My CIO Career: Kathleen Lovett of VSP Vision Invests in Individual Relationships to Build Effective Teams

One of Kathleen Lovett’s first lessons as a business executive came when she was working overseas. People in a meeting nodded at her words, but only later did she realize they were acknowledging her position, not necessarily agreeing with her. Her takeaway: Ask questions to learn others’ points of view.

This key lesson and others – like the value of investing the time with individuals to develop bonds that will pay off in effective collaborations – are what has driven Lovett’s leadership approach in a career that has led her to the role of vice president and chief information officer for supply chain at VSP Vision, a national leader in health-focused vision care.

Lovett believes leaders who are driving innovation and transformation must become “very good at understanding from a deeper level” the needs and values of employees, colleagues, and customers as a means to developing shared objectives and visions for moving forward.“I am purposeful in engaging with others, talking to them not only in a business environment but also getting to know them as people,” she says.

Lovett started as an intern at US Steel and moved up the IT ranks there and later at Thermo Fisher Scientific. She joined VSP Vision in 2021.

In a November 2024 interview for this My CIO Career profile, Lovett also delved into how a childhood introduction to programming informed her lifelong interests and how she creates high-performing teams that seek continuous improvement. 

Mary K. Pratt: What first drew you into the technology profession?

Kathleen Lovett: Amazingly enough, I had my first computer programming class in first grade.

I went to a Catholic school which had a program called “Apples for Students.” The school had a computer lab with Apple IIe PCs – early Macs that used a floppy disk to “boot up.” The computer teacher created lessons for the students to learn BASIC programming, create graphics on the screen and play educational games. I remember printing “Hello World” on the screen.

I really enjoyed programming because it was a puzzle to figure out syntax and the order of computer instructions to get the desired results. It was also a new way to create art with letters and numbers.

I also was fortunate that my mother was a Catholic school math teacher and was able to have an Apple computer at home for us. I often would help her by trying out math education lessons and showing her what I learned at school. This really helped feed my curiosity and love of learning.

When I went to college, I started out as a biomedical student and computer courses were part of that curriculum, which is when I really fell in love with it again. So I switched my major junior year and graduated from college with a computer information systems degree with a math major. As part of my college program, I had an internship at US Steel where I could apply technology in a real-world setting, which set me on my career. The company hired me after I completed the internship.

Do you think enough is being done to inspire the next generation to enter IT?

We do not do enough. We historically have not done enough to highlight how technology has an impact on us every single day.

However, when AI and ChatGPT came onto the scene, they raised the visibility of and excitement around technology and how technology plays a role in our everyday lives.

I and others are working to inspire others to enter the profession. I am active in organizations such as the National Center for Women & Information Technology and its Sit With Me initiative to promote more women in the profession. We are working to raise the visibility of technology and the need for more diversity in technology roles. We are also working to highlight the fact that you do not have to be a deep technical expert to contribute to the technology profession. There are, for example, digital product managers who use a lot of creativity and art to understand customers and there are businesspeople who bring their functional expertise into technology.

Did you aspire to become a CIO early in your career – or even while still in school?

I did not start out aspiring to become a CIO. I had viewed technology as a way to solve problems, and as my education was a blend of business and technology, I really looked at how to partner with people to solve business problems together and how to advance business strategies together. So I was really just focused on learning as much as I could about the business as a whole.

Then as I went through rotations in the business, and as I experienced different opportunities, I started to see the bigger picture. I was really excited to see where technology could play a bigger role. As my scope and responsibilities grew, I moved into more leadership roles.

What are your key objectives as a CIO?

I focus on partnering with executive colleagues and developing our business strategies. And as CIO I am a catalyst for change because technology innovations can really drive transformational change.

As a result of the partnerships and strong relationships I have with my executive colleagues, we have close alignment between the tech strategy and the business strategies, so we are really able to leverage technology investments to maximize value.

You have worked overseas. What did that experience teach you?

I lived and worked in Slovakia during my time at US Steel. It was a rotational assignment. Although I was prepped for the assignment, and I met people ahead of time, it was still a very humbling experience.

I remember getting the translation of minutes back after my first meeting, and the minutes showed something very different than what I understood of the discussion that we had.

That experience taught me about perspective: You can bring people together, but everybody can hear or interpret things differently. In that first meeting I saw a lot of nodding in agreement. But I learned that nodding happened just based on hierarchy; I learned that nodding was not necessarily alignment with what we were going to go and do once we left the meeting room. It was more, yes, I hear what you are saying.

