25 Preemptive Transformation In an industry racked by wrenching change, Western Union faces new and nontraditional competition from all sides. The 165-year-old company's strategy: Disrupt yourself before you get disrupted. Western Union has always been on the forefront of technological innovation. The company launched in 1851 with the invention of the telegraph. Now, 165 years later, we are digitally transforming ourselves and devising new and easier ways for our customers to move money around the world. I have two jobs. First and foremost, I am head of global operations, which delivers our entire customer experience. The other portion of my job is leading our technology organization, combining both the traditional CIO and CTO roles. And I joined the company four years ago at a time when those two aspects of the company began to converge, enabling the company to bring new capabilities to the market. This dual role allows me to see the end-to-end process and come up with ways to make it better and drive a lot of efficiency. We have a long and strong history of retail brick-and-mortar infrastructure and an agent network that provides services to customers in half a million locations in 200 countries around the globe. In the last few years, we've been investing heavily in the omni-channel experience as our consumer and business customers interact with us in new ways, from our mobile app to remote kiosks to online bill payment. We're looking at artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate more of what we do. We're investing in analytical tools that can identify risk