The Heller Report: Roundup of New CIOs for March

Citizens promoted Paula Guerrero, previously the financial services company’s vice president of IT, to be its new CIO; Panera Bread, the bakery-café casual restaurant chain, named Santhosh Kumar, a former Dunkin’ Brands IT executive, to be its CIO; Westchester Medical Center Health Network appointed veteran hospital IT executive Leo Bodden to be CIO at the 1,700-bed healthcare system in based Valhalla, N.Y.; lifestyles accessory company Fossil Group Inc. tapped as its chief digital information officer Antonio Carriero, the former chief digital information officer at Salomon (Amer Sports).

You can’t implement a strategic plan without a culture that encourages people to implement it, writes Larry Bonfante, a veteran CIO and leadership coach. Creating a superior culture means giving people a sense of purpose and ownership for the company’s success. It also requires leadership that instills a sense among employees that their work has meaning tied to the organization’s outcomes.

What comes after a CIO role? James “Jay” Smith, thought about that question during his decades of working in conventional roles such as CTO, CIO and head of innovation. In this edition of the My CIO Career series, Smith, who serves as a board level executive at AEG Fuels explains his approach to creating a multifaceted work life. 

More enterprises are searching for CIOs to lead them in creating data-driven value using AI, notes Kelly Doyle, managing director at Heller, in this article at CIO.com. Doyle advises CIOs seeking a new role to find a culture eager to innovate and change. “The key to a company’s ability to adopt AI technologies for their own customers and employees will be organization change,” she notes.