556: In this interview, Angela Yochem, the EVP and Chief Transformation & Digital Officer at Novant Health, and George Llado, the SVP and CIO of Alexion Pharmaceuticals, focus on the power of ecosystems. Angela discusses the importance of leveraging ecosystems to drive innovation at scale, and she shares the story of how Novant Health formed an “unconventional partnership” with Stewart-Haas to build ICU carts for overrun hospitals. Meanwhile, George discusses Alexion’s strategy of cultivating relationships with startups and venture capital firms to accelerate innovation, as well as his approach to strategic planning.
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555: In this interview, Cathy Southwick, CIO of Pure Storage, discusses the storage as a service model and IT’s three strategic priorities: scaling the IT organization, having a lens on security, and enabling the broader business. Cathy discusses how Pure Storage uses its own technology inside the business, the differences she has recognized working for a small and growing company versus a Fortune 15 giant, and how being a prior customer of Pure Storage has helped her since coming into the role. Lastly, Cathy talks about what customers look for in a strategic technology provider, how her IT team works with the rest of the organization, which is full of tech talent as a whole, and a variety of other topics.
554: Rob Carter, the Executive Vice President of FedEx Information Services and the Chief Information Officer for FedEx, and Steve Randich, the Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer of FINRA, discuss the role of technology in creating a nimble enterprise. Rob shares the story of how technology that once provided FedEx with a competitive advantage had become outdated, and the massive effort the company undertook to overhaul and modernize its legacy technology. Meanwhile, Steve discusses the benefits of being an early adopter of the cloud, how FINRA is pushing up against the limits of Amazon Web Services, and FINRA’s use of advanced analytics and machine learning to better identify fraud and bad actors.
553: Marta Zarraga, Global Chief Information Officer of Capital Group discusses her experience onboarding into her new role virtually, how Capital Group has given flexibility to its employees during the pandemic so that they can best serve their customers, and how the company has adjusted to a mobile workforce. We also discuss aspects of work that are done much better face-to-face than remotely, Capital Group’s ambitions to expand more into Europe and Asia, the different experiences Marta has had across four different CIO roles, among a variety of other topics.
552: Shailesh Prakash, the CIO and Chief Product Officer of the Washington Post, and Chintan Mehta, the CIO and Head of Digital, Technology, and Innovation for Wells Fargo, discuss strategy and its role in driving growth and innovation. Shailesh discusses how IT and engineering went from being a cost center to being a strategic differentiator and driver of business growth. He goes on to share the story of Arc Publishing and Zeus Technologies, which grew from internal solutions into sizable revenue drivers with over 200 customers. Meanwhile, Chintan shares his view on the importance of long-term strategic planning and how the company’s Strategy, Digital Platform & Innovation (SDI) group set strategy across the organization.
551: Marcello Damiani, the chief digital and operational excellence officer of Moderna, has been a major part of Moderna being at the forefront of the COVID vaccine development. In this interview, we discuss how Moderna is using messenger RNA to prevent and cure diseases, such as COVID-19, aspects of Moderna’s data strategy, and how the company has used data to run the most effective clinical trials possible. We discuss how Moderna is building a digital environment and how COVID accelerated the company’s digitization. Lastly, we discuss the emerging technologies Moderna has used in its digitization journey, the importance of being agile in how you adjust your day-to-day tactical activity to the strategy that you are building, among a variety of other topics.
550: Melanie Kalmar, the CIO & CDO of Dow, and Shamim Mohammad, the chief information & technology officer of CarMax both have experience modernizing large organizations. In this interview, Melanie discusses Dow’s adoption of agile and DevOps practices, offers insight into how she has reoriented IT around service delivery, and gives her take on how to innovate at scale. Meanwhile, Shamim discusses CarMax’s shift from a project orientation to a product orientation and why the traditional way of delivering IT projects does not work anymore. We also discuss how transforming to a nimbler organization has helped CarMax during the pandemic, among a variety of other topics.
549: Seth Cohen, the global CIO of PepsiCo, leads IT for one of the largest beverage companies in the world. In this interview, we discuss the main difference between digital and analog companies along with PepsiCo’s digital agenda. We discuss how data strategy has evolved over the past 5-10 years, and a bit about PepsiCo’s own data journey. Lastly, we discuss cross-cultural communications lessons Seth has learned from living all over the world, the benefits of an East to West innovation path, PepsiCo’s experience switching to an entirely remote workforce, among a variety of other topics.
548: Kimberly Johnson and Rob Alexander have both been part of massive transformations at Fortune 100 companies. In this interview, we focus on people and talent strategy. Rob discusses how Capital One’s talent transformation was critical in supporting the company’s massive technology transformation, which has included insourcing IT and building technology internally as well as moving its data centers to the cloud. Meanwhile, Kimberly discusses the importance of teamwork in driving innovation, and how Fannie Mae rapidly responded to enable teams to continue collaborating during the COVID pandemic.
547: Lee Crump, the former CIO of Rollins, represents a unique case in which he hand-picked his successor Thomas Tesh, the current CIO of Rollins. In this interview, we discuss Thomas and Lee’s working relationship over the past 23 years, why Lee picked Thomas to replace him, and what Thomas believes are Lee’s greatest strengths as a leader. We discuss Rollins’ M&A Strategy and the only two things Rollins always takes over when buying a company: security and payroll. Lastly, we discuss Rollins’ strategic priorities over the next few years, why Thomas believes we will see all computers go away in the future, and a variety of other topics.
