CIO Promotions Galore

CarMax promoted two IT executives today. Mike Dolan was promoted from senior vice president to executive vice president of administration. He’s in charge of HR, IT, construction, procurement and engineering for the used car retailer. Dolan joined the company in 1997 as its CIO, from H-E-B Grocery where he had the same title. Richard Smith was promoted from vice president of “management information systems” to SVP and CIO. Smith hold the distinction of being CarMax’s first full-time employee.  He helped develop the CarMax concept in 1991 while working for Circuit City (Circuit City owned CarMax until a few years ago. For more on Circuit City’s ownership of CarMax, see the profile of the electronics retailer I wrote in 2005.)

Similar news coming out of Markel Corp. The insurance underwriter promoted its CIO, John Latham, to SVP of operations. Latham’s actually been an operations chief before, having served as COO of Markel Re, a business unit of the company he formed in 2002. In his new role, he’ll be focused on business development. The Richmond, Va.-based company also tapped Dave Egbert, its CTO, to succeed Latham in the CIO role. That’s some nice succession planning right there.  Egbert joined the company in March 2006. For more information about the two executives, read the press release.

Elbert Simpson was promoted from CIO and SVP of IT to president and COO of one of Public Service Enterprise Group’s (PSEG) businesses. His bump from CIO to COO of PSEG Services came amidst sweeping management changes inside the company.