Only 19% of CIOs at top U.S. companies are women, according to a recent report by Korn/Ferry International. Here are observations from six that have made an impact on the profession and their companies.
Jean Holley, CIO of supply chain logistics company Brambles, talked to Martha Heller recently about whether boards are appointing more CIOs than in the past: “From my experience, that question is irrelevant. Boards are appointing people with business experience in hot, transformative technologies, like IoT and cyber security. If you can demonstrate that experience, you'll be attractive to boards.”
A 29-year veteran of the company, Melanie Kalmar has recently been promoted to the position of CIO of Dow Chemical. She told Computer Weekly that a global SAP SOA system she implemented was a “foundation platform” that “will help enable Dow's new business models well into the future. Speed to market is a key competitive advantage in our industry.”
Intel has recently appointed Paula Tolliver as corporate vice president and CIO. She told CIO Journal that “with the maturing of cloud computing capabilities and more as-a-service offerings, the change we’ll see in the next three years is unprecedented.”
Sheila Jordan joined Symantec as senior vice president and CIO in February 2014 from Cisco Systems, and knows first-hand what it means to run an IT group for a technology company: “We are customer one for our products and services team at Symantec… We are giving them feedback to the products in near-real time,” she told CIO Journal.
Martha Poulter, CIO of Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, had to find a way to get employees to trust a new data-driven pricing system for hotel rooms. “It’s the change management inherent in having people adopt and embrace what the information is telling them, at times when they may not agree,” she told CIO Journal.
Kim Stevenson, CIO at Intel for the last five years, has recently been promoted to the position of COO for the Client and Internet of Things Businesses and Systems Architecture (CISA) Group. Stevenson transformed IT to make a direct impact on the business, using big data analytics to deliver “nearly $1B in incremental revenue and productivity gains for Intel in 2 years,” she told Peter High.
