Peter High
05-07-2015
Excerpt from the Article: When Jeff Bezos purchased the Washington Post for $250 million in 2013, the portion of the company that was not purchased was rebranded as Graham Holdings. Its holdings include Kaplan, Slate, multiple television stations, CableOne, and Graham Media Group (which is the former Post-Newsweek Stations), among others. Yuvinder Kochar has been chief technology officer of the company pre- and post-divestiture, having held that role for more than 12 years. In this interview with CIO Insight contributor Peter High, Kochar talks about the changes afoot at Graham Holdings, his own methods of managing IT, and his thoughts about the future of technology.
CIO Insight: You were the CTO of the Washington Post Companies until that organization was split up. Jeff Bezos purchased the Post, and the other part of the organization is called Graham Holdings. What makes up Graham Holdings?
Yuvinder Kochar: Graham Holdings Company (GHC) is a diversified firm whose principal businesses include Kaplan (educational services), Graham Media Group (television broadcasting), CableOne (cable systems), Slate and Trove (news media), Celtic and Residential Healthcare, Social Code (social marketing technology and services) and a couple of manufacturing companies. We are a public company with operating revenues of $3.5 billion in 2014.
Since the divestiture of the Washington Post in 2013, GHC has acquired several health care and manufacturing businesses. In the most recent annual report, Don Graham (our CEO) very succinctly answered the question, “What kinds of businesses do we want to buy?” Businesses we can understand. Businesses with a proven record of profitability and a management team that wants to continue to run the company after selling it to us. And businesses that aren’t too capital intensive.
CIO Insight: Graham Holdings is diversifying quickly, going beyond education and media into health care and manufacturing investments. How do you think about technology in such a diversified group of businesses?
Yuvinder Kochar:My strategic thinking about technology at GHC derives from the way we manage our businesses: Our diverse businesses share common goals and values, but each has its own identity, workplace culture and management responsible for its operations. To allow maximum flexibility to our businesses to respond to market changes, we do not try to consolidate and centralize functions across our businesses. To read the remainder of the article, please visit CIO Insight
