CIOs of the Year - CBJonline.com

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Jun 8, 2015 - post-op reminder calls for surgical services. The patient monitoring/fall preven- tion system saved his me
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Advertising Supplement

The Los Angeles Business Journal presents

CIOs of the Year

2015 Presenting Sponsosr:

Gold Sponsors: Laserfiche Workday

Community Partners:

®

This special advertising supplement did not involve the reporting or editing staff of the Los Angeles Business Journal.

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26 AN ADVERTISING SUPPLEMENT TO THE LOS ANGELES BUSINESS JOURNAL

JUNE 8, 2015

CIOs OF THE YEAR 2015

Publisher’s Letter hard to think of an industry-leading company that could survive without a great CIO. These important individuals and their teams play vital roles in making Los Angeles businesses, institutions and nonprofit groups successful. Their decisions often impact all aspects of a business, including their company’s growth, profitability, functionality and competitiveness in the marketplace. This is our fourth year of celebrating the cream of the proverbial crop among Los Angeles’ finest IT leadership minds with an awards event for those who have their hands on the steering wheels of new technology. Our annual Los Angeles Business Journal CIO/CTO Awards, held Wednesday, June 3rd at the LA Hotel Downtown, give us the opportunity to stop for a moment and applaud the IT inventiveness and technological achievements of the corporate space’s hi-tech men and women – the often unsung architects and enablers of our companies’ operational successes. Indeed, it’s the CIOs who are often charged with providing the operational tools required to match a CEO’s vision for a company. So for all the great CIOs celebrated by our awards this year,

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we say thank you and congratulations! Your tireless contributions to the companies you serve and ultimately, our business community as a whole, are appreciated. This year’s list of superb finalists (all profiled in these pages) — each an example of excellence in the field of corporate technology stewardship — made it even more difficult to arrive at the honorees. We are particularly excited to shine a light on ten particularly outstanding honorees announced in ten categories. We applaud each of the honorees and the terrific finalists who are also profiled in these pages. Also, many thanks to the support provided by our presenting sponsors, Robert Half Technology and Williams Data Management, and to our community partners Association of Information Technology Professionals and the Los Angeles Chapter of ISSA. Best regards,

Matthew A. Toledo Publisher & CEO



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CIOs OF THE YEAR

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JUNE 8, 2015

Honorees CIO OF THE YEAR

JAMES BRADY AREA CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER KAISER PERMANENTE R. James Brady has worked tirelessly to partner with Kaiser Permanente medical center administrative and clinical leadership to align IT strategy and goals to the needs of the business. In his role as a Kaiser Permanente medical service area CIO, he has stepped up and taken on a regional lead role in driving the improvement of strategy and governance between IT and the business. Specifically, he has worked tirelessly to align IT products and services with medical center strategic needs. In addition, Brady has improved the feedback mechanism available for national and regional IT groups by streaming feedback from the business. Recognizing the need to have an up-to-date, consolidated, and comprehensive view of IT projects at a local medical center, regional, and national view, one of the first things he did when he arrived at Kaiser Permanente in 2013 was to engage in an initiative to document over 1,700 technology projects that impacted his local medical centers, providing a high level view to business leaders, enabling them to better identify their strategic priorities. Brady also saved an estimated $3 million with innovative process identifying missed Pulmonary Hypertension, Sepsis, and Pantocypenia reimbursements at Kaiser Permanente. He championed numerous in-patient initiatives at Kaiser Permanente, such as patient monitoring/fall prevention, bed tracking system and optimized BUN workflow, nurse call integration, reduced readmissions, and post-op reminder calls for surgical services. The patient monitoring/fall prevention system saved his medical center $350,000 in year one, and similar savings are expected in ensuing years. In short, among his peer area CIOs at Kaiser Permanente, Brady has taken a lead role in looking for ways to improve the collective influence of the area CIOs to foster improved regional and national efficiencies, and to provide innovate ways IT can better communicate with clinical and business leaders, thus increasing the value to IT to the organization.

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CIOs OF THE YEAR

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Honorees

ENTERPRISE CIO OF THE YEAR (500+ EMPLOYEES)

JON MICHEL GREENWOOD SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, GLOBAL IT SYSTEMS LIVE NATION ENTERTAINMENT, INC. Senior Vice President of Live Nation’s Global IT Systems, Jon Michel Greenwood is responsible for all aspects of Live Nation’s technology systems and strategies globally. This includes the company’s robust event booking systems, enterprise systems, POS at the company’s clubs, amps and venues, software development for HOB.com, and VIP ticketing sites and shared services for QA and the PMO. Greenwood perpetually strives to drive process improvements and has a unique ability to create efficient technical solutions to complex business objectives. He consistently works efficiently to solve problems, create workable solutions and forge compromises. In short, he is effective, diligent and talented – and brings a hearty background of experience to his role at Live Nation. Prior to Live Nation, he held several positions at Sony Music and Sony Corp. of America including Director of QA, and Sr. Director of Content Operations and Promotions, overseeing acquisition, reception, DRM and maintenance for Sony’s content ecosystem for eBook, mobile, music and video ecommerce stores, while also directing production, technology and usability work for large scale promotional initiatives with companies such as Best Buy and Coca-Cola. A former musician, award winning producer and designer, Greenwood has decades of experience in entertainment and technology, having worked on a vast expanse of products in consumer electronics, entertainment, internet, gaming and graphics software with companies and individuals such as Bob Ezrin, Disney, IBM, Microsoft, Monty Python, Pink Floyd and Quincy Jones. He has also achieved multiple US and world patents in software, hardware and process.

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Congratulations, John Williams and all the other 2015 CIO Awards winners!

From your colleagues at



© 2015 Laserfiche. Laserfiche®, Run Smarter®, and Compulink® are registered trademarks of Compulink Management Center, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Laserfiche Proudly Congratulates

K ARL CHAN 2015 CTO of the Year

Thanks for 26 years of technology leadership, vision and innovation!

With 35,000 customers and offices in seven countries, Laserfiche is the world’s largest privately held enterprise content management (ECM) company. More than just document management software, Laserfiche provides powerful workflows, web forms, mobile apps and digital signature integrations that get the right information into the right hands faster and more effectively than ever before.

Visit laserfiche.com/LACIO to learn how Laserfiche enables: ƒ A Fortune 500 healthcare company to reduce the cost of document processing by nearly $1 million ƒ A large university system to accelerate the contract review process by more than 50% ƒ One of the nation’s top digital counties to save $5.5 million by implementing DoD 5015.2-certified records management

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CIOs OF THE YEAR

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Honorees

CORPORATE BUSINESS CIO OF THE YEAR (100-500 EMPLOYEES)

JOHN WILLIAMS SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, PLATFORM OPERATIONS TRUECAR, INC. ECHNOLOGY is essential to everything TrueCar, Inc. does because it is a technology product company that uses data to power its marketplace. The technology decisions that John Williams makes have a tremendous impact on the success or failure of the business. Last year, Williams successfully led TrueCar’s technology team in adopting a new data storage and processing platform, Hadoop. The data platform is the beating heart of TrueCar and switching out all the technology that powers it was an enormous undertaking. Williams looked at where the company would be in the next five to 10 years – thinking strategically about not only the size of the data sets, but also the types of capabilities that would be needed to power next generation TrueCar products. Rather than simply expand and upgrade the existing data platform technology in a linear way, he investigated all options including completely new technologies and approaches. By understanding the radical new capabilities of large-scale distributed computing, Williams was able to develop a new philosophy of how data can be ingested, processed, and exposed to power products and services. The economics of these new systems are so good that virtually unlimited amounts of data can be stored forever. This breakthrough leads to many unique business advantages for TrueCar. As the leader of the technology team for a hyper growth company, Williams’ designs solutions with the assumption that the company will experience massive expansion in market cap within a handful of years. This leads to ambitious solutions that unlock incredible new product capabilities and yield unique competitive advantages in the marketplace. Williams

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believes that innovation often doesn’t come from the top down; it comes from all directions and layers within the organization. Williams is driven to ensure that TrueCar has the type of culture that captures and values this.

