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Notes from a CIO Who Crossed the Digital Divide

By David Guzman

May 01, 2004 — CIO — The digital divide has been a public issue for nearly a decade, but the gap appears to be widening. We are quickly becoming a society of digital haves and have-nots, with large differences in access to computers, software and content. This should be of concern to everyone who believes in maintaining a democratic society. But for me, it is a personal issue.

Born at the edge of a tropical rain forest in Puerto Rico, I came to the Northeastern United States with a family of migrant farm workers, and grew up in the urban barrios of Paterson, N.J., and East Harlem in New York City.

Blessed with maniacal tenacity, I was driven to change the circumstances of my birth. As an eighth grader, I looked old enough to work the graveyard shift in factories in Northern New Jersey and continued to work from midnight to 8 a.m. through high school. Eventually, I transferred from the public schools to a parochial school in Passaic, N.J., where I worked as a janitor after school, cleaning the toilets to pay for my tuition. I took college classes, often walking as much as 12 miles to class. I played varsity baseball, as well as basketball and football. Somehow on three hours of sleep, I was able to maintain excellent grades and score well on standardized tests. Along the way, I managed to impress people of influence who wrote glowing recommendations for college. By the grace of God, these combined factors allowed me to acquire a first-class education at Yale, which made an extraordinary difference in my life.

After graduating from Yale, I began my work career at Morgan Stanley on Wall Street in a unique two-year management training program. It was there that I became fascinated with technology. I continued onward, with six years on Wall Street, five years of management consulting at Deloitte & Touche, and increasing responsibility roles in technology at a number of Fortune 100 companies. I worked for Federated Department Stores, Office Depot, Alcoa and as CTO at Kmart; and ultimately became CIO at Owens & Minor, a Fortune 500 health-care distributor based in Richmond, Va.

Of course, technology was not a significant differentiating factor when I attended college in the mid-1970s; personal computers were rare then, and were just beginning to have a major impact in the business world that I entered in the early 1980s. But that is no longer the case today. Computer literacy is a must for any child who enters the world with a lack of advantage and dreams of achieving success in business or any career path.

 

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