1/2/18
By Peter High, published on Forbes
Linda Jojo joined United Airlines as Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer in November 2014. Between then and mid-2017, a primary area of focus was improving the company’s mobile tools and apps for customers and employees. As the value she contributed increasingly was customer-facing, the justification of expanding her responsibilities was made. In the middle of 2017, she was promoted to EVP of Technology and Chief Digital Officer.
In addition to her responsibility for United’s technology platforms and analytics, Jojo took over strategy, development and deployment of United’s e-commerce, mobile app and commercial web platforms. With these expanded responsibilities, she and her team have profoundly impacted both top and bottom line of the airline.
Jojo has also joined the small but growing club of CIOs who have joined public boards, having joined the board of $31 billion revenue utility services holding company Exelon in September of 2015. She is a member of the Compensation & Leadership Development Committee and Finance & Risk Committee. She covers all of the above and more in this interview.
Peter High: Since June of 2017, you have been the Executive Vice President of Technology and Chief Digital Officer of United Airlines. This follows your more than two and a half years as the Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer of United. How do these new titles change your purview?
Linda Jojo: I am responsible for technology as I had been as CIO. Additionally, I am also responsible for our digital strategy and ownership of our digital channels such as our website, our apps, and our digital distribution.
High: What are some aspects of your digital strategy?
Jojo: As in every industry, digital is pervasive throughout the organization and throughout the airline. A big component is arming and empowering our own employees with real-time information about the customer so that we can serve them better. It is about harnessing the massive amount of operational data we have to improve the reliability of our airline, to get more involved and more predictive in our maintenance activities, and to get more sophisticated in our revenue management process.
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12/18/17
Thaddeus Arroyo has a remarkable journey in technology. He began his career in telecommunications, eventually became an IT executive at Sabre, and then returned to telecommunications as the Chief Information Officer of Cingular Wireless. Via acquisition, he would later join AT&T and become the company’s global CIO.
As he describes it, Arroyo was fortunate to be exposed to growth-oriented, innovative, and transformative opportunities. This included time as the President of Technology Development at AT&T. In that role, Arroyo was responsible for the development of AT&T’s products and services, digital experiences for customers, and systems supporting the operations across AT&T business segments, networks, and services. He notes that, “These experiences equipped me with a broad perspective across many technology and business operation disciplines, and this set me on the path to acquiring the skills required for any successful business leader.”
Opportunity called in Mexico when AT&T acquired multiple businesses in that market, and Arroyo would become the CEO of AT&T Mexico for a two year period in 2015 through 2016. Earlier this year, he became the CEO of AT&T Business.
Arroyo believes that this rapid rise beyond the CIO role will be accessible to many others. He believes that great IT leaders who understand business processes as well as anyone, and who use their unique visibility across all business units to contribute and help drive the business strategy will follow in his footsteps.
Peter High: You have gone from chief information officer of multiple companies to Chief Executive Officer of AT&T Business. Can you describe your career path in brief?
Thaddeus Arroyo: Over the course of my career, I have moved across industries and roles serving businesses and enabling capabilities. Most of my career has been spent in the technology and telecommunication space. Having worked across multiple industries, I have been appointed to positions that have led to technology transformation and integration, and I have focused on enabling business strategies that create business velocity and drive product innovation.
I have looked for roles that position me to broaden my skills through new experiences. That was true at the beginning of my career when I started in the IT department of Southwestern Bell, which was the nucleus of what today is AT&T. While working there, I served in the US Army Reserve as a Signal Corps Officer. That part-time experience was a large element of how I developed my core management and leadership foundation.
After beginning my career in the telecommunication space, I left and changed industries. I went to work for the IT department of American Airlines with Sabre Corporation. There, I had an opportunity to work on expanding their international data networks, then work on application development, and finally on product marketing. My time with Sabre allowed me to move across disciplines and get experience around not just the application of technology, but around operating the business too. That experience was instrumental in positioning me for what I do today.
My experience with Sabre led to my first CIO role, which was at Cingular Wireless. Cingular Wireless was the result of the consolidation of several regional wireless players, including BellSouth and SBC, which evolved from Southwestern Bell Telephone. At Cingular, I had an opportunity to direct the scaling of our operations and the integration of our systems during a period when the wireless industry was consolidating. During that scaling, Cingular purchased AT&T Wireless. When AT&T acquired BellSouth in 2007, I had an opportunity to become the Global CIO for all of AT&T.