EMERGING BUSINESS CIO OF THE YEAR (LESS THAN 100 EMPLOYEES)

KEN WEINER CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER GUMGUM Weiner joined GumGum as its first employee in 2007 and in the eight years since then has grown his engineering team from zero to 30. Under Weiner’s leadership, GumGum’s engineering team consistently demonstrates its position as an industry opinion leader around several software engineering disciplines. He frequently encourages team members to author papers and present at various technology conferences and meet-ups. His leadership extends beyond the realm of just CTO. He motivates and educates all GumGum employees and is a critical component of the energy and passion represented in the company’s culture. As GumGum has become one of the success stories of Silicon Beach, Weiner continues to be a recognized tech community thought leader, both locally and nationally. He has strived to make GumGum a leader in the digital advertising industry by participating in the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s committee for inimage advertising, and his peers call on him continually for his knowledge and expertise about digital advertising. Weiner conducts weekly meetings for the purpose of communicating executive business decisions to middle management. Once a year he conducts an engineering all-hands meeting to lay out the technology roadmap and reinforce the engineering team’s core values. He has the ability to truly educate and roll out the engineering roadmap to all facets of the business. He takes the audience into account, adjusting the message so all members of the team can understand, from the receptionist to the CFO. He makes time to give a special effort to research and seek out tools that can help engineers do their jobs more efficiently. His choice of using Trello for executing scrum is an example of this. His “move fast and break things” approach is a good fit for a startup environment. Because of that motto, the engineering teams at GumGum are able to finish large projects within short amounts of time.

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PARSONS Proudly Recognizes

Congratulations! Your Innovative Contributions in Technology Help Shape our Progress.

RENEE TRAN IT Service Partner of the Year Winner for the Los Angeles Business Journal’s 2015 CIO/CTO Awards

JOE VISCONTI Lifetime Achievement Finalist for the Los Angeles Business Journal’s 2015 CIO/CTO Awards www.parsons.com

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Honorees

GOVERNMENT CIO OF THE YEAR

MICHAEL SYLVESTER DIRECTOR, BUREAU OF CONTRACT AND TECHNICAL SERVICES LOS ANGELES COUNTY DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC SOCIAL SERVICES ICHAEL J. Sylvester is Department Chief Information Officer and Assistant Director of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services (DPSS). He is paving the way with his leadership, with an emphasis on utilizing leading edge technology throughout Los Angeles County, to modernize the department’s systems and make the most of contemporary technology. In the wake of the financial crisis, the need for human services skyrocketed, while resources at DPSS, like many government agencies, continued to tighten. The increase in the number of citizens served, as well as the scope of services needed, stressed long-standing delivery systems rooted in face-toface business processes and paper. Sylvester looked to modernize mission critical technology solutions to fill the gap between demand and resources. He successfully communicated this vision to the Department’s Executive team who provided their full support, and to his IT management team and staff who were critical in bringing his vision to fruition. As one example, Sylvester and his team developed a Mobile Technology Initiative to identify, shape and deploy modern mobile technology that could improve efficiency and customer service. This initiative extended public assistance services beyond the traditional office visit, improving customer service and organizational efficiency by enabling self-service through mobile and browser-based technology. Sylvester and his team were among the first to pioneer and fully integrate document imaging, web portals, Voice Over IP, call-center telephony and mobile applications for use in the public sector. Shaping these tools to conform to the complex public policies and procedures and then securing the

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necessary buy-in to implement these tools to the scale of Los Angeles County has been a true innovation. After shaping the design, Sylvester and his team successfully convinced multiple groups of stakeholders and oversight organizations that client sensitive data could be successfully and securely available on the web and then via a mobile device.

NON-PROFIT CIO OF THE YEAR

RAY AUSTAD WEBMASTER STEPHEN S. WISE TEMPLE Austad has been involved in the technology field since 1996. He joined the Stephen S. Wise Temple and Schools team in 2005, and was last year named Digital Communication and Information Systems Manager. Since 2010, he has been involved in numerous aspects of the Stephen S. Wise Temple information security program and works to make programs and systems both usable and as secure as possible. He also enthusiastically brings security awareness to the IT team, staff, the school and the synagogue community. Austad has made a name for himself with his consistently excellent and innovative approaches to problem resolution, especially when it comes to information security. He has overseen Stephen S. Wise Temple’s WAF product and he is now instrumental in transitioning the Temple’s security to a new outsourced provider. Coworkers report that Austad loves to work with people and help them solve their problems, which has helped contribute to the effective and cohesive team culture at the Temple. Outside of his work at the Temple, but still highly relevant to Austad’s career, is his ongoing series of contributions to the Information Systems Security Association (ISSA). ISSA is the nonprofit community of choice for international cybersecurity professionals dedicated to advancing individual growth, managing technology risk and protecting critical information and infrastructure. Austad has significantly stepped up to help ISSA in recent months and has been working on the organization’s annual summit. In addition to previously serving as ISSA’s technology director on its board, Austad has returned to be ISSA’s security evangelist and help the organization get people to attend its critical information security summit. He has also consulted for the Association and provided his expertise with web and digital marketing and communication for its monthly meetings. He is also a member of OWASP Los Angeles, and regularly attends InfoSec meetings and conferences.

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CIOs OF THE YEAR

2015

Honorees CYBERSECURITY PROFESSIONAL OF THE YEAR

SCOTT HENNON SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, INFORMATION SECURITY MANAGER BUSINESS CITY NATIONAL BANK ITY National Bank’s Scott Hennon has developed, implemented and monitored a long-term information security and privacy strategy inclusive of the people, processes and technology needed to be successful in the short and long term. He has reviewed, implemented, updated and documented companywide information security policies and procedures to align with growing and evolving security needs and requirements. He developed strong collaborative working relationships with groups throughout the company involved with information security matters (Legal, Compliance, Audit, Corporate Security, Application Dev, Network Management, Digital Channels, Operations, Business Dev, etc.). He also partnered with enterprise risk managers to map and develop a common definition and understanding of IT risk. Hennon has implemented leading and innovative cyber security tools and strategies to prevent the organization and clients from costly data breaches and cyber fraud — including developing and validating Enterprise Cyber Preparedness and Response Plans and adding APT, Advanced Malware, and DDoS protection, “big data” advanced forensics, and client fraud protection tools. Hennon’s expertise has enabled him to detect and prevent millions of cyber-attack attempts against company network and systems. He developed and maintained strong relationships with local and federal law enforcement to share information and fight cybercrime – efforts were recognized by L.A. District Attorney’s Office for ongoing work and assistance. Hennon also repeatedly leveraged strong security practices as a competitive advantage to help generate substantial new business from current and prospective clients. It’s worth noting that Hennon does not implement security for the sake of security. He builds strong relationships with the different business line executives and senior leadership to better understand their goals and challenges, and then provides strategies and options for addressing those items. He understands that things like user experience and convenience are very important to the business lines and so he strives to provide strategies to achieve both a world-class user experience as well as world-class security.

