Martha Poulter, CIO of Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide

Episode Overview

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

• Her role and vision for the IT organization at Starwood
• The way in which the IT team gets involved in the customer experience
• How her experiences as a customer of Starwood colors her experience to developing internal plans
• How she divided her time during the first 100 days of coming on-board at Starwood
• Some of the early plans Martha had for the organization and how she sees those plans moving forward into the future
• IT’s role from an innovation perspective and how they organize around those activities
• How her tenure at GE Capital helped her transition to Starwood
• Eye on the Trends: Data as an asset, computing miniaturization (mobile, wearables, etc.), and the Internet of Things

Martha Poulter’s Biography

Martha is currently Executive Vice President & Chief Information Officer of Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc., a position she began in June of 2014. Prior to joining Starwood, Martha spent eighteen years at GE Capital in a range of information technology and e-Business leadership roles. Most recently she served as Vice President, GE and CIO, GE Capital from August 2010 to June 2014 where she was responsible for further integrating the best of GE Capital’s IT applications, infrastructure and resources across all consumer and commercial platforms. From 2008 to 2010 Martha served as CIO for GE Capital, Americas where she was responsible for driving global digitization strategy, organization and delivery of customer value through technology, and from 2007 to 2008 she served as CIO for GE Capital, Capital Solutions. From 1995 to 2007, Martha held various positions for GE, Corporate Financial Services. Prior to joining GE Capital, Martha held various positions with Southern New England Telephone, a telecommunications company.

Martha completed her MBA from the University of New Haven and received her Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Connecticut.

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