5 Lessons From New Technology Leaders

At a time when the federal government is investing $40 billion into a housing strategy for Canada, Paul Mason is taking on the role of the first-ever CIO to help lead the crown corporation in delivering on that vision. Learn how Mason has transformed the corporation over the past two years by working with key technology partners and reimagining the way it can deliver customer service.

Jessie Adcock came to the City of Vancouver as the chief digital officer in 2013 and soon was tasked with taking on the municipality's entire technology portfolio. She executed on a four-year smart city strategy that is admired around the world, created a city-wide free Wi-Fi network, and is in the running for a $50 million federal grant. We spoke with Adcock at our Digital Transformation Awards event. 

Tara Mulrooney is the 2018 CanadianCIO of the Year in the public sector. As the technology leader of the Energy Resources Conservation Board in 2011 and 2012, she faced a legacy environment of myriad custom-built systems, a dependency on expensive consultants and a broken relationship between the business and the IT department. Mulrooney led bold initiatives that included retiring the mainframe, which had been viewed as a core piece of infrastructure previously, building out the in-house talent, and regaining the trust of the business. With the important responsibility of regulating the development of Alberta’s energy sector, Mulrooney recognized the need to have the IT department respond to business needs in an agile manner.

Mark Saunders joined Sun Life in the depths of the 2008-9 recession and reinvented the firm's IT department, fostered a healthy new culture of engaged employees, and introduced agile work styles that have lead to innovative ways to serve customers. He's the 2018 CanadianCIO of the Year in the private sector.

Alex Benay was appointed as the federal government CIO in 2017 and has been winning attention for his new approach to IT operations and outward public speaking. He's also released a new book, 'Government Digital', which takes a global perspective on delivering innovation public policy. Alex's five lessons for us range from the value of open source data to recognizing loss aversion.

We're back for 2018 with a new set of technology leaders from across Canada that have transformed their organizations and achieved impressive feats of innovation. Marking the CanadianCIO of the Year Awards that will be announced Nov. 6.

PCL Construction CIO Mark Bryant has taken the close-knit family culture at this century-old organization and extended it out as the basis for all his interactions with customers and employees. That’s why he’s a finalist for the Information Technology Association of Canada’s CanadianCIO of the Year award, given in partnership with ITWC. We’re doing a Q&A and podcast series with some of the most interesting CIOs nominated for our annual awards program. Follow along as we meet the technology decision makers that are driving innovation in Canada. Bryant used his family perspective to transform PCL across four pillars: cloud, integration, mobility, and data analytics.

There was a time that Corey Cox thought his best day at work for Tandet would be running into Donny Osmond while delivering a package, but now he's a finalist for the CanadianCIO of the Year award. For the past two decades, Cox has risen up the ranks of the transportation, equipment and power generation firm Tandet Group. Founded in 1978, the group has evolved to own various fleets of courier vehicles and provide backup power generation to clients across Canada. After helping Tandet work through a major ERP migration and even adapting systems to avoid a Y2K crisis, Cox cemented his role as Tandet's key technology decision maker. 

Sometimes a digital transformation means rethinking the jobs that your IT department is doing and identifying where you're better served in outsourcing pieces of your infrastructure. That's a lesson that Karim Ramji learned in taking on his role as CIO at Kinark Child and Family Services. Coming from a position onto the board into a non-profit organization that had seen three vice-presidents of IT come and go in three years, Ramji knew that a big revamp was needed. At the same time, he needed to find a way to make sure that Kinark's mission remained at the centre of focus - helping children with mental health issues at varying degrees of severity.

While he might not literally be laying the tracks for Canadian Pacific Railway Michael Redeker, CIO of CP Rail, he's responsible for the silicon-based infrastructure that is crucially important to the smooth operation of the transportation icon. When he joined the organization in 2012, the firm's IT infrastructure looked like its age. The legacy systems of this transportation network had been outsourced to a long list of service providers. Redeker was tasked with changing that, and five years later his organization is completely transformed. Now not only does CP Rail have an iron network across the country, it has a digital one that delivers realtime analytics across the organization.

Bruce Ross is being recognized for his work in transforming RBC into an innovative and customer-focused organization. Thanks to Bruce, RBC is running agile labs, and is using cutting edge technology to improve its customer experience. According to J.D. Power, it ranks as the best of the big five banks in Canada for customer satisfaction. That comes thanks in large part to its innovative mobile apps.

NAV Canada is Canada’s Air Navigation Service Provider. It manages 12 million aircraft movements per year for 50,000 customers across 18 million square kilometers. Before Claudio Silvestri joined, NAV Canada was handling all those aircraft movements just fine - but it’s IT department was a different story. Projects were taking off, but not landing on target. Employees were onboard, but not really engaged. Critical systems were verging on obsolescence. It took a leader like Claudio to grab the stick and right the organization’s course.

Interviews with some of the most interesting nominees for the CanadianCIO of the Year award. From Canada's largest bank to one of its foundational railways, to the firm behind air traffic control towers across the country - transformational IT leaders share their stories.  Producer Brian Jackson and host Jim Love introduce ITWC's new podcast mini-series that tells the stories of some of the top CIOs in Canada.