Movers and shakers: Claire Govier, Phil Brimacombe, Rick Gibson and Alan Grainer

Claire Govier has resigned as healthAlliance CIO. She joined the shared services organisation two years ago after being CIO at Vodafone New Zealand. Kevin Robinson, manager solutions delivery at healthAlliance is interim CIO.

healthAllliance is the country’s largest shared services organisation, providing IT and non-clinical services for the four Northern district health boards. Major projects under Govier’s term included the upgrade to Windows 7 and the revision of the IT operating model and structure.

Phil Brimacombe is now Head of Corporate Services at NorthTec, responsible for finance, IT and property services.

Brimacombe moves to this role after nearly three years as director IT strategy, policy and planning at the University of Auckland. His previous roles include consultant at Techspace, CIO at healthAlliance and joint CIO for Counties Manukau and Waitemata District Health Boards.

Rick Gibson is now IT manager at Westland Milk Products. His previous roles included CIO at Gough Group and before that was project controller at Holcim Australia.

Rick Gibson at the CIO roundtable on ‘Enterprise mobility: Platform for growth and innovation’ at the Grill in SkyCity.

Alan Grainer is now general manager print and technology for Gravitas Media, a provider of print and content management systems.

His previous roles included CIO at Baycorp and Waikato District Health Board. He was also CEO at Wild Bamboo, a specialist software company.

Stuart Preston is now account executive at SuccessFactors, following three years at Symantec as account director.

LIC appoints Paul Whiston as chief executive of its new subsidiary business, LIC Automation.

Whiston was previously head of sales and marketing for Paymark, where he was also acting chief executive for a time. Prior to that, he was based in London as general manager international for Simpl.

LIC chief executive Wayne McNee says Whiston brings a strong leadership background to the role, and extensive experience in senior roles for information technology organisations that operate in international markets.

Whiston starts with LIC Automation in June. From that time, LIC Automation will oversee all automation and sensor technology systems for LIC, as well as any future developments. Its formation follows LIC’s acquisition of milk sensor technology provider Dairy Automation Limited (DAL) in February 2014, and a decision to merge it with the co-op’s automation business, Protrack. Whiston will lead a team of 50 staff and be based in Hamilton.

National intellectual property specialists James Wells promotes Peter Brown and Owen Culliney as senior associates, and Sebastien Aymeric as an associate.

As a patent attorney based in James Wells’ Auckland office, Peter Brown heads the firm’s Food and Beverage division. He completed a Bachelor of Science (Hons) in genetics and a PhD in biochemistry at the University of Auckland before undertaking his post-doctoral fellowship with Auckland Uniservices.

Owen Culliney is a commercial lawyer and heads James Wells’ rapidly growing national commercial team. Outside of work, Owen is chairman of the Disciplinary Committee for the Waikato Football Federation and chairman of the Career Moves Charitable Trust Board, and a member of the Rotary Club of Waikato Sunrise.

A member of the Auckland litigation and commercial teams, Sebastien Aymeric focuses on commercial and intellectual property disputes. He is a barrister and solicitor of the High Court of New Zealand and holds a Master of Laws from the Sorbonne University of Paris.

Doug Henschen joins Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research as vice president and principal analyst. His research focuses on information and orchestration technologies, business intelligence, data-visualisation, analytics, NoSQL and big-data analysis.

The appointment of Henschen, former Information Week editor, signals Constellation’s commitment to comprehensive analysis of the impact of disruptive technologies on business today, says R “Ray “Wang, principal analyst and CEO of Constellation Research.

Send news tips for ‘Movers and shakers’ to divina_paredes@idg.co.nz

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