CIOs are getting jobs!

CIOs are getting jobs! It’s true! Despite the dismal employment reports that plague our morning newspapers, the IT executive hiring market seems to be picking up.  My colleagues in executive search report an uptick in CIO search engagements, and at my firm, we are busier than we have been since late 2008.  There are still more kings than kingdoms, and some fantastic talent “on the street,” to be sure.  But with the consumerization of technology forcing every company to innovate in IT, companies know that they need the right IT talent, and they are willing to pay for it.

Onto the news….USIS, an Altegrity company, has announced that Cheryl Cohen is their new Chief Information Officer (CIO) reporting to USIS President and CEO Bill Mixon.  Cohen has 26 years of experience in IT, with the last 13 years spent at ManTech International and DynCorp. Most recently, she served as vice president of information systems at ManTech. 

Huron Consulting Group, a business consulting services provider, announced Vincent A. Martin has been appointed as the Company’s CIO.  Martin is a consulting industry veteran with more than 20 years of professional services experience working in various IT roles where he helped companies with their information management organization, and provided integral support by carrying out the IT strategy and implementation. Martin was most recently at McKinsey & Co. as Director of Information Technology.

DTT Surveillance, an industry leader in the surveillance space, recently  announced the appointment of a new CIO, Matthew Kravitz.  Kravitz has 15 years of executive and consulting experience helping companies build better customer relationships, increase revenue, and decrease costs by realizing operational efficiencies.

Michael Fillios has been named CIO, Enterprise Functions of ITT, reporting to Carol Zierhoffer, Vice President and Global Chief Information Officer.  In this expanded role, Fillios will continue to provide strategic business relationship management, support and advisory services to ITT’s functional organizations and global shared services.  In addition, Fillios will now lead the global IT strategic planning and governance processes and is responsible for creating and aligning the technology vision and plan with the ITT business and functional strategies.  Ensuring tight integration of the planning and execution cycle, he will also assume responsibility for oversight of the IT enterprise governance and portfolio project management activities.

Christopher Grant McDaniel has recently been named Head of IT Planning and Strategy for Qatar Project Management (QPM) based in Doha, Qatar providing large scale Real Estate and Infrastructure Project Management Services.

Central National–Gottesman has appointed Jim Panos to CIO. Central National specializes in the  global sale of pulp, paper, paperboard and newsprint and is located in Purchase, NY.

Telstra has appointed former Seek, Wespac, NAB and Standard Chartered Bank technology executive Patrick Eltridge to be its new CIO, following the resignation of John McInerny in June.   Eltridge spent much of his career at the National Australia Bank through the 1990′s, ending up as its head of business and IT alignment, before spending a brief period as a consultant at Boston Consulting Group.

Woodrow Chin, formerly of a San Francisco-based Internet company called Exit13 and Wachovia, joined Dillard’s this month as their CIO.  Dillard’s, based in Little Rock, Arkansas, is an upscale retailer with over 330 stores in 29 states. Chin replaces former CIO Bill Holder.

title=”Alan Claypool”>Alan Claypool is the new CIO at Austin Energy. Alan has 25 years of technology leadership experience and previously served as Manager of Business Applications for the City of Tampa, Florida, providing IT support for all City departments. Prior to that, he was US Air Force Commander (Chief Information Officer) for the largest communications squadron in the Air Force.

Viacom Inc. named David Kline as Senior Vice President of Technology and CIO of the media conglomerate and of MTV Networks, which it owns. Kline was Executive Vice President and CIO at Discovery Communications. He joined Discovery in 2007 from Rainbow Media, a unit of Cablevision Systems.

Iron Mountain Incorporated, the information management company, has hired Tasos Tsolakis, the former chief information officer for Affiliated Computer Services (ACS), to lead its information technology organization. Tsolakis, 54, becomes Iron Mountain’s executive vice president and CIO and will oversee the company’s use of technology to serve customers and grow as a global information management leader. Tsolakis takes over for Bill Brown, who moves into a new role as senior vice president, global compliance process.

That’s it for this installment of Movers & Shakers. Thanks for tuning in and please continue to send me news.  Martha Martha HellerHeller Search Associates, Martha@hellersearch.com