The Lumos List: 50 CIOs of Impact and Influence + 10 Future CIOs, 2023
For the first time ever, we’ve created a list to recognize the most influential CIOs of 2023. This list is based on peer nominations and those recommended via our discussions with industry leaders.
At Lumos, we defy the status quo. We celebrate innovators, forward-thinkers. More than impact, we revel in the stories around those creating change that will influence the world - small ripples that lead to large scale difference. The people that power the technology…for good. As such, we’ve created a list to recognize the most influential CIOs of 2023. This list is based on peer nominations and those recommended via our discussions with industry leaders.
The role of the CIO is in the center of it all. These strategic technology leaders are responsible for accelerating business growth, driving operational efficiencies, overseeing the development and evolution of their organization’s information technology platform…the list of complex and far-reaching efforts goes on and on. A highly visible role that differs in focus (and in some cases, title) from company to company, the CIO may spearhead IT efforts and innovation growth or assess mission critical programs that support the entire company.
Fighting necessary evils to protect data, security, and privacy, these heroes may be supporting companies known across the globe or smaller players mightily fighting the good fight. The need to manage costs and increase capital efficiency has required many companies to go through the unfortunate action of lay-offs. Through this gut-wrenching shift in our economy, these ‘CIOs of Impact and Influence’ instill the following:
Shaping the Future of Business & Technology
They spot opportunities early and cultivate a game plan before most even realize there is a gap. They develop new technologies and innovate across the organization while ensuring compliance and company objectives are at the forefront. Resources are allocated for innovative solutions that increase productivity and capital efficiency. Data integrity and privacy are always a strong factor in every touch, so they continuously build systems that thwart threats. They lead to create significant impact not only within their organization but across industries via their unique lens of leveraging technology and data.
Their focus on IT is to transform the world we live in and lead strategic decision-making, create new revenue streams, and nurture internal and external customer engagement.
Developing and Nurturing Talent
They prioritize people before technology. Talent is seen as partners and their skills are cultivated strategically in collaboration with leaders across the company. Infrastructures created are all based on open communication and transparency in order to build solid levels of trust.
They value discovering talent in unusual places, inclusivity, and a commitment to an impactful mindset.
Range of Industries & Backgrounds
Nominees can and should come from a variety of industries and diverse backgrounds.
Not one to accept or settle, their career has been industry agnostic, led only by the need to transform the world by positive change through innovation.
A - G
Pavi Agrawal, Vice President and Head of IT at Relativity
Driving innovation and growth has always been at the forefront of Agrawal’s motivators. Case in point: he’s co-founded and acted as CTO for four startups, which he sold to PE. These experiences helped bolster his ability to meld relationships between the business, users, and technologists, a key priority of his current role at Relativity. As VP and Head of IT, Enterprise Architecture, Enterprise Applications, PMO Office, IT Service Delivery, Help Desk, IT Infrastructure and Business Intelligence and Analytics functions all fall under his purview. We dare you to find an industry he hasn’t touched - his experience spans multiple areas from retail to manufacturing to banking to media encompassing b2b, b2c, d2c, b2b2c.
Gary Aliff, Acting CIO at Zendesk
Aliff rose to his role at Zendesk after holding executive positions at Gap Inc. and L Brands. As acting CIO, he’s charged with advancing technological innovation for a workforce of over 5,000. Aliff’s team covers Customer & Employee Experience Systems, Data & Analytics, Architecture, and the PMO. His focus has been on narrowing the chasm between business and technology, including within global IT strategy and implementation initiatives. Aliff has built a reputation for building collaborative teams that tackle cross-functional issues throughout the business, with a critical eye toward optimizing operations to sustain such partnerships.
Peter Baskette, Vice President, IT and Procurement at Udemy
While Baskette has a storied career making the jump from Harvard University to technology stalwarts Riverbed and Udemy, tech support and customer service has always stayed front and center. Having always led large organizations, his current role at Udemy allows him to flex his skills in organizational change management for a workforce of almost 2,000. Baskette has been instrumental in greatly reducing spend even while forging digital transformation. That’s in addition to ensuring compliance with industry-leading SLAs, oh, and…being featured as a ChangeMaker by Freshworks in their podcast series and e-book.
Sunny Bedi, CIO & CDO at Snowflake
Bedi came to Snowflake after holding Corporate IT and Operations leadership roles at Nvidia from 2008-2020, scaling that org from a workforce just under 2,000 to 15,000. Similarly, when he started at Snowflake, the company had less than 2,000 employees, which has now just about doubled during Bedi’s tenure. That headcount was planned for the Bay Area…until Bedi joined. He saw the hiring trajectory the company was targeting and knew it was not just extremely expensive, but almost unthinkable to hire such a volume of talent there. Now? The company has a global employee base allowing quicker project completions and an organic way to scale efficiently. Fifty percent of the Snowflake headcount is outside of the Bay Area, which Bedi attributes to enabling the org to have around-the-clock coverage and scale-efficiency. Not one to stay on the sidelines, he recently hosted the CIO Leadership Panel at the Snowflake Summit, speaking on how the CIO role can ‘move from a functional strategic business leader capable of powering business transformation’.
