In Episode 10 of Season 3 of The Risk Wheelhouse, hosts Ori Wellington and Sam Jones go deep into a case that should make every executive sit up straight: the June 2025 cyberattack on United Natural Foods Inc. (UNFI). As the primary distributor for Whole Foods, UNFI represents a critical node in the North American food supply chain—and when that node collapsed, the results were immediate and jarring: empty shelves, viral photos, panicked customers, and a $300 million hit to UNFI’s market value.

But this episode isn’t just about groceries. It’s a cautionary tale for every industry.

💥 When Optimization Becomes Fragility

What makes this case so revealing is how it exposes the illusion of resilience—a modern trap where over-optimized systems appear efficient on the surface, but are held together by a single vulnerable thread. UNFI’s downfall wasn’t a unique failure. It was a structural one, a feature—not a bug—of a model obsessed with just-in-time logistics and single-source efficiency. As Sam Jones bluntly puts it, “Concentration breeds collapse.”

Whether it’s a cloud provider, a claims processor, or an AI risk engine, the same brittleness exists across industries. And the blind spot? These dependencies are often invisible until it’s far too late.

When Automation Moves Fast—and Misses the Point

In this episode of The Risk Wheelhouse, Ori Wellington and Sam Jones expose the blind spot threatening today’s most advanced risk tech: isolation.

Autonomous IRM is no longer theory. AI platforms like Tuskira are already simulating threats and triggering real-time responses. But as this episode reveals, most operate in a vacuum—starved of strategic input from the top and assurance feedback from the bottom.

The result? High-speed automation chasing low-value noise.

When Risk Intelligence Is Just a Lie You Tell Yourself

In this episode of The Risk Wheelhouse, Ori Wellington and Sam Jones take listeners deep inside the boardroom drama, technology illusions, and costly consequences that define one of the most revealing chapters in risk history. Drawing from The Risk Ignored Part I, Chapter 4 by John A. Wheeler, they uncover how SunTrust’s billion-dollar implosion wasn’t just a financial disaster—it was a failure of architecture, mindset, and nerve.

And the kicker? The very tools sold to prevent this kind of catastrophe—first-generation GRC platforms—were part of the problem.

Why Integrated Risk Thinking (IRT) is the Strategic Superpower Your Business Has Been Missing

For organizations in today’s digital era, the biggest risk might not be what’s coming—but how you’re thinking.

Traditional risk management has always been reactive. It slices risk into categories—financial, operational, cybersecurity—and manages them in isolation. The result? Fragmented insights, missed signals, and a business strategy vulnerable to blind spots. Even Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) platforms, once hailed as the future, have largely become digital filing cabinets—useful, but far from transformative.

That’s where Integrated Risk Thinking (IRT) changes the game.

In Episode S3E6 of The Risk Wheelhouse Podcast, hosts Ori Wellington and Sam Jones unpack a revealing analysis by McKinsey & Company, highlighting critical weaknesses in traditional Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) frameworks. Despite significant investment, many organizations report disappointing results from legacy GRC approaches. Wellington and Jones discuss five systemic shortcomings identified by McKinsey that underscore why traditional GRC struggles in today’s complex, rapidly evolving business environment.

A minor tremor—or a market wake-up call?

In the latest episode of The Risk Wheelhouse, hosts Ori Wellington and Sam Jones break down a seemingly routine market fluctuation that revealed far more than expected. Season 3, Episode 5—The Workiva Sell-Off Reveals What’s Really Driving Today’s IRM Market—examines how the sudden drop in Workiva’s stock price, despite favorable earnings, exposed a deeper truth about the state of Integrated Risk Management (IRM) in 2025.

At first glance, the culprit seemed small: whispers of delays to the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and postponed sustainability regulations triggered investor unease. But beneath that reaction lies a profound shift in IRM market dynamics. No longer driven solely by product innovation, today’s IRM landscape is shaped equally by the volatility of regulatory timelines, geopolitical risk, and enterprise strategy.

Risk management is undergoing a revolutionary transformation, and businesses stuck in outdated approaches are increasingly vulnerable in today's complex landscape. This eye-opening deep dive examines the stark contrast between traditional and modern risk perspectives through the powerful analogy of "monocles versus smart glasses."

Drawing from insights shared by John Wheeler (Wheelhouse Advisors) and Andrea Elliott (ACI Worldwide) at the Mitratech Interact Conference 2025, we explore why the old compliance-focused, backward-looking approach is dangerously inadequate. Today's interconnected challenges demand a panoramic view that integrates both assurance (protection) and performance (strategy) perspectives.

The moment a baseball season begins, hope fills the air as teams dream of championship glory. But as any sports fan knows, talented players alone can't win championships—they need strong managers making smart calls and adjusting strategy in real-time. This powerful analogy perfectly captures what's often missing in corporate risk management today.

Many companies believe their Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) programs provide comprehensive protection against uncertainty. Yet in practice, these programs frequently amount to little more than documenting potential problems and checking compliance boxes—the equivalent of having a playbook without a coach actively managing the game. This fundamental gap between identifying risks and actively managing them represents the critical difference between traditional GRC approaches and the emerging discipline of Integrated Risk Management (IRM).

The relentless pace of change in today's business environment demands a radical rethinking of risk management. Gone are the days when risk could be viewed merely as a necessary evil or compliance hurdle—forward-thinking organizations are now recognizing it as a crucial lens for making better decisions and driving long-term value creation.

Drawing insights from the "Flip the Risk Conversation Forward" session at the 2025 Mitratech Interact Conference, we explore how businesses can navigate turbulence and emerge stronger by fundamentally transforming their approach to risk. John Wheeler's three-part framework—Flip, Adopt, Manage—offers a practical roadmap for organizations looking to evolve beyond siloed, reactive risk management toward a more integrated, proactive stance.

Welcome to Season 3 of The Risk Wheelhouse, where we’re turning up the heat on one of the most underappreciated yet mission-critical topics in risk management: Operational Risk. Why? Because in June, we’re releasing the highly anticipated 2025 IRM Navigator™ ORM Report, and it’s poised to reshape how the world thinks about organizational risk, resilience—and responsibility.

We kick off the season with a bang in Episode 1: Beyond the Box-Ticking—How Organizational Culture Drives Operational Risk. Hosts Ori Wellington and Sam Jones peel back the layers on one of today’s most dangerous blind spots: the cultural and behavioral failures quietly fueling massive operational breakdowns.

The AI revolution isn't coming—it's already here, transforming how organizations operate. But with tremendous power comes significant responsibility. How do forward-thinking companies harness AI's potential while protecting themselves from serious risks?

Risk isn’t just something to track—it’s something to actively manage. But too many businesses still rely on outdated, fragmented approaches that leave them exposed to cyber threats, compliance failures, and operational disruptions. In this episode of The Risk Wheelhouse, hosts Ori Wellington and Sam Jones unpack Integrated Risk Management (IRM) as a practical, technology-driven solution that’s helping organizations simplify, automate, and streamline risk management.