Professionally, I create environments where people want to work, and customers and stakeholders want to do business. My business card says I am currently Senior Vice President, Chief Information Officer and Chief Marketing Officer of Parkway Corporation, based in Philadelphia. Day to day, I am responsible for IT, marketing, customer experience, and product development, among other key roles.
I thought I wanted to be a physicist, but life had better plans for me. I worked my way up as a programmer, network engineer, DBA, and many of the other front-line IT roles. Along the way, I worked in both consulting and corporate roles in private and public companies. That combined breadth and depth of functional and organizational experience shaped my fuller view of the landscape. In about 2007, I took on Chief Marketing Officer responsibilities for the first time, and that leap across the wall was one of the most pivotal moments in my career. I have had the pleasure of creating the CIO and CMO roles a couple of times for companies and enjoy working in uncertainty!
Originally, I expected to be a techie, not an executive. However, I found businesses (investment management, real estate) that I enjoyed even more than technology. Finding workplaces doing work I enjoyed really ignited a passion, and my career accelerated beyond my expectations. Moreover, I found that I enjoyed mentoring and growing people in both my team and others. That made me unusual among the technical talent and also accelerated my path to leadership roles.
Bud Bentley was the CIO I reported to in the late 1990s, who taught me by example that the business, not technology, was the truly important focus of the role. He also taught me how to "run air cover" for the team to support them and "swing a machete" to clear obstacles to success.
I am already participating in that evolution. Marketing, operational excellence, product development, customer experience, and partner relations are all part of my job. The modern CIO is no longer fenced in with boundaries. They must contribute actively to other key leadership functions in the business. It’s not about a “seat at the table,” it’s about designing and delivering the table.
Leaders will need to be inquisitive, flexible, caring, and fully aware of their own ethical and moral compass. Complexity and opportunity are going to increase, and the leader of tomorrow will be able to read and adapt to rapid changes in people, technology, and businesses. In a rapidly changing world, we had to better understand our own core values before jumping into uncertainty.
I am an avid reader. I also rely on 360 degrees of relationships and ask many questions from peers, technical staff, and other experts. You can’t know everything, but you can know who to ask and who to trust.
Customers and employees will always drive expectations so what they want and demand will always drive change. Increasingly, they expect real-time access to personalized information and analysis and functionality everywhere. AI and augmented reality are just the next expressions of that trend. Some legacy physical businesses, like real estate and parking, will be challenged to understand and engage with customers (and employees) at the speed and volume they expect. I have been working on this for years, and it will continue to drive changes in our industries.
Never try to be or pretend to be someone you aren’t.
I can positively influence next-generation leaders and there are even more opportunities beyond IT and Marketing for me to lead. I am actively working to ensure I do both.
A big thank you to RJ Juliano from Parkway Corporation for sharing his journey to date.
If you would like to gain more perspective from Tech Leaders and CIOs you can read some of our other interviews here.