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IT TEAM OF THE YEAR (INTERNAL)

VIC HERRERA (TEAM LEADER) CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER DTT SURVEILLANCE, INC. the moment Vic Herrera took leadership of the DTT IT Team over ten years ago, he has not only transformed, but also established key management standards within the department, which have proven successful. Not only has the team’s productivity increased quantitatively, but more so, qualitatively. His management success is attributed to the fact that he has achieved an unparalleled balance of stringency and empathy when dealing with his team. Herrera and his team are adept at deciphering and comprehending the current (and assessing the future) technological needs of the business. This is accomplished through numerous meetings and Q&A sessions with not just his own department, but most importantly, other departments within the company. The team meticulously crafts technological blueprints and roadmaps, and when presenting these to other members of the organization, resolutely solicits feedback and input. Herrera and his fellow teammates never fail to implement viable proposals and solutions from the company, assuring everyone that their needs are met and their ideas are not falling on deaf ears. Subsequently, DTT’s members have come to respect and admire Herrera and his team’s technological methodology - and at the same time - take delight in seeing their ideas come to fruition. Knowing that a team that communicates well stays together, Herrera maintains a strict open-door policy where communication is concerned. He wholly welcomes new and innovative ideas, and constantly challenges others around him to think outside the proverbial, “box.” He is a huge proponent of his team working collaboratively, thereby strengthening the bonds and relationships formed therein. In addition, Herrera never fails to recognize and reward creative team members with tokens of gratitude such as

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movie tickets, gift cards, lunches, weekend trips, etc. His intrepid – yet prudent – approach to change has positively manifested itself in the countless new and more profitable methods by which the company operates.

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CIOs OF THE YEAR

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Honorees

IT SERVICE PARTNER OF THE YEAR (EXTERNAL)

RENEE TRAN (TEAM LEADER) VICE PRESIDENT, BUSINESS & TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS PARSONS Tran is a role model who takes charge, influences decisions, and is not afraid of responsibility or providing input and feedback. She is an active listener who builds consensus using logic, common goals, and cues from others to encourage confidence and optimism in everyone she works with. She is goal oriented and leads by example. She focuses, and places a high priority, on eliminating obstacles for the Information Systems department, so they can achieve their objectives. Tran’s Business & Technology Solutions group comprises an eclectic team of talented individuals who are multidimensional thinkers and problem solvers. These individuals are trusted advisers who are encouraged to think innovatively, take calculated risks, build a network of reach-back talents, and collaborate strategically to achieve their missions and guarantee customer satisfaction. Tran’s vision is for the group to contribute directly to Parsons’ core business by identifying enabling technology to solve customers’ problems. She also encourages her group to build great customer rapport through willingness to dive into the trenches, and excel at the fundamentals of project management. Tran is in a unique position to provide technologyinspired business innovation for Parsons’ internal teams as well as its customers. She has brought a vision for accelerating business line growth through technology-inspired services. These include an increasing emphasis on Parsons’ innovative use of technology to enable business growth; facilitating service delivery improvements through automation; and growing, protecting, and leveraging Parsons’ intellectual property. She is a key supporter of innovation and supports the information systems department’s metric on the subject – so much so that she has made it a requirement in her direct report’s annual performance goals. Tran

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places as much emphasis on supporting opportunistic innovation, which is often generated through resolving customer challenges on a daily basis, as she does for targeted innovations focused on advancing Parsons’ core differentiators.

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD

KARL CHAN CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER LASERFICHE® having been with Laserfiche for more than 25 years, Karl Chan continues to bring fresh perspectives to his role every day. In is his belief that all IT initiatives should increase the company’s capabilities to deliver innovation to both internal and external customers. To this end, he encourages the software development and marketing teams to think creatively about how to solve business problems and package those solutions to generate revenue and establish a competitive advantage. As one of the first Laserfiche employees, Chan has also been instrumental in shaping the company’s entrepreneurial culture. An adaptable leader with keen business acumen to compliment his sharp technical skills, Chan took on the task of leading the marketing team after the sudden and unexpected death of the company’s Vice President of Marketing in 2013. During his tenure as both CTO and Acting Head of Marketing, the company launched a very successful new product, Laserfiche Forms, and began developing and planning for the release of a new cloud platform The successful launch of Laserfiche Forms is a feather in the cap of Chan’s legacy with Laserfiche. It is an e-forms product that was originally developed to solve an internal problem of managing the high volume of internal employee travel requests. Chan’s team extended the solution for recruiting purposes to allow candidates to fill out job applications online, which triggers internal workflows that automatically route the information to HR. When Chan saw how successfully the e-forms solution was meeting the company’s needs, he seized the opportunity to create business value and monetize the solution by bringing it to market. He worked with product marketing to brand the solution “Laserfiche Forms” and sell it to customers. As a result of his creativity and vision, company revenue grew by 11.4% in 2013 and 15% in 2014.

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CIOs OF THE YEAR

2015

FINALISTS

ALBERT AHDOOT COLOCATION AMERICA ONE of the things that makes Albert Ahdoot such an excellent technology executive is that he listens with his ears, eyes and heart. He pays attention to others and understands that when leaders step down from their corporate perches a true conversation can take place. By taking a vast interest in the employees at Colocation America, he promotes communication through conversation – talking with employees and not just to them. This interactivity creates an open and fluid conversation. Ahdoot has a clear vision, plain and simple. His aptitude empowers him to effectively identify opportunities that someone without his experience may not notice or know how to properly execute. His inspiration and vision in leadership allows Colocation America to be more lean and flexible, helping the company adjust faster than competitors. It also helps increase insight into how to improve the flow of delivering value to customers, and his insight helps Colocation America to quickly pivot the direction of the business when the time presents itself.

This year’s esteemed CIO of the Year finalists are arranged below alphabetically by last name. Congratulations to all of the finalists!

DAVID ALEXANDER LOS ANGELES DEPARTMENT OF WATER AND POWER DAVID Alexander relies on empowerment, diversity, and engagement throughout the team. He opts to promote leadership from within the team by encouraging the team to collaborate with and guide the stakeholders throughout the organization in a mutually beneficial manner. He also relies on diversity and inclusion in his organization and encourages team member participation. He enables the team members to participate in all aspects of strategic planning, program development and implementation, and operational duties and encourages engagement and discussion of pertinent topics. Finally, he motivates his team to engage with stakeholders and draw the stakeholders into discussion with team in order to facilitate education and value add in cyber security. In short, Alexander engages in all levels of organization. This is especially challenging as the organization is operationally and financially three discrete organizations. He must manage three sets of liaison activities and continue to ensure a strategic and tactical execution of an enterprise IT security program, but Alexander succeeds at this task with flying colors.

KEVIN BOWMAN CELLUPHONE

SCOTT BURNS GOLDLINE, LLC

CELLUPHONE recently opened its Chicago distribution center and simultaneously upgraded to the latest version of its ERP, Microsoft Dynamics AX, over a period of 90 days. Kevin Bowman, the company’s CIO, was at the forefront of ensuring that the upgrade happened seamlessly and was able to scale with the business as the new distribution center opened. Bowman provided unfailing support to the entire team at Celluphone and its clients – the Independent retailers that are the lifeblood of Celluphone’s business. Bowman makes it a personal goal to always go above and beyond with the products and services Celluphone offers to its customer base, and uses Microsoft Dynamics AX to do so. The strong technological core of Celluphone, under Bowman’s leadership, led to a profit of $680,000 within the first four months of opening the distribution center in Chicago. Bowman’s technology plan shines through at Celluphone, as the technology that Bowman was instrumental in developing and implementing generates significant positive ROI.

SCOTT Burns’ goal as Vice President of Information Technology at Goldline is to create a safe environment where his teammates can express themselves without any judgment. Through this environment, he hopes that employees will feel more comfortable with failure and taking chances. As the IT department innovates, he recognizes that there will be opportunities where they are leveraging new capabilities or exploring new practices in which no one in the room is an expert. Burns asks his team to participate in design sessions, where they draw pictures and process flows in a space where all can feel humble enough to express what they don’t know. Burns focuses on getting work done and therefore looks for achievable innovation initiatives. For example, as Burns’ team introduced new capabilities on the phone system, data center and other key initiatives, they always looked to advance the company’s workflow efficiency or the stability, adaptability, and fault tolerance of the platforms being implemented – positive changes were consistently bundled together for increased leverage.