Marty Boos, Vice President, IT at StockX
As VP of IT at one of the hottest marketplaces for exclusive sneakers, apparel, and accessories, Boos is charged with developing innovative solutions to keep the momentum (and record-breaking revenue seen in 2022) at StockX going. Marketplace conditions in flux seem to be his sweet spot as he continues to deliver billions of dollars in e-commerce dealings globally each year, regardless of economic happenings. His teams are spread out over the U.S., Europe, and China and oversee IT, Corporate Infrastructure, Business Systems, Web Applications, Network and Data Center operations.
Colin Carmichael, SVP and CIO at CIO Professional Services
Along with transforming IT solutions that support and enable both the business and technology for global companies, Carmichael also focuses his 20+ years of experience on advising senior executives as a go-to strategic partner. His career is nearly industry agnostic, covering life sciences, security, retail, and technology. He was key in Oracle’s $7.4B acquisition of Sun, leading the IT applications migration within that large-scale global multi-cloud initiative. These accomplishments have not gone unnoticed, as he’s been recognized as a Large Corporate Finalist for multiple years (including 2023) in the Bay Area CIO of the Year Oribe Awards for his exceptional leadership, management effectiveness, and business value created through technology innovation.
Ken Cushman, Head of IT and CIO at Pinterest
With more than 465 million people visiting Pinterest each month, Cushman has his work cut out for him as Head of IT and CIO. A whopping 55% of users leverage the platform as a place to shop, which in turn demands continuous new tools and the latest in technological innovation. Cushman is continuously inspired by the company mission to bring everyone the inspiration to create a life they love and finds the most ingenuity when working closely with his team. A critical focus of his at Pinterest is to expand upon ways the IT organization can enable the business.
Jon Dack, CIO at Celonis
At Celonis, Dack oversees Enterprise Business Systems, Global IT Infrastructure & Support, Enterprise Security, and overall Digital Strategy. He uses his perch to consistently search out unique ways to increase the effectiveness of data and technology with a tight focus on spend management, all the while supporting business goals. A critical focal point of his role is leveraging technology and data to enable business units to increase efficiency. Upon first joining the org, Dack zeroed in on sales processes, accounts payable, and accounts receivable to uncover any hidden opportunities. He separates process improvements into two areas; the customer lifecycle and the employee lifecycle, and rolls this framework out as how the business operates. He feels that IT support also has room for improvement process-wise, and encourages teams to leverage automation. For growth, he structures teams around high-end, high-yield work rather than mundane tasks such as managing tickets.
Michael Denari, Head of IT at Canva
Hailing from Santa Barbara, CA, Denari leapt at the chance to take on a role at Canva in Sydney, Australia. That experience has inspired him to encourage others to take risks in life, be it ‘small, measured risks on projects, pushing for a new internal role, or landing a new gig’, he values building the ‘confidence muscle’ in his team and those around him. Denari takes this ambition seriously and applies it to professional challenges, one of which is a critical one; SaaS sprawl. He is developing ways for the org to manage their SaaS infrastructure and drive policy around it. The IT team hosted their first inaugural IT:XT conference to increase productivity at Canva by aligning initiatives supporting business objectives. An example? The tech support and vibe teams collaborated to launch Canva TV Studio at the Sydney campus earlier this year, a testament to Denari’s dedication in partnerships with vendors, but also cross-functionally within internal teams.
Lucius DiPhillips, CIO at Airbnb
DiPhillips, Airbnb's CIO since 2020, has led the company through a period of unprecedented innovation, growth, and profitability. With a philosophy he calls "high-tech human touch," DiPhillips guided Airbnb’s business technology team to develop a platform that builds connection and belonging through technology. DiPhillips’ vision has been instrumental in shaping the team's initiatives, including propelling Airbnb to be an early adopter of AI, implementing next-generation backend systems and infrastructure, and moving physical data centers to the cloud. By doing so, he reduced costs while providing scalability, better security, and greater agility in responding to new business requirements and challenges.
His demonstrated success over 20 years have earned him expanded responsibilities beyond core IT systems to include oversight of revenue-generating, customer-facing insurance platforms. Beyond his core responsibilities, DiPhillips leads the Airbnb Tech Diversity Council, a group of senior technical leaders at Airbnb tasked with amplifying and advocating for diversity-related projects and initiatives.
Joy Driscoll Durling, EVP, Chief Information and Data Officer at Procore Technologies
Joining Procore in 2022 as their first ever EVP, Chief Information and Data Officer, Durling is responsible for leading the company’s data-as-a-product strategy in addition to information technology, data intelligence, and product and information security. The construction industry is her primary customer base, and with it comes massive amounts of data generated by millions of construction workers leveraging the Procore connected platform. Durling’s main focus is to continue to transform Procore into an org with a data-driven culture. In supporting the company’s mission to ‘connect everyone in construction on a global platform to better leverage the power of their data to do the best work of their lives and run better businesses’, Durling has been instrumental in multiple initiatives including Procore Copilot, Connectability, and Procore Pay. She has been vocal about how modern CIOs should evolve, and spoke at Procore’s inaugural CIO forum. Durling discussed the ‘forces reshaping the role of the modern CIO from embracing technologies to cultivating data-driven cultures and catalyzing innovation.’ She continues to frame innovation with technology and predictive, data-driven experiences.
