By Peter High, published Forbes 3/13/17
When Norm Fjeldheim joined Illumina as Chief Information Officer and Head of Global Facilities, he did so after one of the longest tenures by a CIO at a single company: 17 years in that role at Qualcomm. Fjeldheim’s tenure at Qualcomm was a success, but he believes now that his tenure was too long. Though he is proud of what he and his team accomplished, he indicates that he could have used more variety to his roles. In the end, though, he is glad that he landed at Illumina, a $2.4 billion provider of sequencing and array-based solutions for genetic analysis.
Fjeldheim has spread his wings beyond the IT leadership to include Facilities Management. As it turns out, this allowed him to return to his roots, as someone who studied architecture for a time as an undergraduate. It also allows him to take a more hands-on role in creating the workspace of the future.
Peter High: I thought we would begin with your role in your current company, Illumina. If you could, please provide an overview of the organization, as well as a review of your responsibilities both as Chief Information Officer and Head of Global Facilities.
Norm Fjeldheim: The first thing I tell people is that we are not a lighting company, despite our name. We are a company focused on improving human health through the power of genomics. That is our mission. It translates into several different products and customers that we create. We have developed various technologies for unlocking DNA, and we make that information available to our customers. Then our customers do various things with it. We have customers that are researchers, we have customers that are using it for agriculture, trying to improve crop yields, and solving world hunger. We also sell into the clinical space: labs and hospitals use our technology to help with diagnosing diseases — rare diseases or genetically based diseases and that varies from the specific test for cystic fibrosis to neonatal genetic testing, to supporting undiagnosed diseases. We sell to the FBI and law enforcement for DNA testing. One of our biggest customers is ancestry.com. They use our technology in those commercials in which they ask, “Where are you from? Are you Scottish versus German?” We have a wide variety of customers who are doing amazing things by unlocking human DNA, or virtually any DNA for that matter.
As for my role, IT is traditional IT, such as infrastructure, help desk, data centers, and managing our cloud environment. We are one of Amazon’s biggest customers, our machines produce a vast amount of data; unlocking DNA translates to terabytes of data. We store a lot of that at Amazon in the cloud. I am responsible for all of our business systems, and all of our supporting systems with everything that the company does digitally.
I also have responsibility for cyber security. The CSO reports to me, which means I get involved with product security, the security of our instruments, the medical devices, as well as Base Space which is a Software as a Service [SaaS] service that we provide for analyzing patient DNA.
I have responsibility for running our facilities. That includes keeping the lights on, and the plumbing, and the electricity, and the air conditioning. I also have responsibility for constructing new buildings as we grow. We have five major campuses around the world with major construction projects going on in each of those right now. We are in twenty locations around the world and I am responsible for the standards, negotiating and establishing contracts, and bringing in the connectivity to tie in with the rest of the company. Lastly, health, safety, and compliance are part of my job as Global Head of Facilities, since we are an FDA regulated company.
Peter High: What was the logic in having these responsibilities combined under one executive?
Norm Fjeldheim: I think it was opportunistic by Illumina. They knew that I was capable of running a large organization. I had done that in my previous role when I was at Qualcomm. It was a two-thousand-person IT organization, and I had responsibilities beyond IT there, as well. Illumina felt like I could certainly do more and that facilities would be a good fit. They needed leadership there and operational focus. It turned out that it was a better match than they anticipated because my original major in school was architecture and I grew up in the construction industry. My dad was a general contractor and I had been a carpenter all through high school and college. Facilities was something that I understood to a much greater degree than they realized, we had not talked about that in the interview process. It was a chance for me to get back to my roots.
Peter High: How do you divide your time between the various areas that you have described, and, how do you staff them? Is there anyone else who has dual responsibilities like you do, or are they fully independent staffs?
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