Helen Cousins, Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer of Lincoln Trust Company

Episode Overview

Among other topics, Helen discusses the following issues with Metis Strategy:

• Helen’s unorthodox path to CIO and how it contributed to her understanding of IT as part of a business.
• The value of the broader perspective due to a business background in Helen’s success as a CIO.
• The challenges and strategies in mending the relationship between IT and business to garner support and trust.
• The importance of appropriately marketing accomplishments in IT both internally as well as across the organization.
• Helen’s rise to becoming a Board level CIO and the impact of an IT executive’s perspective to the rest of the board.
• Eye on the trends: The growing importance of cloud and mobile technology and the need to understand how to analyze and leverage risks to gain support for related projects.

Helen Cousins’ Biography

Helen is the Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer of Lincoln Trust Company, a role she has had since 2006. As part of the ownership team, she has led the transformation of the company into an analytical organization by implementing a business process management program encompassing business intelligence and workflow management for the entire organization.

Prior to her current role, Helen was SVP and CIO for Dex Media, Inc where she led the enterprise implementation of a new technology platform. As part of the executive team she participated in what was, at the time, the 2nd largest leverage buyout in US history, an IPO and subsequent sale of the company.

Prior to joining Dex , Helen was SVP and Corporate CIO at Cendant where she was responsible for orchestrating one of the largest outsourcing deals with a major technology firm as well as leading the IT due diligence and integration for several major acquisitions which increased revenue by $15B. She has held several other executive positions managing global organizations, spending her first 25 years on Wall Street with top Fortune 100 / 500 firms. She has won various awards and recognitions for her accomplishments including being named to CIO Magazine’s prestigious CIO Hall of Fame in 2012.

Helen graduated summa cum laude with a B.S. in accounting and economics from Fordham University and an MBA from Pace University.

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