Jim Gearhart. VP, Head of Information Technology at Gong
Gearhart handles challenges such as the shift to the public cloud, SaaS sprawl, and ensuring smooth customer and employee experiences by ensuring his role has a seat at the strategic, decision-making table. After all, he’s responsible for keeping the business moving forward at Gong as well as driving growth and managing critical systems, all of which have a direct impact on revenue. He’s known to motivate his team to ‘mine for gold’ by setting a goal each day to learn more about the business and increase their understanding around critical business drivers. In turn, this knowledge helps them discover new revenue-increasing technologies.
Emily Glassberg Sands, Head of Information at Stripe
With an economist background, Glassberg Sands is in her element when leveraging data to understand the decisions made by companies and when building products that apply solutions to widespread market inefficiencies. At Stripe, she leads the information organization encompassing the Data Science, Growth, ML Infra, Business Applications, and Corporate Technology teams. Her focus surrounds simplifying ways for companies to generate new monetization strategies that are also efficient for their developers.
Patricia Grant. SVP and Chief Information Officer at Tenable
At Tenable, Grant is responsible for driving digital transformation, innovation, and modernization to support the business. Being at the forefront of the cybersecurity industry, Tenable has the path to $1 billion in sight and Grant is laser-focused on making sure the tools, technology, processes, and people are in place to ensure the company scales toward this goal. To do so, she’s centered her strategy on three key business areas: resource efficiency (with pressure on cost optimization), frictionless go-to-market experiences, and optimizing end-user experiences - both internally and externally. A few ways Grant plans to achieve success in these areas is by increasing automation by auditing current processes and systems, ensuring employees have the tools they need when they need them, and to ensure all tech is ‘simple, easy, and intuitive.’
H - L
Mike Hamilton, VP, Information Technology and Enterprise Engineering at Cruise
Throughout his career, Hamilton has put a spotlight on this belief: building a strong and high functioning team drives business results through partnership and collaboration with business partners. Via his role at Cruise, he keeps this belief alive by enabling IT to drive success for the business by leveraging both the technical depth of the IT team and the domain knowledge of business partners. Combining these elements and valuing collaboration allows his team to solve the toughest business problems thrown their way. Respecting and celebrating the professional and personal lives of his team, he aspires to inspire them to constantly be looking for ways to learn and improve while enjoying a powerful sense of achievement. Hamilton builds a culture for his organization that he says sets them up for success - one in which team members feel safe and risk-taking and innovation are encouraged to help identify effective solutions to propel the business forward.
Jadee Hanson, CIO at Code42
With honors such as The Forbes CIO Next List 2023, Top 25 Women in Cybersecurity by The Software Report 2022, and one of 2022’s Top 100 Women in Security by Cyber Defense Magazine (not to mention quotes in respected publications as Inc. Magazine, Forbes, and the Wall Street Journal), it’s no surprise that Hanson landed a spot on our list too. Her role as CIO and CISO at Code42 has her leading both enterprise security and technology strategy. Hanson is modernizing the CIO/CISO role at Code42 by turning the Security division into a revenue-driving business enabler and elevating the role of security across the organization. Within her short tenure thus far, she has increased the company’s cyber detection, response, and recovery capabilities by an impressive 90%. Code42’s corporate technology infrastructure has also been impacted by Hanson’s outstanding skills, as she streamlined and transitioned all services to the cloud, which created more than $1.2 million in SaaS-based spending decreases. Always a proponent of knowledge-sharing, in 2020 Hanson (along with Code42 President and CEO Joe Payne and former Code42 VP Mark Wojtasiak) penned the book, ‘Inside Jobs: Why Insider Risk is the Biggest Cyber Threat You Can’t Ignore’ to help orgs embrace today’s collaborative culture in a secure way without slowing the business down.
Brian Harris, CISO/SVP of Technical Operations at DraftKings Inc.
Joining DraftKings in 2014 as IT Director, Harris has soared through the ranks to his current role of CISO/SVP of Technical Operations. Prior to DraftKings, he polished his technical skills with a two year stint at TripAdvisor. Harris and the team at DraftKings are constantly pushing the envelope with new ways to innovate. In the past month alone, they have announced a ribbon cutting on their new DraftKings Sportsbook located within a PGA Tour tournament location at TPC Scottsdale. The 13,000 square foot space of course boasts state-of-the-art technology including 3,400 square feet of video walls. As well, the team announced plans to launch an online sportsbook in Maine through a deal with the Passamaquoddy Tribe. Harris will no doubt continue to propel DraftKings forward through the use of tech and data, with the latest in security technology.
Jeff Haslem, Chief Information Officer at Talkdesk
At Talkdesk, Haslem is charged with global initiatives involving the company’s security, information technology, and business systems. That includes helping this fast-growing company scale their technology operations in record time while delivering the best customer experiences possible. Haslem’s team is focused on ensuring the IT engine and all supporting aspects are executing at their highest level to enable teams across the org to work effectively while speeding time to market. Among the initiatives Haslem champions is formalizing the IT and data strategies to surpass Talkdesk’s aggressive business goals.