KUNAL ANAND PREVOTY

ALAIN AVAKIAN BLACKLINE

AS co-founder and CTO of Prevoty, Kunal Anand not only leads the company’s engineering team, he is also heavily engaged with all of Prevoty’s strategic customers. He can, and does, therefore deliver guidance to the entire organization, not just on the technical elements of the product offering, but also on effective sales, marketing, operations and support aspects of the business. Anand has led the engagement with all of Prevoty’s “lighthouse” accounts, including Visa, Sony and Time Warner. His technical acumen, coupled with his industry expertise, make him a natural thought leader and the company’s entire go-to-market strategy is built on the understanding of the market that he brings. Passionate about innovation, he sets goals for his engineering team that has them spending 20% of their time not doing day-to-day development work, but rather coming up with new innovations that can help enterprises protect their data and their users.

ALAIN Avarkian was hired as CTO of BlackLine in July 2014, based on his skills learned from over 25 years of experience at several growing Internet companies where he was instrumental in providing the technology vision, strategy and leadership to help organizations scale from concept through public offerings, acquisitions and beyond, coupled with his rare mix of exceptional interpersonal and management skills. Avakian is a gifted communicator and understands that all employees need to have exposure to BlackLine’s technology roadmap along with regular updates on its progress. Under his direction the company’s development team contributes to BlackLine’s bimonthly global employee newsletter providing updates on major initiatives along with important metrics and milestones. In addition, Avakian gives semiannual presentations to all employees during monthly all-hands meetings, he also presents each year specifically to the sales team at their annual kick-off, and he presents once a year to all current and prospective customers at BlackLine’s annual User Conference.

CAL NET TECHNOLOGY GROUP

CHRISTIAN CASE BUNIM-MURRAY PRODUCTIONS

CAL Net Technology Group is considered by many to be among the premier providers of IT Services in Southern California, because it understands its customers, their technological needs, and has built an exceptional organization that is accountable and delivers. This starts at the top of the organization with a focus on understanding businesses’ changing needs, which translates to the alignment of the entire Cal Net organization to the success of the companies it works with. Cal Net understands that IT is a critical enabler of businesses, not just a point solution, and it instills this understanding in its team daily, working as a cohesive unit to solve business issues through IT. Cal Net is extremely adept technically, working with the premier technology companies in the industry: MSFT, HP, EMC, ShoreTel, and others to shape how technology can improve business. At the same time, Cal Net’s leadership team realizes that technology is only half of the equation, and focuses on creating high performing teams and providing exceptional service.

BUNIM-MURRAY is a unique environment with a production schedule that drives tight time lines, sends people across the world to film shows, and creates huge ebbs and flows in staffing. Christian Case, the company’s CIO, is able to establish strong ties with the different stake-holders in his different divisions and with the executives in the organization, by understanding the unique needs of the business and delivering solutions that make their lives easier. Case is constantly communicating what projects are ongoing and where project are with both his IT team and with the entire company. He truly views IT as an enabler and competitive advantage for Bunim-Murray and is constantly looking for ways to improve systems and process. Whether it is workflow solutions, scalable telephony systems, or an infrastructure that support a distributed network of production specialists. He has internalized the unique requirement of Bunim-Murray’s business and is continuously architecting the IT infrastructure to address it.

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CIOs OF THE YEAR

2015

FINALISTS

MARTIN CORDOVA CENTINELA HOSPITAL MEDICAL CENTER

PABLO DA SILVA NEW HORIZONS COMPUTER LEARNING CENTERS

MARTIN Cordova has developed several standards that have been implemented at Centinela Hospital Medical Center to create an effective IT department. One of the standards is “Service Standards.” This concept was presented in a departmental meeting that outlined the goals of the process. To further stress the importance of this agreement, each team member signed a copy as his or her commitment to the process. Cordova also promotes innovation within his IT departments in the form of “Idea Challenges.” In this manner, he encourages his team to be innovative with the goal of fostering efficiency, cost reductions and improving customer service. Team members are encouraged to bring their ideas forward in departmental meetings so that they can be reviewed and implemented. Cordova understands that his team experiences on a daily basis input from the hospital departments that they service which gives them first-hand knowledge for creating specific and effective solutions to issues as they arise.

AS a leader of Sales, Operations, Technical Support and now Information Technology, Pablo Da Silva has been integral to building the next leaders of New Horizons Computer learning Centers. At NHSoCal, the company’s mission is to empower people to succeed through learning. Pablo Da Silva takes the Drucker style of leadership and approaches any project head on before enlisting his team. Through research, practice, implementation and improvement, he and his teamwork mentality shine through daily. One of Da Silva’s best characteristics is his availability for employees to brainstorm with. He allows employees to have a voice, and be heard, which makes a huge impact in the company’s culture. This helps him stay up to date on newer technologies, strategies, and process improvement. Without him, New Horizons would not be able to grow and develop at the rate it has over the last year.

DEBORAH FIORELLA NBCUNIVERSAL - PARKS AND RESORTS

TODD FRIEDMAN MATTEL

DEBBIE Fiorella has an exceptional skill that enables her to clearly articulate the company future vision to her team. She demonstrates strong leadership by empowering the team to become company visionaries by understanding each of their roles in delivering the company vision. Currently, Universal Studios is embarking on several key projects: 1) opening of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter; 2) opening of Springfield Attractions; and 3) expanding WiFi throughout Universal Studios Hollywood. These efforts are multi-million dollar projects requiring tremendous coordination efforts with multiple IT and construction vendors. Through Fiorella’s leadership and vision, the managers responsible for these projects are thriving and successfully meeting their deliverables. She also fosters creative thinking by presenting problems to the team members and allowing the teams or individuals to develop the process, system, or strategy to create a solution. She believes creative thinking should be rewarded, especially in instances when such thinking leads to the creation of efficiencies, minimization of outages, and mitigation of impacts to business operations.

TODD Friedman is a versatile leader with over twenty years of experience in Information Security and IT management. He currently leads global Information Security for Mattel, the worldwide leader in the design, manufacture and marketing of toys and family products. Friedman has spent over two decades in information technology, previously in the insurance and entertainment industries, where he led numerous functions, including infrastructure planning and management, systems integration, PMO, project management, governance, compliance, and for the past decade, information security. Prior to joining Mattel in 2012, Todd was SVP / CISO of Universal Music Group, the world largest music company. He has a number of certifications, including CISSP, CISM, CRISC and CIPP.

SEAN DANIELS WILDWOOD SCHOOL

TINA DENUIT-WOJCIK ENPLUG

SEAN Daniels at Wildwood School looks to align technology initiatives and school goals. He constantly works to build a strong IT foundation, and help ensure that technology is helping Wildwood deliver on its core mission of providing top tier education for its students. In one example, Daniels has taken an innovative focus to cloud solutions to provide 24/7 access for education while reducing cost. In another specific example, as the head of the IT and Ed tech departments, Daniels has been integral in laying the groundwork around the development of Wildwood’s new technology learning space (tecdec). The space allows students to be creative around areas of technology: designing, building and tinkering. He is also working with educators to drive the innovation lab to spearhead new lesson plans with this program, helping Wildwood use IT as part of its curriculum. At all times, he Daniels prioritizes his objectives to his team and successfully identifies new projects to ensure the schools IT environment stays current.

TINA DenuitWojcik at Enplug takes a special approach to establishing strong ties with the company’s business and promotes this relationship through all levels ranging from developer to executive. Examples of this include setting up a weekly engineering report that details all of the tasks accomplished during the time period – this is sent out to the entire team who is able to learn about the details of the engineering side of things. Denuit-Wojcik also spearheads a quarterly Q&A session with the engineering team, allowing everyone in the company to gain a broader understanding and give opportunity for discussion on tech/business alignment. She has also implemented a program where a new member of the company is required to use the product in its latest iteration from set-up to configuration – making sure everyone has an innate understanding of the customer experience. In fact, the company’s technology plan and business value are known throughout the organization as a result of Denuit-Wojcik’s initiative.

