Mark Thornton is Vice President of the Infotainment Business Unit at Panasonic Automotive Systems America. He holds full P&L responsibility across American and Japanese OEM programs and also serves as VP of Engineering and VP of Program Management.

He also leads the company’s Digital Transformation (DX) program. He designed its DX architecture, coordinates the transformation across Panasonic Automotive’s global operations, and built the training curriculum behind it. He has personally led more than 1,200 employees through its four-day, hands-on workshop, teaching teams to redesign how they work and use AI tools to deploy business solutions quickly, with measurable ROI. The program started in engineering, where agentic AI is shortening development cycles and engineers now direct AI rather than doing each task themselves. It has since reached every part of the business, from HR, Legal and Finance to Purchasing, Sales and Factory Operations.

Mark began his career in military systems engineering in the UK defense sector and has worked in automotive embedded systems since 2000, covering everything from silicon and hardware architecture to software and program delivery. He speaks on AI adoption in engineering and across the enterprise. He also advises leadership teams on the organizational side of AI: building the momentum and continuous-improvement habits that turn pilots into lasting operational change.