That was one of my first lessons, and it was something that really stuck with me. I have incorporated that lesson into how I lead as an executive. I learned to ask questions that allow me to gain a deeper understanding and get feedback, so we can have discussions and make decisions that move us forward in support of the same goals and that show we are truly aligned.

You have talked about your focus on continuous improvement. How do you build continuous improvement into your IT team?

There is a cultural aspect, a cultural focus on getting better by staying curious and asking questions.

But we also prioritize continuous improvement in how we work. It is deliberate, and it is something that we talk about. We talk about how to prioritize areas for improvement and which areas we will target for continuous improvement.

For example, we had a pilot using generative AI tools with the developer platform GitHub to expedite some of our development cycles. We gathered feedback from the team and are now implementing those tools into more of what we do. As part of that, we are showcasing what we learned in the pilot and showing how some of the team was able to leverage GitHub to achieve objectives faster than they would have been able to do previously.

Also, we define and measure how continuous improvements drive value. We measure productivity gains. We look at hours saved. We look at improved service levels. We ask whether we are able to mitigate issues more proactively or whether we have improved system uptime or whether we reduced the number of tickets that come in.

And we work with our vendors on continuous improvement. We work with them, for example, to drive down the support we need from them, looking at metrics such as the support tickets to measure results.

You also have talked about your work creating high-performing teams. What is your strategy?

There are three priorities that are critical for our performance and our success.

One is a culture of customer centricity. We do not create technology solutions for the sake of it. We do it to address customer needs, which means gaining a deep understanding of our customers is important.

Second is accountability. We do what we say.

And then there is collaboration. I expect others to help if one group is having a challenge.

Also, as a company we do employee engagement surveys, and reviewing results and hearing feedback from the team are great ways for me to understand what’s going well, which areas we need to address and where we need to take roadblocks out of a team’s way to make them more effective.

How do you approach building professional relationships?

It is taking the time. I am purposeful in engaging with others, talking to them not only in a business environment but also getting to know them as people. I have one-on-one meetings so I can more deeply understand them, understand how can I help them, and understand how I can be a value creator for them.

Unless you walk in somebody’s shoes, you cannot really understand or be empathetic to their situation. That’s why being more hands-on, visible, and involved is also important, so you create a relationship and then keep building it.

That takes time. So I look at my calendar and make time for building relationships, because it will not happen any other way.

You also make time to serve on the advisory board of the CTO Forum. Can you tell me about that group?

The CTO Forum provides an educational program for business leaders to learn about strategic themes, new innovations, and practical usage of technology. This group brings together the greatest minds across the world with a blend of academia and business experts to share insights and key learnings. As part of the advisory board, I partner with other board members, to create a learning series curriculum that is meaningful for attendees.

For example, we gathered in October to delve into generative AI and discuss areas where it holds great promise but to also consider issues around data privacy, hallucinations and bias as well as how companies are making sure that they keep those issues top of mind as they work through the best applications for this technology.

This group is a good way for me as a CIO to stay connected to what is happening around technology advancements so I understand what is coming in the future and can bring that information back to my organization. It is also a good way for me to build a network of other CIOs and gain insights and lessons learned that I can then apply.

What has been a memorable or important lesson-learned in your career?

One of the big lessons-learned happened in the early days of my career working at a multinational manufacturer, when we were doing an ERP implementation. It was a large implementation and as we went through one of our deployments, it unintentionally backed up work at one of our mills.

It was a big lesson-learned on the importance of understanding the depth of the different people involved and the testing that needs to go into bigger projects. It helped me learn the importance of asking questions, going on site to talk to the people who are involved, and really understanding the nuances that occur as you go into different groups, different facilities or different teams.

In this case we were able to overcome the challenges by being on site and just working through them, but it was a tough couple of days.

What are your priorities outside of work?

There are three things that I do outside of work that really recharge me. One is spending time with my family. I have three kids, and being with them and going with them to their different events definitely fills up my time. I also run. I do marathons with my husband, and one of my goals is to qualify for the Boston Marathon. Running is a way for me to be outdoors, and when you are running for an hour or two, you have plenty of time to think and reflect. I love it.

And the third thing is spending time at the beach. I always try to fit beach time into my schedule and have been to many beaches around the world. My favorites include Sanibel Island to collect many seashells and Siesta Key with its beautiful, powdery white sand. 

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