Paul Heard, Chief Information Officer at Mimecast
A current focus of Heard’s is one likely toward the top of the list of many CIOs - exploring how AI can safely enable business success. At Mimecast, he’s responsible for all the technological needs of the company including the data organization, global infrastructure & operations and applications for internal and partners’ use. Heard builds a culture that celebrates new ideas and challenges the status quo. Growth-focused or spend management projects are where he shines, having the uncanny ability to identify the right people to include to solve issues quicker and with outstanding results. Heard did so while at Hewlett Packard, during the separation into two companies, with a team of 800 people in a jaw-dropping short nine months. In his words, he “enabled the $8B sale of HP software by creating an end to end landscape, handling huge complexity including managing teams from HP IT, Deloitte and DXC to achieve the result in 12 months.” Never a walled garden, Heard can be found sharing his knowledge on stage, through published articles, or simply via chats with his team and colleagues.
Chris Hymes, Chief Information Security Officer and Head of Enterprise IT at Riot Games
Nearing a decade at Riot Games, Hymes is both the CISO and Head of Enterprise IT. He oversees the corporate IT infrastructure and works to support the security of the global gaming platform. His team is composed of both security and IT professionals and ensures they have a handle on the company strategy and vision so they may be key drivers throughout the org. With over 100 million players across the globe, Hymes must ensure compliance with the EU’s GDPR regulation to protect this growing roster of gamers and support the mission to make Riot Games the most player-focused game company in the world. Due to this massive, global audience, the security side of his team deals with a growing number of obstacles, especially when preventing fraud. When building out a strong security team as a company like Riot requires, Hymes recommends thinking long-term, surrounding yourself with the right people, and equipping them with the skills to take over when the time comes.
Tope Iluyomade, VP of Business Technology at Marqeta
At Marqeta, Iluyomade is accountable for the company’s digital & technology strategy, services, organization, and governance. A driving force that has led him throughout his career is the belief that engaging customers, addressing issues, and incorporating requested features drives product improvement and holds tenfold more value than creating what you believe is necessary. He builds people-focused teams that are inspired to make a big impact across key areas of IT functions including strategy development, cybersecurity, analytics, business intelligence, and technical operations. Having been described as a strategic visionary and an innovative pioneer, Iluyomade creates a culture of nurturing transformative ideas through strong coalitions of cross-collaborative teams.
Sumit Johar, Chief Information Officer at Automation Anywhere
As CIO at Automation Anywhere, Johar oversees building and executing the IT strategy to simplify, automate and secure internal operations while driving growth. He’s responsible for leading and overseeing the vision, strategy, and operations of Automation Anywhere’s IT department globally and provides strategic IT leadership and direction to all business units and functions. All this, while also fostering innovation and streamlining operations by maximizing the company’s internal use of its Automation 360 cloud-native RPA platform. He and his team follow the principle of ‘Automation First’ , keeping the cost of managing ERP and CRM operations in control, while reimagining how work should get done. Johar partners with internal resources such as Sales and Marketing teams to provide thought Leadership for IT leaders in the Automation space. Johar is currently leading the company’s internal program to leverage generative AI in a way that reduces costs and improves employee and customer experience. He believes that democratizing technology is the way to truly unlock its potential, and as proof, he created the company's first Automation Center of Excellence and a Customer Zero program which centers on making IT the best customer for their own technology.
Eric Johnson, CIO at PagerDuty
Having just joined PagerDuty a few months ago after four years as CIO of SurveyMonkey, Johnson is already making an impact. He has hit the ground running managing the company’s critical IT infrastructure, data management and enterprise systems to further their mission of revolutionizing operations and building trust. A key area of focus for Johnson and team is to modernize operations with the PagerDuty Operations Cloud (which recently announced a new addition to PagerDuty Copilot, the assistive automation capabilities segment - now offering a Slack-based, generative AI assistant). Johnson will continue to further the mission of the company to support CIOs by dedicating efforts to protect revenue, reduce operating costs and mitigate the risk and costs associated with major operational failures that CIOs and their companies face.
Bo Kim, CISO & CIO - Head of Security and IT at Gusto
As CISO and CIO, heading up both Security and IT at Gusto, Kim has focused on expanding services that support and enable business agility and growth. He has built a collaborative culture everywhere he lands, building global teams across Enterprise Applications, Information Security, Infrastructure and End User Services. Kim values leading with a foundation of extreme ownership, transparency and empathy combined with coaching and development for his team.
Brian Klapac, Senior Vice President, IT and Workplace Services at Smartsheet
Klapac leads Smartsheet's global IT and Facilities teams, guiding the company's strategies for Enterprise Systems, IT Infrastructure, IT Support, and Workplace Services. His role includes CIO functions and partners across all levels of the company to develop organization-wide IT strategy to improve the org’s capabilities and achieve its strategic goals for a publicly traded, high-growth SaaS company with expanding international operations. Having joined Smartsheet in 2022, Klapac has also been leading the IT function, including creating Smartsheet solutions to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of business processes across the company. Throughout his career he has focused on building teams, scaling internal operations, and improving customer success.