High: How and when did you pivot from CIO to CEO?
12/11/17
Historically, the chief information officer’s primary reporting relationship has been to the chief financial officer of the enterprise. The initial rationale for this included the fact that much of the initial value from IT was in helping save costs by automating financial processes, and likewise the historical perspective that IT departments are primarily cost centers to be driven down. Ironically, though this has historically been the predominant hierarchy, few CIOs have replaced their bosses and become CFOs.
Cynthia Earhart has been one of the few to successfully walk that path. Among the many roles that she has played at Norfolk Southern since joining the company in 1985 has been that of executive vice president and chief information officer of the company. Earhart has a CPA, and had joined the company in the Accounting department. On her path through the CIO role, she continued to ensure that her teams had appropriate financial acumen while continuing to sharpen her own. As such, due to the value she contributed both to the top and bottom lines of the company, this unusual career path became relevant. What is the likelihood of others following in her footsteps? Earhart offers thoughts on her remarkable journey.
Peter High: You recently were promoted at Norfolk Southern from Chief Information Officer to Chief Financial Officer. This is an unusual pathway, and it might be helpful to understand your background prior to IT.
Cynthia Earhart: I graduated from college with a degree in Accounting before going on to get my CPA and working a few years in public accounting. When I came to work for Norfolk Southern, I came into the Accounting department, and I spent the first third of my career there before moving to IT. When I moved from Accounting to IT, I did not anticipate a pathway back to Finance. The CFO job was not on my radar.
12/4/17
Fletcher Previn is the youngest chief information officer in the history of IBM. He rose to the role in May after having spent 11 years at the company. He sees his role as helping to make his colleagues productive, to attract top talent, to be the digital front-end of the cultural transformation that IBM is ushering in, and to do all of this in a secure manner.
It is a fifth area that may be the source of highest value, however. Previn notes that his department has a role to play in ushering in the cognitive enterprise. This dovetails with the company’s focus on artificial intelligence through its Watson unit, but Previn notes that his team is working on artificial intelligence and machine learning initiatives independently, as well.
Peter High: You have been the Chief Information Officer of IBM since May of this year. How did you find out that you were going to be selected as the CIO of IBM? Likewise, what sort of preparations did you go through before taking on the role?
Fletcher Previn: I had worked in the IT Department at IBM for some time and had supported two previous CIOs in various capacities. One was a kind of Chief of Staff role, and the other was an executive capacity running the workplace and service and back-office functions. I had a pretty good sense of what the job would entail. That allowed me to hit the ground running and have less lead time in terms of getting up to speed and being able to execute our strategy.
High: Once you took the role, to what extent was it a case of continuing with the strategy versus refashioning it in various ways?
11/20/17
Paula Tolliver joined Intel a little more than a year ago as chief information officer. She had spent more than two decades at the Dow Chemical Company. She had been CIO there, as well, but she also ran procurement for a time, and had profit and loss accountability for Dow’s $1 billion services business. Therefore, she came to Intel with an orientation toward driving revenue growth from her post.
Tolliver immediately got to work doing just that. She has helped lead a major push toward deepening the company’s investment in analytics and artificial intelligence, in addition to other new technologies, and has helped drive $350 million in revenue growth in the sales and marketing channels alone, as she notes herein.
Tolliver has also improved IT’s orientation toward being “customer zero” for Intel’s own technologies. As such, she has woven her team into the product development process, and served as an important proxy for CIO and other IT executive customers of the company.
Peter High: You recently celebrated your first year anniversary with Intel. Prior to coming to Intel, you spent a couple of decades at Dow Chemical. What drew you to the CIO role at Intel?
Paula Tolliver: I have been in the profession for close to 30 years. My move to Intel was the result of my beginning to reflect on my career and wanting to be more deeply involved in this exciting time for IT. As I looked around and started to understand the potential of new technologies and how quickly they are advancing, I wanted to be a part of that in a more meaningful way. I saw joining the technology industry as a way to jump in with both feet. Fortunately, for me, Intel was looking for a CIO. What drew me to Intel was that they are a substantial contributor to the advancements happening in the IT industry. The technology that Intel has developed over its long history have driven many significant technology advancements, opened up many of possibilities that we see today, and powered the digital transformation. The privilege and honor of joining the Intel team and being a part of the ecosystem of technology was too exciting for me to pass up. I jumped on board and have enjoyed every minute.
