep and specialized legal and medical expertise of the teams, combined with the technological capabilities that were emerging to go online and make that knowledge digitally accessible. I found that really cool and exciting. I think I am still here for more or less the same reason. We are in the midst of a new technological wave that will enable us to deliver even more value. Our clients do work where making mistakes is not an option. Banks, accountants, and lawyers have to deal with compliance requirements. In the medical field, it is about saving lives. It involves significant decisions with high stakes. Our teams understand the needs of these professionals, and our technology seamlessly integrates with their daily work by providing the right information at the right time. The feeling that we can make a difference gives me great personal satisfaction and motivates me time and again to work with my colleagues to bring every new transformation to a successful conclusion for clients, employees, and shareholders.’

Speaking of employees. You are seen as a champion for women in the tech sector. At Wolters Kluwer, all positions are more or less tech-oriented, and at the same time, you have a good overall gender balance. The supervisory board consists of forty-four percent men and fifty-six percent women. You and CFO Kevin Entricken make up the executive board, and women are also well represented at other levels of the company. In 2024, Wolters Kluwer was even named one of America’s best employers for women by Forbes. What can other companies learn from you?
‘At least, that as executive and supervisory board, you must remain actively committed to all forms of diversity, including for example, nationality, age, cultural background, and expertise. When it comes to gender, we always ensure that there are enough women in our talent pool and cast a wide net when compiling lists of potential candidates. It is also crucial to set clear goals and continuously assess whether you are achieving them.
Another important aspect is the Wolters Kluwer Women’s Network, which we established a few years ago to strengthen the community of women and their allies. It helps us promote inclusion and improve the employee experience for women. Moreover, it acts as a self-fulfilling prophecy: where women in the tech sector network with one another, that often attracts other women as well. And of course, it matters that a woman has been at the helm of the organization for years and that there are many women in several senior positions too. Role models are important.’

Prior to becoming CEO, you successively led the Legal & Regulatory and Health divisions and are praised by others for how you grew these divisions through digital innovation and strategic acquisitions. What opportunities do you see for Wolters Kluwer in the current artificial intelligence-driven transformation?
‘We see how AI tools and capabilities can help us take customer service to an even higher level. That has given us new energy and is bringing us even closer together as a team. At the same time, we realize that we need to act quickly and collaborate differently to make the most of this moment. Already, seventy percent of our revenue from digital solutions is enabled by AI. We are excited about what we have launched and how it is embraced by customers. Focusing on collaboration with customers has been our motto for years, but we will need to accelerate our effort. To this end, we are setting up small, smart teams comprising a subject matter expert, a product manager, the head of data science, and tech experts who continuously test with the customer to ensure we are on the right track. And we do this through rapid feedback cycles. The team builds a small piece of software, shows it to the customer immediately, learns what works and what does not, and adjusts it right away to develop, at lightning speed, software that can be directly integrated into workflows and procedures. We have been working for years in a way I would call agile, but now it is becoming a ‘team of teams,’ as one of my colleagues calls it. So, as a project grows, we do not add more people to a team—because that can cause delays—but we simply add another small team alongside it.’

You sound enthusiastic, but in the market, AI is also seen as a threat to Wolters Kluwer’s revenue model. The current share price is suffering because of that. How do you try to reassure the market and the shareholders?
‘I think the software and knowledge sector in general is facing uncertainty regarding the consequences of AI. For us, this is not the first technological transition. In the past, we have been able to successfully monetize such transitions, and I have every confidence that we will do so again. In that regard, it sometimes seems as if we are living in two completely different worlds: internally enormous enthusiasm, and externally uncertainty.
My response is to explain that, for example, at accounting firms, our revenue model is tied to the total scope of and the added value delivered to clients, and therefore not to the number of hours or users. I also point out that reliability is one of the things that truly sets us apart from our competitors. While standard AI models still occasionally make mistakes or hallucinate, we combine our own verified data with the oversight of our human experts. In addition, our specialists develop specific evaluation models and weighting factors that continuously monitor the AI ​​results. This ensures a deterministic process: we know exactly what the outcome is and rule out incorrect conclusions. The combination of superior data and human expertise protects and strengthens our revenue model, which is evidenced by the increasing demand for our products.
Furthermore, in our communication, we must continue to convey that our solutions are actually being embraced and implemented. For instance, in the healthcare sector, we have launched an AI tool to support clinical decision-making. Our goal is for seventy percent of our medical clients to actually use this tool on a daily basis, and we are on track to achieve this. Another example is the recent acquisition of the Berlin-based legal AI startup Libra. This allows us to link our unique European content in ten countries to an AI workflow tool that enables legal professionals to draft, review, and edit contracts more quickly. Such facts and figures are very important to let the market know that the solutions we offer are also commercially successful.’

Your appointment represents continuity rather than a radical turnaround. How will you nevertheless leave your mark on the strategy for the coming years?
‘The three pillars of the strategy remain firmly in place. The change lies mainly in how we execute that strategy. As a team, we have placed new emphases there. For the first pillar—scaling up our expert solutions—we will always do so with an AI focus. The second pillar, accelerating growth, is crucial for us. This year and next, the emphasis there is on forming smart partnerships. Sometimes this means integrating our software into the large systems the client already has. A great example of this, in my view, is ambient listening: AI software that uses a microphone to listen in live in the background to the conversation between the doctor and the patient, then filters out the medical essentials, types it directly into the medical record, and prepares  prescriptions or follow-up steps. This saves doctors hours of administrative work.
Because we have integrated this software with Microsoft Dragon Copilot and Abridge, among others, the doctor can simply continue working in their familiar system. The third pillar of our strategy is the further development of our capabilities. In doing so, we want to focus on strengthening our commercial clout. Specifically, the sales teams and sales channels will receive better processes, data, and support to serve customers even better.’

You are setting clear priorities regarding what you want to do. How do you want to approach that?
‘In the fourth quarter of last year, we updated our core values as a management team, and later through interactive workshops in larger groups. These values are now being put into practice and guide how we want to collaborate and achieve our goals. For example, ‘focus on customer success’ has changed to ‘drive customer value,’ and we have added the word ‘fast’ to the value ‘aim high and deliver,’ because speed, in this day, has become essential. The value ‘make it better’ has changed to ‘prioritize what matters.’ We cannot do everything, so let us make sure that we focus on the aspects that will set us apart in the future.
Ultimately, of course, it is about having a discussion about those values: what do they actually mean? How do we put them into practice? What are we really going to do differently from now on? The fourth value – ‘win as a team’ – has in fact remained the same, but our message is that your team is no longer – or at least no longer only – your own department, but the entire chain working together to help the customer. We are now in the phase where we have provided the new values, along with a toolkit, to the managers so that they can get to work on them with their teams. For us, this is a great way to hold on to the essence of our values ​​while simultaneously implementing the changes needed to drive the transition.’

If we fast forward to when you step down as CEO: what do you hope your legacy will be?
‘I am very proud of our high customer satisfaction scores. In the medical division, for example, we have been achieving a verified Net Promoter Score of eighty-three for years, and we are also performing strongly across the entire group. If we maintain these high scores by creating demonstrable added value for our customers with our new AI solutions, that is the greatest reward for me. The key to this success lies with our employees. I am truly enthusiastic about the speed with which our teams are integrating AI capabilities into their own workflows. By deploying developer tools such as GitHub and TechTool on a large scale, we are drastically increasing our internal efficiency and can deliver solutions, which make their work easier, to our customers much faster. In this way, employee productivity and customer satisfaction reinforce each other.’

This interview was published in Management Scope 06 2026.