David Koenig, Chief Information Officer at Delinea
After three years as CIO of Sprinklr, Koenig joined Delinea about a year ago, assuming leadership of the company’s IT strategy and operations, infrastructure, business applications, and helpdesk teams. A key focus of Koenig’s is driving digital innovation initiatives and ensuring corporate information security. As Delinea continues to scale operations to meet growing demands for privileged access controls, Koenig is driving collaboration with the team to improve processes for customer experience and innovation adoptions, all while making sure security is top of mind. His 25+ years of experience in the global technology space supporting Fortune 500 companies speaks to the success he’s had increasing business agility through strategic architecture, data-driven management and governance, and robust engineering…experience all being applied at Delinea as they continue to hit growth benchmarks.
John Lake, Vice President, Enterprise Applications at Toast
Lake joined Toast as the Vice President of Enterprise Applications leading the strategy, development, and delivery of IT solutions that support business growth and customer success. He has brought his passion for leveraging IT as an enabler for business transformation to Toast as they enhance the customer experience and build strong business partnerships internally and externally. Lake focuses on building and managing high-performing IT teams, ensuring they are nimble enough to handle complex projects and programs, including implementing and integrating SaaS-based solutions while always ensuring information security and compliance. Lake is also an active board member and advisor for two non-profit organizations, where he shares his insights and expertise on IT trends and best practices.
Praniti Lakhwara, Chief Information Officer at Zscaler
As CIO at Zscaler, Lakhwara is responsible for leading the company’s information technology solutions and enabling a seamless experience for customers and employees. One of her main areas of focus has been driving a comprehensive strategy to help scale the company rapidly, build a world-class IT organization, deliver innovative solutions globally, and create a secure robust infrastructure. Lakhwara was named to the Womentech Network’s 100 Executive Women in Tech to Watch in 2023 and is a highly sought after and respected IT expert throughout the industry.
Mindy Lieberman, Chief Information Officer at MongoDB
Lieberman brings broad experience to the role of CIO at MongoDB, leading the global IT organization responsible for business system delivery, data engineering and analytics, corporate infrastructure, collaboration tools, and IT Operations. Before joining MongoDB, she built out teams and the business system infrastructure supporting Finance, Employee Experience, Sales, and Enterprise Data at Peloton, Okta, Zendesk, and Salesforce. Lieberman’s road to IT began in a unique way, as a researcher at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, only making the switch to computer science when she realized her CS friends were enjoying themselves more than she was. Her reputation precedes her when it comes to building highly skilled and collaborative teams who partner with the business to achieve company goals. Her management style includes motivating through inspiration while also providing clear direction.
Philip Luedtke, VP, IT & Business Systems at GitHub
Luedtke first joined GitHub back in 2019, leaving in 2020 to join Podium. He returned to GitHub, again as VP of IT & Business Systems in 2021, where he still leads the company’s IT initiatives today. A self-described internal combustion geek, Luedtke enjoys all things that ‘go’ with wheels. When he’s not solving problems and driving innovation at GitHub, he can be found documenting life through photography or hanging out with his family on the ski slopes or bike trails. Or, as he puts it, ‘doing nerdy things’.
M - Z
Chetna Mahajan, Chief Digital and Information Officer at Amplitude
Award winner, advisor for half a dozen organizations, ample credit from a variety of companies for transforming their enterprises and driving their global strategies with digital innovations…that’s Mahajan in a nutshell. Did we mention she has led and participated in 15 sizable integrations - mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures? In her roles as CIO, she has handled $200M+ budgets while leading 450+ diverse and global teams. Mahajan has become the industry go-to source for subject matter expertise for strategy development, agile execution, and operational excellence. As Amplitude is built on modern machine learning and generative AI technologies, Mahajan has spoken out regarding the impact of gen AI. She sees this evolution as shifting developers to being the true problem solvers, able to design the solution to what users need. One of her predictions moving forward is that developers will have to change their skill sets now that gen AI has the potential to field natural language requests and translate them to any integrated development environment. Having joined Amplitude just over a year ago, the business impact of generative AI is something Mahajan will be focused on as she continues to map out her 2024.
Chet Mandair, Chief Information Officer at Guidewire Software
As CIO, Mandair oversees Guidewire’s global Business Technology organization to support the company’s growth and remote-first working modality by delivering delightful, safe, connected experiences for the Guidewire community. First stepping into the role four years ago, his core focus was migrating operations to the cloud, transforming the global company of 3,200 employees into a 100% cloud-based infrastructure within 12 months. Another early accomplishment was having the company embrace a data-driven culture. When he first arrived at Guidewire, they were mainly using spreadsheets. Under Mandair’s guidance, the company shifted from spreadsheets to dashboards and today the org leverages LiveBoards, enabling them to harness live data to make informed decisions. His influence also impacted the company’s technology mindset, moving from a traditional waterfall approach to becoming an agile product-driven organization, very similar to engineering groups. Moving forward, Mandair and team are working toward four key areas: simplifying and scaling their existing process via automation, democratizing data to better support business decisions, optimizing customer support, and supporting disruptive innovation by identifying new business ideas to incrementally iterate and enhance their current state.