High: Intel has been going through a transformation. Can you describe the changes and the role that IT plays?
11/13/17
The Chief Information Officer of $100 billion revenue Express Scripts Neal Sample has had unusual breadth and depth of experience for someone who is still in his mid-40s. He has a PhD in Computer Science from Stanford, which allows him to dig into the weeds of the technology his team develops with the best of them. He also spent time professionally as a consultant, giving him an orientation and a toolkit to solve a diverse array of problems. He spent time with legendary digital native companies like Yahoo! (where he was Chief Architect) and eBay (where he was CTO of X.Commerce, eBay’s venture to bring together a comprehensive set of commerce products and capabilities to help merchants and businesses compete in the world of social, local, mobile, and digital-driven commerce). At American Express, he grew from CIO of the Enterprise Growth unit to become president of the unit.
Sample took his current role for the St. Louis-based pharmacy benefits management behemoth nearly two years ago. As he notes in this interview, information is the coin of the realm for Express Scripts, and he has helped tune his team to drive better insights through better gathering and synthesis of information. His team helps lead the innovation agenda for the company, and he has grown leaps and bounds.
Peter High: In the 20 or so months that you have been the CIO of Express Scripts, you have been in the throes of a transformation. What was the state of IT and technology when you joined Express Scripts and what changes have you made?
Neal Sample: For 20 years, Express Scripts had primarily grown inorganically through acquisitions. The enterprise’s growth pattern was fairly consistent, they would purchase another pharmacy benefit management company or a related business, integrate it, capture the synergies from the integration, and then leverage those synergies to acquire the next business. From a technology perspective, this meant that they often did not end up with the systems they would have designed or chosen if they had started with a blank sheet of paper. It was not one plus one equals three, it was more like one plus one equals one. There was a lot of technology debt. There were many systems that would have been upgraded if the focus had been on infrastructure, instead of integrating the next company. There were also a plethora of systems. We had 31 development languages. Any technology stack you could imagine was present. Midrange, mainframe, on premise cloud, off premise cloud, it was all there. We had the opportunity to do some clean up, to enhance our reliability, and to become more agile. From a business process perspective, development had been primarily waterfall, which meant that not only were the cycle times long and fairly expensive, but the processes were rigid in their ability to respond to the market.
We had our work cut out for us. We had to decide to start with people, process, or technology. We picked all three. We began a tech debt retirement program and a move from waterfall to agile. We also focused on attracting and hiring in-house talent. Years of outsourcing had left us a little light for the transformation. In summary, I came into an environment that was target rich in people, processes, and technology, and began chipping away.
High: Part of your purview as CIO is innovation. As you have taken care of the efficiency part of the equation, trying to get to that one plus one equals three equation, what innovative ideas have you pursued?
11/06/17
Yoshua Bengio is one of the foremost thinkers in a field within artificial intelligence known as artifical neural networks and deep learning. Although significant progress has been made in recent years due to (among other factors) the combination of the proliferation of data, the decreasing cost of compute, and the tremendous amount of money and talent now devoted to artificial intelligence, Bengio chose this as a field of study during the 1980s, in the throes of what some referred to as the AI winter, seeing through a period when money and enthusiasm for artificial intelligence had dried up.
Bengio is the co-author (with Ian Goodfellow and Aaron Courville) of Deep Learning, a book that Elon Musk referred to as “the definitive textbook on deep learning.” On top of his growing influence in this field, he has also been enormously influential in shaping Montreal to become a hotbed for artificial intelligence. Bengio co-founded Element AI in 2016, which has a stated mission to “turn the world’s leading AI research into transformative business applications.” Element AI aims to foster partnership between the private sector and academia to help push the expansion of AI.
Bengio believes Montreal has emerged as a powerhouse due to the combination of great universities, great companies (including a number of Silicon Valley companies who have established offices in Montreal), and Canada’s ethos of cooperation among elite minds. We cover all of the above and more herein.
Peter High: Where does the field of deep neural networks currently stand in your estimation?
