Movers and shakers: Air New Zealand appoints Intuit exec as chief digital officer

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Avi Golan will take on the newly-created chief digital officer role (CDO) at Air New Zealandnext month. Golan is currently vice president Intuit Small Business Group based in San Francisco. He has held executive roles in Google, Barnes and Noble and Olive Software.

Golan holds an MBA and a Bachelor of Computer and Information Science. He is also a co-founder of the Israeli Entrepreneurs and Founders Foundation. Air New Zealand said Golan will bring “a world-class technology leadership focus it company strives to embrace the opportunities of the rapidly changing digital world”.

Air New Zealand cited his experience in building consumer-based web and mobile products for a variety of industries. Golan has also led large and diverse teams competing globally, and has had significant profit and loss accountability during his career. Golan was appointed following a global search for the CDO. It will be a CIO-plus role, said Julia Raue, who left Air New Zealand last month, following eight years in the CIO role. The CIO role was not filled and its portfolio was integrated into the portfolio of the CDO, making it a much larger role, with a different reporting line (reporting to CEO Christopher Luxon), said Raue, who had reported to chief financial officer Rob McDonald. The CDO’s team will comprise the whole ICT team, along with parts of the sales, marketing and operations. “It has digital sales, loyalty, commercial, digital innovation and customer experience, as well as information and analytics,” Raue told CIO New Zealand. “It has business as well as IT delivery components.”

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Freightways creates CIO role Freightways, a major service provider in the express package and information management industries, is recruiting for a chief information officer. It is a newly created role. The successful applicant will report to the managing director and will lead a team of 35 people “both directly and indirectly through existing senior IT management”, according to the advertisement for the role. New ANZ chief at BMC Chris Gibbs is appointed ANZ managing director for BMC, reporting to BMC Asia Pacific president Gavin Selkirk. Gibbs appointment follows BMC’s recent Exchange user conference, where the company unveiled its Digital Enterprise Management strategy – a set of IT systems designed to help organisations make the transition to a digital business. Gibbs joins BMC from the Endace Division of Avago Technologies, where he was Vice President of Sales Asia Pacific and Japan. Prior to that,he was the Vice President of Global Accounts for Global Communications Service Providers (GCSPs) in Asia Pacific and Japan at CA Technologies. “I’m pleased to be joining BMC at what is an exciting time in the company’s history following its move to private ownership,” said Gibbs, in a statement. “The newly-unveiled Digital Enterprise Management strategy is attracting a lot of attention and has been designed to help our customers modernise, digitalise and transform their existing technology – this positions BMC as an industry role model with a strong competitive advantage.”

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