TAK FUJII PANCREATIC CANCER ACTION NETWORK

RICK GEHRINGER CARUSO AFFILIATED

TAK Fujii was recruited to the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network as the organization’s tech leader to upgrade the technology needs for a growing enterprise. His first action was to implement a strong information technology governance structure. He followed the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) framework and implemented Incident Management, Release Management, Problem Management, Service Desk, etc. to stabilize and create reliability from the existing network, server and application environment. While implementing each section of ITIL, he educated the information technology team on the merits of each. The greatest impact was the immediate stabilization of the “tech” environment since the hardware and application teams were working together to focus on uptime. The resulting increase in uptime and reliability provided Fujii with credibility among his Executive Leadership peers, opening a dialog where the information technology team could take on a greater role in supporting strategic business initiatives.

AT Caruso Affiliated, Rick Gehringer has established a program and project management approach to innovative technology projects. This approach provides a macro view that supports the business vision and a micro view that supports the projects that help to deliver the vision. The vision, as well as the related program, is broken up into individual projects with release milestones. Also, Gehringer’s project portfolio management techniques ensure that the most important projects to the business are undertaken and the less important projects are deferred. He uses business metaphors to describe business systems in order to take the mystery out of the underlying technology. In the past year, he has conceived (or contributed to the conception of) various market-facing innovations that are unique in Caruso’s industry. Each innovation Gehringer has developed and implemented has contributed to the guest/customer experience, and in many cases, has been revenue-generating.

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CIOs OF THE YEAR

2015

FINALISTS

LORI GETZ CYBER EDUCATION CONSULTANTS

DAVID GIRDNER ANTROPY

MARK GOVATOS CROSSROADS SCHOOL

RICHARD GREENBERG LOS ANGELES COUNTY DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC HEALTH

SINCE 2004, Lori Getz has worked as an Instructional Technologist in Los Angeles. She has a Master of Arts in Educational Technology from San Diego State University and is certified by isafe.org as an Internet Safety Specialist. In 2008, she founded Cyber Education Consultants and began speaking to students, parents, and educators about Internet safety, security and ethics. Since that time she has reached out to Internet users across the world. Her mission is simple — to help bridge the gap between a young generation of digital natives and their parents and teachers. Today, Cyber Education Consultants provides workshops, professional development and consulting services to more than 100 schools across the country. Getz often lectures live, speaking to parents, teachers and students. She has been published in several areas including as an online expert for momlogic.com, kidsinthehouse.com and most recently was featured in Rachel Simmons’ new edition of “Odd Girl Out” and Lucie Hemmen’s, PhD “Parenting a Teen Girl.”

ANTROPY, which was co-founded by David Girdner, has a proven track record of delivering robust, cost effective IT solutions to small businesses throughout Southern California. Founded in 2001 by Girdner and Jody Marc Cohn, Antropy provides a wide variety of Information Technology services to a diverse set of clients ranging from single user home offices to corporations with multiple locations across the nation. Girdner and his firm service a client list that includes accounting firms, private K-12 schools, entertainment companies, law firms, and medical practices. Under Girdner’s stewardship and technical know-how, Antropy is committed to providing excellent service and robust IT solutions that fit the needs of a variety of businesses. He strives to develop partnerships with his clients to ensure the highest levels of service and satisfaction.

AT Crossroads School, Mark Govatos has a unique perspective of how an IT organization should deliver for its user base as he has been with the organization for close to 30 years, starting as a Mathematics Instructor, moving to Mathematics Department Chair, and heading the Computer Science division before moving into IT administration. From those roles Govatos understands the complexities of how a school operates and the role that IT plays in the education process. He has insight to the needs of the teaching staff, department staff, and administration staff. This has helped him create deep relationships with all of Crossroads constituencies and he has become a vital part of the school’s staff. He has a hand in the day to day running for all technology of the school. He has been given the responsibility of negotiating all contracts and keeps in open line of communication with all vendors or personnel that have to do with the schools technology needs.

CREIGHTON GRENOBLE ASCENDANT SERVICES, INC.

NATE HO RBZ

RICK HOPFER MOLINA HEALTHCARE

CLIVE HOUSTON-BROWN UNIVERSITY OF LA VERNE

CREIGHTON Grenoble has developed a remarkable track record of being able to formulate and understand business objectives and strategy, and then deliver technical organizations and solutions that meet those objectives. He has expertise managing large client engagements and building quality relationships with clients and is a seasoned program manager and systems architect, with a broad background in information security, enterprise infrastructure and application development. He’s a successful consultant, executive and entrepreneur who has repeatedly demonstrated his ability to grow a practice, build long-term client relationships, lead teams, and operate a small business. In 2002, he founded and began to lead Ascendant, a successful, information technology focused consulting firm. Clients are consistently satisfied and the firm thrives on follow-on work. Typically, engagements involve Grenoble and Ascendant acting as an “extension arm” of the CIO or IT Director, and often leading major initiatives, such as enterprise-wide programs, large projects and improvements in the management of innovation and operations.

NATE Ho’s philosophy on leadership comes in two parts. First and foremost, leading by example is nonnegotiable. He feels he could never ask anyone to do anything that he would not do himself, all of which roots in humility. It may not necessarily be worth his time to clear something as simple as a paper jam, but there is certainly value in morale, social equity and however slight reduction in administrative overhead by just taking care of it himself. Ho believes it is important for an IT leader to allow room for failures and mistakes. He believes that “failures” may be an overly harsh word for what are essentially “teachable moments.” Allowing people to learn from their mistakes is one of the easiest and best ways to help them grow. Outside of his role at RBZ, Ho is also a member of the ISSA’s Los Angeles chapter and participates in the monthly meetings to promote security awareness.

RICK Hopfer, CIO of Molona Healthcare, is responsible for establishing the company’s strategic technology directions by leading the IT Organization to align technology objectives, operations, programs, and investments around Molina business objectives. Improving quality and efficiency of IT delivered of services reduces annual operational expenses leaving more of the annual budget to provide for our members. Along with establishing Molina’s new Service and Enterprise Architecture programs, Hopfer reorganized other aspects of his leadership team. Core IT services across the company have been consolidated, gaining operational efficiencies while creating tighter alignment with each of Molina’s unique lines of business. Hopfer possesses an uncanny ability to influence positive impact on the core business and is exemplary of how one can influence growth through innovation, leadership and motivation. He is a strong CIO who never loses sight of the key business strategies and objectives.

TWO years ago, the University of La Verne completed the plan for the “2020 Strategic Vision.” The area of technology in enhancing the educational enterprise as well as helping with cost efficiencies was integral to the 2020 Strategic Vision. Dr. Houston-Brown has been a champion of aligning his area and his leadership with the 2020 Strategic Vision. Coupled with this attitude and behavior, he works closely, collaboratively, and authentically with each of the Vice Presidents across the institution. As a result, he has achieved and exceeded tactical goals that he identified in the 2020 Strategic Vision and is on the path to exceed the technologically related 2020 goals identified by the Board of Trustees and the campus. Dr. Houston-Brown not only continually communicates and disseminates the plan for technology within the University of La Verne 2020 Strategic Vision, he also seeks feedback from each individual and group on how it can adjust, add to, or eliminate items from the plan.

COMPARED to many other organizations, the amount of sensitive and personal information within LA County Public Health (PH) is staggering. The PH applications, Internet, and Intranet, are constantly targeted with a multitude of attack methodologies. Richard Greenberg had a vision for an application security management solution, and a training solution to provide ongoing training for the Application Development and the Security Office personnel. This project was part of his larger initiative to implement a Secure Application Development Lifecycle in PH that would result in robust and compliant DPH software applications. The first component of his solution was to work closely with the Project Management Office and Application Development Division to integrate a Security Review Process into the project conceptualization process and all subsequent phases of the software development lifecycle process. The subsequent training efforts, as well as use of the new technological tools, have shown to be of great value.