Rami Mazid, SVP, CIO at Nutanix
Having joined Nutanix as CIO a few months ago after over 7 years at eBay, Mazid’s first order of business was to contribute to Nutanix's mission of simplifying IT infrastructure and driving innovation in the industry. The field of hyper-converged infrastructure and hybrid multi cloud is an exciting one, and in his role Mazid is responsible for IT Operations, Network Services, Systems Engineering, Cloud Operations, Application Services & Information Security. Bonus: He’s held Top Secret Clearance with the U.S. Department of Defense and has more training, certs, and development than you can count.
Matthew Minetola, Chief Information Officer at Elastic
From Hewlett-Packard to E*TRADE, and now to Elastic, Minetola’s career has given him extensive experience in transforming technology systems, business alignment, financial management and governance, market share growth strategies, the list goes on. He describes the role of CIO as the ability to provide the information a business needs in order to make decisions and has worked toward enabling companies to access 80%+ of valuable data to make informed business decisions. Throughout his career as CIO and Head of Technology, Minetola has focused on applying technology to increase spend management, propel business growth, and transform businesses to catapult past planned milestones.
Teza Mukkavilli, Chief Security Officer and SVP, IT at ChargePoint
As the Chief Security Officer and Head of IT at ChargePoint, Mukkavilli is charged with IT Business applications, information security, and global quality compliance. This all comes with the parallel roles of CIO and CISO, ensuring all strategic and operational plans enhance both IT and security. Mukkavilli has made a name for himself when it comes to achieving IT business cost optimization, building global teams, implementing GDPR and CCPA compliance, establishing security engineering and third-party risk management capabilities, and developing enterprise risk and compliance control frameworks. With that comes holding multiple cyber security certifications such as FedRAMP, SOC2, PCI, and ISO. As he’s built his career, Mukkavilli has focused on programs that drive organizational change and enterprise transformations that impact sustainable improvements worldwide.
Saura Naim, Vice President Information Technology at Benchling
Joining Benchling as VP of Information Technology a mere few months ago, Naim is ramping up quickly with strategic vision, team mission, and plans supporting the over 200,000 scientists across Fortune 500 companies, startups, and renowned academic institutions that are building on Benchling. Over her career, Naim has valued relying on a data-driven, collaborative, and outcome focused approach. In doing so, she connects people, process, and technology with alignment of cross functional stakeholders. To truly transform business models and tackle large-scale challenges, Naim architects repeatable and scalable processes. Her management and people strategy centers around promoting and mentoring people in the workplace in addition to within the organization globally to ignite impact and change.
Dan O'Donnell. Vice President Information Technology at Zoominfo
After eight years at Cognex, O’Donnell made the move to Zoominfo about a year ago, managing the global IT team with a focus on elevating critical processes and improving overall efficiencies and productivity. Closely partnering with other internal technology teams to support and enable them to achieve goal alignment and overall business success is a key aspect of his working strategy. O’Donnell’s passion surrounds identifying profit boosting solutions and combining it with his emotional intelligence skills to lead businesses through strategic digital transformations to meet business objectives.
Shahan Parshad, Chief Information Officer at Airtable
Parshad made his way to Airtable a few months ago after over seven years at Salesforce and a four year stint at Confluent, heading up Business Technology and Data. As CIO for the low-code platform for building collaborative apps, he helps support strategies focused on winning large enterprise clients while also controlling spend. As the market has shifted toward efficient growth rather than ‘growth at all costs’, Parshad is responsible for ensuring the business operates in a mature way, paving the path toward becoming a public company with durability and efficiency around growth.
Archana Rao, Chief Information Officer at Unity
As CIO, Rao is charged with the internal systems supporting employees and the applications that support business functions. A continued goal during her tenure at Unity is to enable the business to leverage IT (and vice-versa), giving the function a seat at the table to drive strong business outcomes to propel growth. Rao was named to the Womentech, ‘100 Women in Tech Leaders to Watch in 2023’ due to her passion and resolve to make a difference in the tech world.
Shyama Rose, Chief Information Security Officer & Head of Information Technology at Affirm, Inc.
As CISO and Head of IT for Affirm, Rose favors a transformative approach to cyber defense and IT optimization. Her team is focused on supporting the company mission to build a payment network based on trust, transparency, and putting people first. As such, Rose’s initiatives revolve around creating a resilient and secure environment to support the scalability of all products and technology. Key areas of focus surround ensuring the protection of customer financial data as well as ensuring a seamless and innovative experience. Always a partner to the business, Rose aligns security and technology pursuits with business goals. Her leadership style consists of fostering resilient teams through innovation and mentorship.
Pranav Shahi, VP, Head of Business Technology at ServiceTitan
After five years at Atlassian, Shahi recently joined ServiceTitan, heading up Business Technology. His emphasis is on achieving scalability within complex organizations like ServiceTitan and delivering cost-effective solutions. His philosophy is success happens around building an IT-driven business transformation. His diverse career has included leading large teams for companies from startups to Fortune 100 supporting high-growth environments. Shahi has built frameworks applying technology to achieve rapid value for the business, along with technology governance and aligned organizational vision.