Yoshua Bengio: We have made amazing progress, but we are far from human level intelligence with computers. Most of the progress has been with supervised learning, which means machines are taught by essentially imitating humans. With supervised learning, humans provide the high-level concepts that the computer learns, which can be tedious and limits the ability of computers to discover things by themselves. Unsupervised learning, or what we call reinforcement learning, is when the learner is not merely passively observing the world, or how humans do things, but interacts with the environment and gets feedback. Humans are good at this. Combining unsupervised deep learning and reinforcement learning is one of the things that I am working on.
High: What steps are needed to reach the more fully realized version of unsupervised learning?
10/30/17
Andrew Moore’s career path at Carnegie Mellon has become emblematic of the way the University fosters its star talent. He became a tenured professor at Carnegie Mellon in 2000. In 2006, Moore joined Google, where he was responsible for building a new engineering office. As a vice president of engineering, Andrew was responsible for Google Shopping, the company’s retail segment. Moore returned to Carnegie Mellon in 2014 as the Dean of the Computer Science department. In that role and given his experience, Moore is among the most influential people in the fields of computer science and artificial intelligence.
In the past, Moore has described the poaching problem that the Computer Science department has, given its stable of extraordinary talent in fields such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, robotics, and others that are high in demand. Of course, he recognizes himself in those professors and students who would choose to follow their passions into lucrative positions in the private sector. The department allows professors to leave and come back in many cases, and is hiring at higher rates in anticipation of this trend continuing.
In this interview, Moore offers insights into the evolving field of artificial intelligence, what is likely to be the factors to determine the companies who will win or lose in this space, as well as insights into what makes Carnegie Mellon specifically and Pittsburgh more generally a hot test bed for cutting edge technology.
Peter High: Andrew, you are the Dean of the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. Please describe your purview.
Andrew Moore: Carnegie Mellon’s School of Computer Science has a couple of hundred strong faculty members who are working on every aspect of computer technology. We also have a few thousand amazing students. My role as Dean is to make sure the whole organization gets to move forward. I see my role as helping to clear the way for these geniuses to get to do what they want to do.
High: You have said that being at CMU is like being at Hogwarts Academy. That when you walk around the School of Computer Science, the College of Engineering, and the university at large, you see a great number of smart people working on a variety of things that will change the technology landscape, and ultimately our lives. What was the origin of Carnegie Mellon’s influence?
Moore: It all comes down to two visionaries, Allen Newell and Herbert Simon. They were two of the four people who, in 1956, took part in the Dartmouth Artificial Intelligence Conference, where they discussed what might be possible with computers in the future. These two gentlemen were in the business school at Carnegie Tech, which later became Carnegie Mellon University. There was, of course, not a computer science school in the 1960s. Newell and Simon used their passion and extreme intellect to speculate and bring together a team of people who looked at, not what computers would do in the next five to 10 years, but what it would mean to live in a world where there are thinking machines. They inspired so many other thinkers through that period that it snowballed over the decades. Today, we have 250 faculty members in the School of Computer Science. They work on everything from the lowest level details of how photons move and how you count them up, to the highest level details of what it means to have an emotional relationship with a talking machine. It was Newell’s and Simon’s initial interest that sparked this and shaped our computer science department.
On the commercial side, through our digital channels, we continue to advance our product suite to allow our commercial customers to have access to the technology portals that house all of the capabilities and resources of the bank that they use. This includes things like wires, accounts receivable transactions, etc. Many of our interactions with our commercial customers also occur through our digital channels. This will continue to evolve as our customers work to become more efficient, and we develop new ways to help them achieve that. This transformation has been underway for some time, but it has accelerated in the last two or three years.
10/23/17
When Greg Carmichael joined Fifth Third Bancorp in June of 2003, it was a chief information officer, a role he held at his prior company, Emerson Electric. He thought joining Fifth Third would provide an opportunity to learn a new industry, to face new challenges, and to return to his hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio. What he did not realize at that time was that he was beginning a journey that would take him from CIO to CEO of the company.
His path began even before he joined Emerson, he was an IT leader at General Electric. He saw at an early age the power that the CIO could have in as much as it touched ever employee of the company, and increasingly most customers, as well. As such he recognized how strategic IT truly could be. He thought about the revenue implications of IT much earlier than the average CIO. This continued at Fifth Third, and by 2006, he was offered the COO role. He became President in 2012 and would ascend to the top post three years later. In this interview, he reflects on his remarkable journey.
