We are excited to welcome Ruth Yomtoubian as our newest Venture Partner at Silicon Foundry. As former Vice President of Global Innovation at VSP Vision, and with leadership experience at AT&T Foundry and Before Alpha, Ruth brings deep expertise in bridging startup agility with corporate innovation. Her strong background in business and global management will provide invaluable insights to advance Silicon Foundry’s mission of transforming innovation and venture investing.
Tanya Privé had the pleasure to sit down with Ruth to explore her career journey, her lessons from leading corporate innovation, and her perspective on where innovation is headed next.
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TANYA PRIVÉ: Today, I’m thrilled to introduce someone who has been shaping the way large organizations think about innovation. Ruth has led transformative work at AT&T, VSP Vision, and as a consultant for global clients across the Americas. She’s known for blending hands-on entrepreneurial grit with the ability to translate between startups and Fortune 500s. Today, we’ll dig into her journey, her perspective on the future of innovation, and her newest chapter here at Silicon Foundry. Ruth, welcome!
RUTH YOMTOUBIAN: Thanks so much, Tanya! I’m excited to be here.
TANYA: Let’s start at the beginning. How did your educational background in business and entrepreneurship set you up for success as a leader in innovation?
RUTH: At Tulane for graduate school, I studied business and global management while New Orleans was rebuilding after Katrina. Even legacy operators had to think like entrepreneurs, and that taught me innovation starts with getting in the trenches. For instance, talking to customers, trying the product, and living the experience. I’ve carried that into my work at AT&T, VSP, and with clients in places like Mexico City and São Paulo, where teams were often literally stuck in glass towers, disconnected from their markets.
I also learned the importance of being a translator: bridging startups and corporates, or legacy industries and tech. Innovation isn’t about tossing ideas over the fence or poking holes; it’s about creating a fully supported vision people can get behind. And really, the best innovators don’t just chase the future. They connect it to the past. You can’t reimagine what’s next without understanding the pieces you’re building from.
TANYA: What resonates to me is your view of innovation as translation: bridging startups and corporates, legacy industries and emerging tech. And I’m sure that perspective shaped your work in many organizations. At AT&T, for instance, you were in the Foundry when AI proof-of-concepts often failed. How did you navigate that?
RUTH: The AT&T Foundry was part of that first wave of corporate innovation in the 2010s, when big companies started planting teams in Silicon Valley to plug into the venture and startup ecosystem. It wasn’t just about gathering intel. Rather, it was about leaning in, seeing what was being built on the network, figuring out where AT&T could play next, and who we should be partnering with on the bleeding edge.
What I really took away from that experience is that the goal of a proof of concept isn’t to be right, it’s to learn and spark something new. If you focus on the learnings and the momentum a pilot can create, then the real value comes from how you translate that back into the larger organization, in the form of storytelling, hand-offs, and the way you connect those early sparks to teams who can run with them.
TANYA: Fast-forward to today, I’m curious to hear what trends you are most excited about in corporate innovation?
RUTH: I’m seeing a real shift in corporate innovation right now. Teams are moving beyond traditional R&D and instead aligning with strategy, whether that’s sales enablement, venture work, or building the right outside partnerships. They’re leaner, but also more connected, working with hubs, experts, even fractional AI talent.
To me, the biggest skill for 2025 and beyond is managing ambiguity. Innovation teams are becoming strategic hubs that help companies navigate uncertainty and anticipate customer needs, especially with so much consolidation happening across industries. And of course, AI is reshaping everything. Most enterprise AI funding still comes from innovation budgets, which means these teams are experimenting, and they’re becoming strategic coordinators accelerating adoption across the business. At VSP, for example, I launched an AI Studio for exactly that reason. Finally, I’d say that executive leadership has to be more hands-on in shaping the direction of innovation. With AI lowering the barriers, smaller players can move as fast as big enterprises. Innovation teams are often the ones spotting those emerging winners early and bringing them to the table.