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JUNE 8, 2015

CIOs OF THE YEAR

2015

FINALISTS

MICHAEL KEITHLEY CREATIVE ARTISTS AGENCY

BRUCE KHAVAR CAT, INC.

KEN KWAN ENGAGE:BDR

JASON LIDOW THE DIGITRUST GROUP

MICHAEL Keithley is a visionary technologist with strong business acumen. His technology vision and strategy roadmap is his gateway into leading his high functioning team to success. He is a though leader when it comes to technology and is able to think outside the box in leading the CAA technology team to define a brand like no other. He was responsible for the technical aspects of the joint venture between Creative Artists Agency and Intel, which resulted in the CAA/Intel Media Lab located at CAA’s headquarters. He continues to serve as a liaison between Silicon Valley’s technology community and not just Creative Artists Agency, but also the entire Hollywood creative community. Keithley continues to share with the business, how the technology group can consistently provide value. Reporting to a partner at CAA, he spends time getting first hand information on what the companies priorities are which allows him to align accordingly and readjust his vision if needed.

A Cyber security visionary, Bruce Khavar’s life long mission has been to provide an effective solution to protect against cyber security attacks for consumers to business enterprise across all industries globally. His systems have been internationally tested and have proven to be 100% hacker-proof over a 6-month period. Commonly firms would have a 2-week window to hack into a system. Khavar’s patented technology is ground breaking and has raised the interests of the homeland security in Korea on the highest level — to the president, where the #1 cyber security expert has endorsed and claimed CAT, INC. as poised for being the global #1 leader in cyber security solutions because of it’s ground breaking next generation paradigm solution that is 510 years ahead of what currently exists in the global market place today.

KENNETH Kwan is one of the cofounders of Engage: BDR. He dedicates himself to building the technology and business parts of the company from the ground up, so he understands very well that the tie between business and technology is critical. He always carefully evaluates the feasibility, risk and cost of every project from the business side, and schedules with team to ensure the execution to meet business objectives and budget. He loves critical thinking, which is required during the planning of every major technical project. Kwan stays in the forefront of cutting edge technology, also encourages engineers to digest new technology by participating open source foundation, technical global conferences, and collaboration with other technical companies in the industry. He sets up many contests for engineers to solve real world business problems, to incubate revenue generators/new business models, and to inspire the rising of new technology to stand out of all other competitors in the industry.

JASON Lidow has been providing information security solutions to middlemarket companies in the retail, healthcare, education, technology, finance, manufacturing and financial industries for the past twelve years. He serves as president and founder of the DigiTrust Group. Lidow’s company, DigiTrust, is a managed security services firm that focuses on using people, processes and technology to proactively provide the highest level of information security at client organizations. Lidow and his team do this by actively identifying, blocking and researching attackers. Through managed security and security consulting services, Lidow works to provide the confidence businesses need to operate in a highly complex, threatening and interconnected world. In short, he and his team act as a security operations center (SOC) for organizations that either do not have a SOC or require augmented SOC functionality, while also reducing the overall cost of security for all sizes of organizations.

PHILLIP LIEBERMAN LIEBERMAN SOFTWARE

SAMEER MAINI ACCOUNT CONTROL TECHNOLOGY HOLDINGS, INC.

BRAD MARYMAN MARYMAN AND ASSOCIATES

REBECCA MENENDEZ AUTRY NATIONAL CENTER OF THE AMERICAN WEST

PHILIP Lieberman is a highly accomplished security software executive with more than 30 years of industry experience. He has an established track record of finding shortcomings in existing market solutions and filling those gaps with innovative new products. As president and founder of Lieberman Software, he developed the first products to serve the privileged password management and shared account password management space. His company released its first commercial product in 1994, but traces its roots back to 1978 when it was founded as a software consultancy. Today he continues to introduce new solutions to resolve the security threat of unmanaged privileged accounts. Lieberman Software has consistently provided unique solutions that fill the niche of managing privileged accounts throughout the cross-platform enterprise. Something of a visionary, Lieberman pioneered the privileged identity management space by releasing the first product to this market in 2001. Since then, the company has regularly updated and expanded its privileged password solution set while growing its customer base in this vibrant and emerging market.

IN 2014, Sameer Maini was promoted from CIO of Account Control Technology, Inc. (ACT) to CIO of Account Control Technology Holdings (ACT Holdings), an entity created to assist ACT’s acquisition and integration of Convergent, a business four times ACT’s size. Maini was challenged to leverage technology and expertise from both organizations to enhance ACT Holdings’ leadership in the industry. He has succeeded in integrating the wealth of knowledge, best practices and leading-edge technologies from three separate divisions, within a 70person IT team, whose members are dispersed among 19 office nationwide. Leveraging his extensive background in call center support both in the U.S. and internationally, Maini has provided the vision as ACT Holdings’ CIO to lead the company’s numerous technology enhancements, including a complex migration to an account management platform, the implementation of a call center speech analytics program, and the building of a world-class infrastructure to support exponential growth.

BRAD Maryman is an experienced computer forensics consultant. Prior to founding Maryman & Associates, he served as a Supervisory Special Agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation for 29 years. During that time, Maryman conducted and supervised investigations, and served as an Information Systems Administrator and Security Programs Manager. Maryman has conducted forensic data acquisition, retrieval and analysis on a multitude of digital evidence including electronic business records, network logs and encrypted files. Additionally, Mr. Maryman has a wide-range of electronic discovery experience, specifically, recovering and processing electronic records produced by a variety of computer operating systems and applications. In 1991 he founded the FBI’s first Computer Analysis Response Team (CART) and served as its team leader. He established the agency’s first state of the art computer forensics laboratory, which is now replicated across the nation. Drawing on his years of training and experience with U.S. Government Inspection processes, he has consulted for corporations and public agencies to perform all-scope security assessments and special analysis reviews.

AT the Autry National Center of the American West, as a museum serving educational and inspirational purpose, creativity brims from every part of the organization. In such an organization, the IT systems must be built with an eye on the horizon of what technologies are yet to come. Rebecca Menendez is charged with looking to current and emerging technologies to see how these can be implemented to support whatever new needs arise. These technologies include virtual desktop, mobile device management and increasing mobility with the upcoming Windows 10 operating system, VLAN for devices in the museum’s galleries, and researching software defined networking to see if this technology can help ease some of the pain points of managing a complex system. Menendez is driven to ensure that the IT systems support the creative forces on staff, rather than serving as a roadblock, while keeping the network and data secure and ensuring that budgetary restrictions are responsibly upheld.

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AN ADVERTISING SUPPLEMENT TO THE LOS ANGELES BUSINESS JOURNAL 41

CIOs OF THE YEAR

2015

FINALISTS

HOWARD MILLER LBW INSURANCE AND FINANCIAL SERVICES

KIMBERLY PEASE CITADEL INFORMATION GROUP, INC.

MIKE PETERSEN TM FINANCIAL FORENSICS, LLC

HOWARD Miller is the Director of the Tech Secure Division at LBW Insurance and Financial Services. He provides risk management solutions including complete insurance programs for a wide range of organizations with a focus on technology and media sectors. He provides additional expertise in the area of technology related risks such as intellectual property, information security, professional services, technology products and executive exposures. He is a Community Outreach Advisory Board Member for the Information Systems Security Association of Los Angeles and helped found a ProVisors Technology Group. Miller holds CRM (Certified Risk Manager) and CIC (Certified Insurance Counselor) designations and has worked in the insurance industry since 1996 and joined LBW, where he is currently a Vice President, in 2004. He has also been on the advisory board of the Information Systems Security Association of Los Angeles, driven by the organization’s work in being the voice of information security for the business and non-profit community in Los Angeles.

