CIO Announcements from TXP and U. Texas at San Antonio

Yesterday I wrote about the increasing prevalence of young managers, and in particular, young CIOs. I have further evidence of that trend: Yesterday, TXP Corp. announced it hired a 35-year-old as its CIO.  (Interestingly, the CIO post is a new one for the Richardson, Texas-based company.)  The thirty-something in question is one Robert Walden, who joined the pre-manufacturing services provider from 7-Eleven.  Most recently, Walden was the convenience store chain’s chief architect and manager of emerging technologies.  During his tenure with 7-Eleven, he was responsible for enterprise architecture and systems integration strategy, designing and developing enterprise portals, and content management systems. 

The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) hired John McGowan (pictured at left) as its new CIO and associate vice provost for information technology.  McGowan starts his new job on July 17.  he succeeds Jeffrey Noyes, who recently retired, according to a press release from the University. McGowan joins the UTSA from Florida International University in Miami, where he held the CIO post for four years. 

On a different note, Forbes has this great little Q&A on its web site called Executive Toy Box.  I just love it.  Some lucky Forbes staffer (actually, it’s David Ewalt) gets CIOs to riff about their favorite gadgets. Yesterday, the CIO of KLA-Tencor talked about his iPod Nano.  To find out why he loves it so much, check out the really short Q&A that won’t take more than a minute to read. (BTW, am I the only person in the U.S. who doesn’t own an iPod?  It’s not that I don’t want one.  Just that I can’t afford the one I want. Because naturally, I want the most expensive one.)