Former Blue Shield CIO ends up at FAA

Last August, a reader told me that David Bowen had reportedly left Blue Shield of California.  Bowen has since turned up at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), where he has been named CIO and assistant administrator for information, according to a story in Federal Computer Week. Bowen succeeds Daniel Meehan, who retired from the FAA in September 2005. Elinor MacKinnon replaced Bowen in the CIO role at Blue Shield of California.

Brian Light has returned to running IT at Staples, reporting to Chief Administrative Office John Mahoney.  Light most recently served as vice president of business delivery, in charge of the office supply retailers’ catalog and e-commerce businesses.  He was hired as the Framingham, Mass.-based company’s CIO in 1998. Scott Floeck had most recently served as Staples’ CIO.   No word yet from Staples on whether Floeck has moved into another role inside the company or if he’s left.  Pete Howard moved into the business delivery position vacated by Light.

Drug developer Covance named its interim CIO, John Repko, its official CIO.  Repko had served as interim CIO since June 2005. Prior to that, he was Covance’s vice president of global applications.  In that position, he organized and led the centralization and globalization of application development, application support and quality control across the company.   Prior to joining the N.J.-based company in March 2003, Repko was SVP and CIO at GE American Communications, a division of GE Capital.  He spent a total of 14 years at GE in positions of increasing responsibility in finance, IT, e-business and Six Sigma.

Robert Quinn joined Genentech last month as vice president of corporate information technology business and science applications. Quinn, 49, reports to Todd Pierce, Genentech’s vice president in charge of all corporate IT. Quinn’s position is a new one, and in it he’ll be responsible for improving business processes, among other things.  He comes to the biotech firm from KLA-Tencor, where he served as vice president and CIO. Previously, Quinn held executive and senior positions at Portera Systems, eBay and Sun Microsystems.