KIMBERLY Pease co-founded Citadel Information Group as a trailblazer understanding and focusing on the need for cyber security management in the private sector. Her determination to drive Information Security awareness into Los Angeles has been diligent and unwavering since 2002. She embraces a belief that every business has a right to prosper without cybercriminals impeding its mission. One of Pease’s favorite quotes is “Nobody is as smart as everybody.” Information Security will only be managed successfully if everybody does his or her part. Pease inspires creative thinking by assessing all angles of an issue, by incorporating different views and perspectives and having an open mind. Pease draws from her Six Sigma Black Belt knowledge and skill to focus on continual improvement. Throughout her career, Pease has maintained an emphasis on productivity and costs and embracing new tools, new ideas, and new methodologies to develop efficiencies.

RICHARD RANDLE MBSG

NAVDEEP REDDY ENPLUG

CHERYL F. SANTOR METROPOLITAN WATER DISTRICT

MEGAN SAVAGE TECH SAVAGE

AS outsourced CIO, Richard Randle helps IT technicians communicate in the language of business — costs, benefits, risks, and return on investment. With an internal team of IT consultants, he oversees over 60 IT professionals at his clients. He is chief strategist, coach, and escalation resource. Basically, when IT technicians are stuck, they call Randle. Randle is particularly adept at achieving collaboration in tense situations where various technical experts present conflicting recommendations. He and his consulting team at MBSG design and support systems in-thecloud, on-the-ground, and blended. The winds of technology are blowing in the direction of cloud, mobile and security, and Randle helps clients harness these forces and deploy emerging technologies within budget constraints. Randle reminds the IT experts he oversees that just because a technology works and is affordable, does not necessarily mean it is the right answer to underlying needs of their business. He helps his team understand the reasons behind any new technology.

AT Enplug, Naveep Reddy communicates his technology plans and business value through the organization by constant education. Every member of the company is expected to have a high level understanding of the technology used. Individual project managers are encouraged to perform their own research on technology solutions and suggest superior choices to the incumbent solutions. The process made in making technology decisions is always clearly laid out by Reddy and his team and critiques are not only allowed, but also expected. Creative thinking is promoted and fostered by Reddy via extremely high levels of cross company communication. A high level of understanding of the core product companywide produces a fertile environment for innovation. Processes are improved, new features are developed, and issues are resolved by this persistent collaborative interchange – directly impacting business efficiency positively for increased revenue generation and high levels of agility that is a significant competitive advantage in an industry, which adheres to ‘traditional paradigms.’

CHERYL Santor, Information Security Manager for Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, has over 25 years of Information Technology experience in the financial field and water industry. She has experience with every aspect of Information Technology. Working with Metropolitan has exposed her to SCADA and Process Control Systems, bringing a new aspect to her Information Technology skills. Providing oversight of the control systems without hindering operations is an experience to which Santor is bringing her regulatory background together with a sense of standards and best practices for access control levels appropriate to the systems workflow. Santor has served as President of ISACA (Information Systems and Audit Control Association) Los Angeles. She is also a member of ISSA (Information Systems Security Association) and FBI Infragard.

ONE of the things Megan Savage of Tech Savage does is encourage clients to think outside the box in their solutions. Instead of approaching a business issue with a specific solution in mind, Savage challenges them to fully define the problem and business need first, before deciding on a solution. By fully analyzing and mapping a business problem or business processes, Savage and her team are able to uncover additional areas where efficiency can be improved than they may have initially focused on, and then brainstorm how a combination of technology and business process changes can address each issue, based on budget and priorities. Savage has also found that Kaizen sessions can be very useful tools to involve the business in defining their current process and pain points, creatively collaborating on short and long term solutions, and owning the results of the implementation.

MIKE Petersen, the IT Manager for TM Financial Forensics, LLC is excellent at applying high-end technology solutions to meet the needs of his business. TM Financial Forensics is a national business and disputes consulting firm specializing in financial, accounting, economic, engineering, scheduling and damages analyses. As a one-man IT shop within the organization, he does an exceptional job and is dedicated to excellence. He is very responsive to business needs and is always looking to do things better for the businesses he works with. Recently, he has been working on a secure high-availability network for the organization.

RAJ RAJKOTIA NEXTGEN TM, LLC & FUND DREAMER RAJ Rajkotia as a senior IT executive leader has worked and managed large teams at Toyota, Westfield, Bank of America and General Motors. Learning best practices from these large organizations, he has built NextGen TM and applied lean strategies to help clients leverage technology. His company and team specialize in a new wave of disruptive technologies such as Social, Mobile, Analytics (Big Data) and Cloud. Rajkotia has consistently provided transformative strategies and consulting services to client companies since 2005. He has a strong background in Finance and Technology Management that has helped companies transform and currently they are an emerging Technology Startup Incubator Company for the Los Angeles region. Rajkotia and NextGen TM have incubated several startups and have successfully launched FundDreamer, a next generation Crowd Funding Company focused on Empowering Women Entrepreneurship and Causes. He is an innovative thinker always looking to generate business efficiencies, drive business growth and attain competitive business advantages through use of technologies and innovative processes.

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42 AN ADVERTISING SUPPLEMENT TO THE LOS ANGELES BUSINESS JOURNAL

JUNE 8, 2015

CIOs OF THE YEAR

2015

FINALISTS

ERIC SCHLISSEL GEEKTEK IT SERVICES

HERSEL SHOUMER LA NETWORKS

STAN STAHL, PHD CITADEL INFORMATION GROUP; INFORMATION SYSTEMS SECURITY ASSOCIATION - LA

ERIC Schlissel and the GeekTek team distinguish themselves from their competition through technical expertise and through customer service. The customer service distinction is the one that makes Schlissel most proud. He leads by example in ensuring that the hallmarks of every client interaction are listening and empathy. By approaching his client relationships in this way, he quickly establishes strong ties with his clients’ teams. Under Schlissel‘s stewardship, GeekTek is a nimble organization where team members wear many hats and are encouraged to contribute collaboratively to any number of organizational and operations initiatives. This diversity of thought is key to fostering ongoing creativity in problem solving. Schlissel runs workshops were the teams practice seeing and solving problems from the end users’ perspective as opposed to from purely a systems perspective. Schlissel consistently demonstrates leadership amongst his own team and also within his clients’ organizations.

AFTER working at large enterprise corporations for 16 years and achieving the highly regarded Cisco CCIE certification in 1997, Hersel Shoumer formed LA Networks, an IT consulting and networking company. LA Networks’ mission has always been to become its clients’ trusted adviser by delivering best of breed solutions. Since its humble beginnings, LA Networks was built as an engineering and consulting firm with extensive expertise in the areas of Unified Communications, Wireless, Data Center Architectures, Wide Area Networks, and Local Area Networks. The LA Networks differentiator is a passion to deliver excellent value and service to its customers and partners. Since he launched, Shoumer has demanded excellence from his partners and employees by the following core principles: Honesty and Integrity, Leadership, Family values, Open Communication, and Passion in Technology. LA Networks has grown to become one of the best-known privately held and highly technical IT solution providers in Southern California, with over $25 million in annual revenue.

KIM A. TERRY GUTHY-RENKER LLC

MIGUEL O. VILLEGAS K3DES, LLC

JOE VISCONTI PARSONS

PHILLIP WALKER NETWORK SOLUTIONS PROVIDER

KIM Terry has built a strong 140 person IT team since his arrival at Guthy-Renker, seeking out the most talented people possible, then delegating responsibility for outcomes not just tasks. Developing a conceptual vision for the future, then planning a way to transition this ‘new world’ is a hallmark of his career. He leverages his 30+ years of technology and managing people to guide organizations through difficult journeys, supporting his team and knocking down roadblocks. Terry has been leading GuthyRenker though a difficult and lengthy modernization of its systems for most of the past five years. Much of the past computing was built and run by business process outsourcers, so the company had little capability to execute an IT modernization program. Also because of the highly outsourced business model, the company had no mechanisms to review, approve or manage IT projects. Therefore, Terry started from scratch. Projects started to become more successful, more accountable and more visible. Success built upon success.