Daniel Shmitt, SVP and CIO at SiriusXM
Currently SVP and CIO at SiriusXM, Shmitt’s prior experience had him move from MLB Advanced Media to spin off company Disney Streaming Services. As CIO, Shmitt is in charge of driving company technology evolution in alignment with business vision. He has served on the board of publicly traded technology firms including having accountability for strategic direction impacting offices around the globe. Earlier in his career, Shmitt enjoyed a successful 10-year tenure as a CEO of a technology services firm, providing solutions to financial organizations with >$1Billion AUM.
Shane Smith, VP, Technology Services at Epic Games
Joining Epic Games as IT Director just over five years ago, Smith has accelerated through the ranks, holding the role of VP, Technology Services for the past year. Throughout his career he has been on both the scoping and executing sides of major IT projects, many of which were managed by the corporate infrastructure team. Cross-collaboration to ensure business objective alignment has been key, as he’s partnered with development, risk management, legal, engineering, operations, and support in order to deliver successful solutions. He has both built and redesigned critical IT systems and infrastructure including networking, virtualization, storage, and source control. Smith values mentoring others in the field, and has participated as an advisor in global steering committees tasked with developing policy and selecting global IT solutions.
Kevin Smith, Chief Information Officer at Lyft
A recent move to Lyft as CIO enables Smith to leverage his strong passion for IT combined with an obsession for exceptional customer experience. He’s held tight to the firm belief that a well-aligned and well-structured IT group can provide a competitive advantage in any business. His leadership style is one of creating a people-first culture, investing in his team to support them reaching their full potential, creating loyalty, and producing stellar results through connection and inspiration. His storied career includes global technology driven companies Facebook, Twitch, and Stripe where he focused on executing technology roadmaps that aligned with business outcomes and produced customer-focused results.
Saket Srivastava, Chief Information Officer at Asana
As CIO for Asana, Srivastava is leveraging the role to double down and simplify their stack in a variety of ways, taking a harder look at technology they have in their environment and identifying those that are driving value. Guiding his team to think in more of an enterprise architecture mindset, where there's a cohesiveness around the experience for the employee is a key focus. As Srivastava sees it, another shift for the CIO function is to be in lockstep with employees on an even deeper level. He and his team are communicating more, taking the workforce along on the journey, as opposed to operating on the back end and rolling out products with visions that no one seems to understand. Srivastava is a recognized thought leader in the consulting domain, mentoring large teams across Europe, Asia, and North America.
Alex Sukennik, Chief Information Officer at Semrush
As CIO, Sukennik’s leadership style is one of motivation, which he sees as the key to maximize levels of business value and productivity. His mantra has been to throw the status quo to the wayside and be an agent of change in high-growth organizations that are moving quickly and in need of transformation. Leveraging technology to fuel business growth, Sukennik elevates high-performance global infrastructures and applications while keeping spend management top of mind. Reliable visibility into data is the foundation for his successful business initiatives, enabling teams to shift to an agile environment and be prepared for whatever challenges the market throws their way.
Sandy Venugopal, Chief Information Officer at SentinelOne
As CIO for Uber and now SentinelOne, Venugopal leads global IT teams overseeing core infrastructure, Operations and Support, Data Infrastructure and Analytics, enterprise productivity applications, business platforms, integrations, and custom solutions. The five areas of focus she considers the foundation to her approach are leadership and solution delivery for technology, enterprise, and business systems, coaching and developing high performing teams, gaining trust throughout the organization, effective planning and execution of strategic, organizational and technical initiatives, and aligning business strategy with actionable projects worthy of investment.
Bryan Wise, Chief Information Officer at 6sense
As CIO for 6sense, Wise is responsible for overseeing and driving innovation within the Business Technology team. This function includes Enterprise Applications, Security, IT Operations, Corporate Data, and Procurement. Those around him have frequently heard the phrase, ‘automation is the key!’. A critical goal that Wise is focused on is improving revenue team efficiency. The four areas the team is concentrating on to achieve that goal are eliminating duplicated effort leveraging automation (they aim to cut 67,000 hours of manual work from operations this fiscal year), ruthlessly prioritizing the high-value work that matters, breaking down silos across the revenue team, and boosting employee satisfaction and sense of contribution and achievement. Wise has utilized the 6sense solution internally as well, experimenting with Sales Intelligence and AI to see what processes and tools maximize results while minimizing effort and spend.
Scott Wu, Vice President, Head of IT at SoFi
As VP of IT at SoFi as of a few months ago, Wu (a self-proclaimed battle-tested leader) is ramping up by building an operationally excellent team that consistently challenges standards to drive global, robust, and scalable technology. He prefers to build a culture of empowerment in IT and engineering to execute strategic business goals rapidly and efficiently. This approach has seen success while driving performance, integrity, and accountability through data analytics and quantitative reporting.
Naveen Zutshi, Chief Information Officer at Databricks
As the first ever CIO for Databricks, Zutshi is responsible for information technology solutions and driving transformational programs to help the company scale its consumption based business globally. Supporting a tech-centric product such as Databricks has led Zutshi to structure the IT team in a way that is differentiated from other areas of the (tech-savvy) company. One way he’s done this is ensuring the team is more engineering-centered. He set up both a product management function and a strong engineering function within IT, to gain the respect and trust of engineers when delivering solutions to them. In addition to his role at Databricks, he serves on the board of advisors for a variety of fast growing startups like Propelo & ToriiHQ and established companies like Zoom and Rubrik. Zutshi is also an investor in many fast growing startups and early stage VCs.