TANYA: Speaking of AI, what role do you see it playing in corporate innovation moving forward?
RUTH: I think of AI as both a force in change and a force in function. Whenever something this big comes along, it gives us a chance to step back and really look at the full picture again. What’s interesting is that corporate innovation teams have been tracking and translating AI from the start. Limited talent in this space would want to work with strategists on real applications that transform the business, and innovation teams can be that bridge. They’re good at cutting through the noise, are well positioned to manage ROI and synthesize learnings, and have the mindset to ensure AI isn’t just a tech play but a true strategic enabler.
And what’s exciting is how AI speeds everything up. You can prototype, demo, and iterate faster than ever, which changes how organizations move from idea to impact.
Take vision care as an example. AI-powered retinal scans—Oculomics— enables early disease detection through biomarkers, opening up new models like ‘Healthcare from the Eye.’ The industry is in the midst of reimagining the structures and value of vision care, as Oculomics starts to impact referral paths, shared care or interoperability between primary care and optical practices. That’s innovation in action: using storytelling, testing, and partnerships to bring a technology to life in a way that improves outcomes for patients and makes sense for providers.
TANYA: That’s such a great example of how innovation isn’t just about the tech itself, but about how it’s applied and translated into real value. And I know you’ve also done a lot of myth-busting around innovation. What’s one misconception you run into most often?
RUTH: One myth is that innovation is about being right. It’s not. It’s actually about learning, catalyzing, and contextualizing.
Innovation also isn’t a free-for-all of post-its and brainstorming; it requires a structured process, storytelling and plenty of patience. Without that, teams risk hype over impact. Ideas can be easily dismissed because conditions aren’t perfect today. Rigorous frameworks can guide the journey and uncover directional feedback.
As a result, when innovation teams, especially corporate ventures, operate on pet projects and unstructured startup introductions, lack methodologies, and don’t state implications, it can be more than costly; the lack of rigor can be an alibi for not investing in startups going forward.
TANYA: That’s such an important distinction. Innovation isn’t about hype, it’s about discipline and impact. Building on that, I’d love to shift gears a bit. Looking back on your journey, what accomplishments stand out to you as moments that really brought that philosophy to life?
RUTH: One that I’m especially proud of was building the innovation team at VSP Vision. The company was at a crossroads, caught between models and struggling to organize around its goals. I had to restructure the team, realign talent, and really listen to leadership and stakeholders across a very complex industry. It wasn’t easy, but we created an agile innovation center that’s now recognized as one of the top groups driving change in vision care, consistently delivering new concepts and partnerships to leadership.
Another milestone goes back to my time in field and network operations at AT&T. I was asked to tackle a complex long-standing problem: tracking milestones (totaling numerous data points) across vendors to flag at risk network sites. To do so, I completely reset the process. That overhaul ended up saving over half a billion dollars and became a model for other regions. More importantly, my boss trusted me to lead the team through it, which shaped how I lead today: giving people clarity, resources, and the space to do the best work of their careers.
TANYA: As you step into your role here at Silicon Foundry, what’s next?
RUTH: What excites me most is helping our members cut through the noise. There’s a lot of what I call faux innovation, or buzzwords without substance. Real impact comes from structure and rhythm, what I think of as a flywheel: consistently pulling in ideas, refining them, and pushing out solutions in a way that executives can trust.
That’s also what I love about Silicon Foundry because of their focus on grounding leaders in real experiences, immersing them in what’s actually happening in the market, and connecting them with the right people and ideas at the right time. I’ve seen how powerful that kind of immersion is, and it’s why I’m so excited to be here. My role is to help turn ‘We should do something’ into ‘Here’s what we’re doing.’ And I’m all in for that.
TANYA: Ruth, this has been such an energizing conversation. Thank you for sharing your journey, your insights, and your vision for the future of innovation.
RUTH: Thank you, Tanya. It’s been a pleasure!