MIGUEL O. Villegas is Vice President for K3DES, LLC a Payment Card Industry Qualified Security Assessor (PCI QSA) firm. He is responsible for performing information security assessments for PCI DSS, generating Reports of Compliance and Reports of Validation for PCI assessments and PCI payment applications, respectively. He also provides information security consulting to clients related to security solution, Information Security Due Diligence, FFIEC examinations, ISO-27002, GLBA, and HIPAA. Villegas brings to K3DES more than 30 years of experience in IT audit, risk management and information security. He is a recognized leader in each of these fields and has been active in local chapters respectively. Villegas is in high demand for lectures at key professional organizations such as Information Systems Audit & Control Association (ISACA), Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA), CA-World, OWASP, Vanguard Security Expo, and the Information Systems Security Association (ISSA).

JOE Visconti is the CTO for Parsons, where his role is to develop the corporate IT roadmap to help achieve Parsons’ business goals. This entails having an intimate knowledge of Parsons business strategies, a wealth of understanding as regards the state of IT in Engineering and Construction, and a practical sense for how to incorporate the latest IT trends for delivering computerized services to Parsons. The role includes oversight for computing standards, enterprise architecture, IT innovation, competitive intelligence, and vendor management. Visconti has spent 33 years in IT related positions for global engineering firms during an IT career that spans 39 years. In times of uncertainty, Visconti is known for being particularly decisive and doesn’t shy away from taking measured risks to achieve needed outcomes. He also has a strong knack for seeing strategic technology patterns while interpreting and forecasting the impact of those technologies will have on companywide operations, growth and strategic objectives.

BUSINESS and IT alignment is a major gift possessed by Phillip Walker. His coworkers report that he is able to understand tech and use tech to create a very good infused model. He has created optimize the value that IT contributes to his business. He has successfully created outline a strategic IT roadmap that has successfully aligned IT strategy to business strategy, and has shared understanding of how IT applications, technologies and services will contribute to business objectives – today and in the future, and a shared focus on where to expend scarce resources, time and money. Walker has created a credible working relationship between the IT organization and the rest of the business as evidenced by reliable daily operations, responsive problem management and predictable, and innovative solution delivery. Walker has created clear metrics as a way to compare product innovation options; and whether concept’s required investment in R&D is producing the desired results.

STAN Stahl, Ph.D. is the President of Citadel Information Group. A pioneer in the field of information security, Dr. Stahl entered the field in 1980. Earlier in his career he secured teleconferencing at the White House, databases inside Cheyenne Mountain and the communications network controlling the nation’s nuclear weapons arsenal. Dr. Stahl excels at helping his clients develop and implement information security management strategies consistent with their unique information security responsibilities, their business realities and their cultural circumstances. He has that rare gift of being able to describe the complexities of information security in a way that makes sense to real-world non-technical business professionals. Dr. Stahl has served as President of ISSA-LA — the Los Angeles Chapter of the Information Systems Security Association — since 2008 and is the creator of the Chapter’s It Takes the Village to Secure the Village program.

PAUL SUNOK AGILE360, A DIVISION OF ENTISYS SOLUTIONS, INC. PAUL Sunok, who serves as the Director of Agile360 (a division of Entisys Solutions, Inc.), is always looking forward to help his clients get better at what they do. He looks at business needs and attempts to find ways for his company to help them meet them in the best way. He’s always asking strategic questions, but more importantly, really wants to help his clients grow and get better. What really tends top impress those who work with Sunok is that he is always looking to find new and innovative ways to implement better and better solutions while staying within the customer budget. He’s perpetually willing to go the extra mile to do the right thing, do it quickly, and do it at the right price. On top of that, his team is dedicated to excellence and repeatedly surprises us with their level of skill.

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AN ADVERTISING SUPPLEMENT TO THE LOS ANGELES BUSINESS JOURNAL 43

CIOs OF THE YEAR

2015

FINALISTS

DAVID WATTS NETFUSION, INC.

ABER WHITCOMB SGN

JONATHAN WONG PLAYBOY ENTERPRISES, INC.

NETFUSION’S CIO, David Watts is very detail oriented and incredibly thorough, and ensures that his clients’ expectations are aligned with his own and those of his team. He places special emphasis on clear communication. He focuses first on clarifying and articulating the client’s business objectives. Secondly, he lays out for the clients how technology can best accomplish those objectives along with the pros and cons of each choice. He works to perform all of this within the context of the client’s specific objectives, infrastructure, budget, and compliance requirements. Another strength that Watts exhibits is his long-standing business relationships, not only with clients, but also with his connections within the industry and outside his industry throughout Los Angeles. Watts supports the growth of other businesses through his involvement in Provisors, a network of business professionals and advisors, and through collaboration with other IT related vendors.

SGN CTO Aber Whitcomb – previously CTO and CoFounder of MySpace – applies his knowledge and expertise in building the world’s original social network, and scaling it to global capacity. The large-scale infrastructure challenges he tackled and overcame in this process now inform the strategy of his role at SGN in mobile gaming. MySpace’s user peak reached about 125 million monthly actives in 2007, but SGN’s network is much bigger. SGN’s network of games comprises 500 million downloads, including 35 million players on its most popular title “Cookie Jam.” This vast player base means millions of transactions and in-app purchases per day which SGN’s IT infrastructure must seamlessly accommodate to generate revenue. Whitcomb’s major innovation at SGN is its patent-pending “MasterKey” system, a platform which allows a game to be developed and coded once, and then simultaneously published to all major games platforms – Amazon/Kindle, iTunes, Google Play and Facebook. The same system also delivers content updates, game maintenance, and other technology updates.

PLAYBOY originally recruited Jonathan Wong for his skill sets in building and migrating large enterprise infrastructure and technology at the cusp of a private equity acquisition. The acquisition involved the collapse of 13 legacy sites; the ground-up build of a new world class headquarters; the migration of multiple petabytes of data; and the reverse engineering of hundreds of home grown applications within a short timeframe. Wong adapted existing technologies to the newly defined business model, which was to transform the 60-year-old business from media empire to brand management company. He then began to draft a new pool of custom applications to drive revenue initiatives for the newly designed business. Within his first three years, IT operational costs were reduced by 43% and performance gains were seen across the board by up to 900%, while still adhering to enterprise best practices. Wong is currently working with the CEO and CFO to re-architect Playboy’s business systems to properly reflect and complement their new directions for the enterprise.

MATT WONG CIVIC RESOURCE GROUP INTERNATIONAL MATT Wong recently joined Civic Resource Group as CTO bringing in more than 20 years’ experience specifically in the building of cloud applications and services. His professional experience also spans working on developing consumer-facing mobile applications. Wong is a curious type of IT executive: his massive knowledge of Information Technology as a discipline combined with his unique knowledge of all technologies available (old, new and emerging) is near encyclopedic. Building on this strength, he cultivated the idea of bringing in new innovation technology on “as needed” basis and integrate it into Civic Resource Group International’s solutions specific to projects requiring innovative fine-tuning. While running the IT dept, Wong possesses a rare brand of business acumen and a combination of old/new school of wisdom in that he is a key Executive who routinely, proactively, (but tactfully) steps outside of his area of responsibility when he feels that a particular business situation requires his input.

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CIOs OF THE YEAR 2015

EVENT SCENE

Over 300 attendees were on hand at the event, held at The LA Hotel Downtown in Los Angeles on June 3, 2015.

JUNE 8, 2015