Peter High: As the President and Chief Executive Officer of Fifth Third Bank, please describe the business as it currently stands?
Greg Carmichael: Fifth Third has been around for 158 years. We have roughly $142 billion in assets and about 18,000 employees. We operate approximately 1,160 retail banking centers across 10 different states and have commercial and consumer lending presences throughout the United States. Fifth Third consists of four main businesses: Commercial Banking, Branch Banking, Consumer Lending, and Wealth and Asset Management.
High: Fifth Third spans business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-customer (B2C) sales. What role does technology play in each?
Carmichael: Technology plays a major role in everything we do; from the products we build, to our distribution channels, to how we service our customers. Our customers want to bank anywhere, any time. We enable them to do that. On the customer side, 60 percent of our financial transactions come through our digital channels, which include our web channel, our mobile channels, and our digital ATM channels. Additionally, 90 percent of our interactions and touch points with our customers occur through our digital channels. Over the last four or five years, as it became possible to transact with a digital image of a check, a significant proportion of transactions, like depositing a check, have transitioned to our mobile platforms.
High: Is there a member of your team who shepherds the evolution of digital channels, digital business, the use of technologies, and so on? Or, is it the responsibility of the broader leadership of the organization?
10-23-17
Suren Gupta has worn many hats over the course of his career, but has ultimately found success by combining his technology and business acumen to tackle IT and operational challenges. In his current role as Executive Vice President of Allstate Technology and Strategic Ventures, he has demonstrated an incredible ability to seize competitive advantage through his commitment to innovation. In an earlier interview, Gupta comments on a company transformation and increased focus on customer service at Allstate. Since then, he and his team have developed and launched Good Hands Rescue Mobile, a service available through their app that connects stranded motorists with emergency roadside service providers. This innovation is responsible for helping around 25,000 stranded drivers a month and providing the company an eight digit revenue lift, and for that reason. Gupta is a recipient of the 2017 New York Summit Forbes CIO Innovation Award.
When asked about Gupta’s contribution, Pam Dufour, president of Allstate Roadside Services said, “Allstate is leading the way in the digital evolution of the roadside industry. Mobile devices are part of most Americans’ everyday lives. The Good Hands Rescue mobile app and website leverage technology to connect people with roadside services using their smartphones. We’re making it easy for people to do business with us anytime, anywhere and in any way.”
Peter High: Please describe the innovative idea that you and your team in IT pursued.
Suren Gupta: Allstate’s mission is to protect customers from life’s uncertainty. In 2015, it launched Good Hands Rescue Mobile, an innovative digital solution that makes it easier for stranded motorists to get the help they need. This mobile application and website enables drivers to easily request roadside assistance anywhere in America through their smartphones. And to expand that promise and the potential usage, the application was not limited to just Allstate’s customers.
When Good Hands Rescue Network launched in markets across the United States, Allstate saw rescue times were still too high as they were dependent on the amount of available service providers in each area. Allstate once again disrupted the roadside services industry with a new product to address those high wait times. Good Hands Rescue Network facilitates the digital exchange of customer requests for emergency roadside assistance. It enables a fully digital network of more than 1,000 skilled crowdsourced rescuers to safely, quickly and reliably rescue customers in less than 30 minutes on average. This cuts down on customer wait times by at least 15 to 30 minutes.
Good Hands Rescue Network was built on a platform as a service infrastructure, and includes state-of-the-art mobile applications for iOS and Android users as well as complementing web applications. It also includes a sophisticated virtual assistant, which is capable of providing roadside assistance using natural language over text message. This is a new model for customer service, the “Talk. Tap. Text” model, where customers can request assistance by calling roadside services, utilizing the Good Hands Rescue application, or texting the roadside virtual assistant.
The development of GHRN is a part of Allstate’s CompoZed initiative. Under this initiative, digital products are developed using agile XP as a software development methodology with paired programming, test driven development, continuous integration, collaborative cross-functional product teams, continuous delivery, and our own Cloud infrastructure Platform as a Service.
High: What opportunity or issue to be resolved led to this IT-led innovation?