10 Future CIOs 2023
We’ve created this list to recognize the most influential future CIOs of 2023!
Doug Casanova, Senior Director of IT at Outreach
Over his career of leading IT teams and infrastructure, Casanova has been charged with managing policies, production support, database administration, networks, and systems support, among other responsibilities. When leading global teams, he doubles down on three key areas - minimizing downtime, increasing performance, streamlining procedures and change management processes, and contributing value throughout the business. His approach to leadership is one of empowerment, enabling his team to develop long-term sustainable results in career growth.
Anais Fletcher, Sr. Director of IT & Business Systems at Instacart
When Fletcher joined Instacart just over five years ago, she built the IT function from scratch. Not only did she scale the team and build the foundational infrastructure for optimal company growth, she did so by nurturing cross-functional teams. As her tenure continued, Fletcher developed strategic technology roadmaps supporting business and security initiatives, working with both the CTO and CISO. When leading business critical projects, she has created operating frameworks that support mergers and acquisitions, office expansions, vendor management, and more. Most recently she has expanded her role scope to include Business Systems teams and now directly reports to the CISO.
Daniel Jacobson, Senior Director of Enterprise Technology at Datadog
As Senior Director of Enterprise Technology at Datadog, Jacobson oversees both the Enterprise IT and Business Systems teams. Having been at the company for over six years, he has been instrumental in multiple critical projects, including the company-wide rollout of security keys. He and his team ensured company-wide visibility around this OKR, and achieved the overall goal of 100% adoption success. Jacobson structures his team to support the business, such as with the Business Systems Analysts, who work with cross functional stakeholders to identify time-consuming processes and develop technical solutions that are secure, efficient, reliable, and scalable. As the company scales, his focus centers on the growth of the operations, security, and support aspects of the team and the company-wide impact to be made.
Sean Joerg, Senior Director, Corporate Technology at Reddit
Joerg currently heads up IT at Reddit as Senior Director, Corporate Technology. His focus has been on maturing the overall Corporate Technology function, while enabling teams to deliver effective community-focused conversations and content. So far, his impressive career pre-Reddit has taken him to heavy-hitters Postmates, Flexport, Twitter, and Apple. Everywhere he lands, Joerg builds ‘ahead of the curve’ programs and services that push the innovation envelope. Always one to offer support, he mentors others in the industry to deliver high impact integrated technology systems and strategies.
JR Laterni, Head of IT at Squarespace
Over his 20+ year career, Laterni has zeroed in on five critical areas - cloud engineering, infrastructure, project management, SaaS ops, and support. He builds a culture around innovation as an effort to shift to an agile environment that supports and encourages outside of the box thinking and flexibility. He has specialized in IT operations, networking, firewalls, servers, corporate email, and cloud solutions and has created blue prints around each, keeping spend management top of mind. A global player/coach at heart, Laterni continues to mentor peers and colleagues, making the complicated…uncomplicated.
Nirav Pandya, Sr. Director of IT and Workplace at Checkr, Inc.
Joining Checkr in 2021, Pandya recently rose through the ranks to Sr. Director of IT and Workplace. There, he focuses on three key areas - strategic thinking, IT transformation, and emerging technologies. Pandya has played a critical role in expanding the SaaS Engineering team to include roles with a specific focus on Okta and automation. His team focuses on building delightful solutions for the business and dives deep into the data and the details to support organizational initiatives.
Mark Pienpakdee, Senior Director, IT Operations and Engineering at Anaplan
One of Pienpakdee’s favorite things about his role at Anaplan is helping to build an impactful IT team to support both technical and business objectives. His two passions, technology and customer service, have been of focus in recent years as he’s polished his skills supporting high-growth, fast-paced companies. Pienpakdee credits valuing growing a loyal user base and crafting stellar customer experiences with his career growth moving from technical support to leadership and cross-functional responsibilities.
Emanuele Sparvoli, Director of IT at Intercom
Sparvoli has spent the past seven years at Intercom, building his career from IT Lead to Director of IT (with a few roles in between spanning engineering and IT). He prioritizes bringing the business and IT together, ensuring mission and vision alignment. Focusing on IT management and project management has helped accelerate Sparvoli’s leadership skills and nurtured his SaaS first sensibility. He continues to dive into IAM, compliance, and zero trust to keep the organization productive and secure.
Frank Weigel, Senior Director, IT & Security at Lattice
Weigel was at Lattice back when there were 80 employees, and he helped scale the organization to a workforce of 700+. Three crucial areas of recent focus for Weigel are establishing and scaling a comprehensive security program, ensuring compliance with GDPR and CCPA, and leveraging automation to scale a small team.
Cale Wenthur, Sr. Director, Information Technology at Seismic
Wenthur and team recently built the tech experience at Seismic’s new San Diego headquarters, building an exceptional environment for the team to work and collaborate. With his extensive experience in creating, implementing, and supporting large-scale network infrastructures, Wenthur has made a serious impact within the two years he’s been at Seismic. His dual background in engineering and management lends itself well to incredibly clear communication to internal and external customers and stakeholders.
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