A reader inquires about the CIO post at furniture maker HNI

A reader emailed me yesterday to ask if I knew whether Malcolm Fields had left his post as CIO of office furniture manufacturer HNI (formerly Hon Industries) and had been replaced by a John Kramer.  I hadn’t heard anything about Malcolm Fields leaving or a John Kramer joining HNI or The Hon Company (HNI’s largest operating company), but I placed a call to HNI’s investor relations department yesterday afternoon to find out whether this tidbit on Fields is fact or fiction.  No word yet from HNI on Fields or Kramer, but a quick check of HNI’s web site shows that one Douglas L. Jones is CIO of HNI.  If anyone has any info about Fields or Kramer, please e-mail me.  (Fields has been featured in a few CIO stories, among them, one on surviving major management changes.)

At Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina (BCBSNC), George Lassiter (pictured at left) was recently named vice president of IS operational services.  No stranger to the BCBS network, Lassiter most recently worked for Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Michigan as its director of data center and hosting services.  In his new position, he is responsible for managing BCBSNC’s two data centers, assuring the availability and reliability of the company’s technology infrastructure and applications, and overseeing disaster planning for IT. 

In other healthcare/pharma news, drug distribution provider DrugMax yesterday announced several new hires in senior management including the appointment of Thomas Ferranti as its vice president of information technology. Ferranti most recently served as executive vice president and COO of SourceOne, a provider of fulfillment, document management and marketing services for the financial services industry.  As SourceOne’s COO, he developed and executed a plan to control costs, improve customer satisfaction and boost sales.  Previously, as SourceOne’s VP and CIO, he managed a 50-person IT staff, the company’s client-server architecture (how late 80s/early 90s) and call center.  Seems odd that Ferranti would take an IT position after having served as COO, but maybe he realized while in operations that he’s really an IT guy at heart. He is in fact a certified network engineer and earned his degree in computer science. 

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported yesterday that Walter DeSouza was named CIO of Sunoco Logistics Partners L.P. He had been vice president and CIO in the industrial solutions sector of Ingersoll-Rand.