Gorkana recruits former Independent IT Director as CIO

Gorkana Group, which supplies the PR and media industry with contact and job information, has recruited Andrew Brown as CIO, securing Brown from the Evening Standard newspaper, owned by Russian billionaire Evgeny Lebedev.

As CIO for London-based Gorkana Group, which has grown from an initial email newsletter to a major sector data provider, Brown is responsible for all infrastructure and development and the technology road map, Gorkana said in a statement.

Brown has been with the Levedev organisation since 2009 in operations roles across the Independent, I and Evening Standard newspaper products. Brown left the organisation for a year to lead a vendor, having been Group IT Director of the Independent for 11 years between 1998 and 2008 before the newspaper joined the same stable as the Evening Standard in a 2010 acquisition.

Brown said of his new role in a statement: “Gorkana has a strong reputation for delivering market leading services and I am excited to join a quality business at such an interesting phase of its growth.”