New CIOs to Report

Yesterday, I had the good fortune to spend some time with Tom Fountain, the new CIO of Bunge, Ltd, a $52B global agribusiness and food company.  Tom is Bunge’s first global CIO and has been charged with the not insignificant task of driving a major IT transformation to the nearly 200 year old company.  From what I could see, Tom is more than up to the task.  He has a solid strategic plan for bringing a balanced plan of people, process, and technology with strong focus on delivering business value to the company (which includes some fairly dazzling organizational design models).  Tom brings to Bunge a track record that includes CIO roles at GE and at Honeywell (not to mention a few years at the CIA).

Bette Walker, CIO of Delphi Corporation, and a generous friend to CIO magazine for many years, has recently retired after 12 years of service.  Prior to joining Delphi, Walker was vice president of information technology for AlliedSignal’s Automotive and Aerospace divisions. She also held several positions with Digital Equipment Corp., including director of IT for Latin America.   Bette’s contributions to Delphi include streamlining the global IT organization, restructuring global IT services and providers, and aligning costs to industry benchmarks.  Succeeding Bette will Tim McCabe, who becomes vice president and CIO after serving for several years as the company’s Director of IT Strategy and Sourcing Management.  The vast majority of Fortune 500 companies go outside for their new CIOs, rather than hiring from within, so this is a major and well deserved victory for Tim.

Richard Entrup has joined CareOne Management LLC as Corporate CIO. CareOne is one of the largest private senior care companies in the US with over 65 care centers located in nine states and over 14,000 employees. Prior to CareOne, Entrup was Technology Director at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City. Entrup has also held the CIO role at Byram Healthcare and Wilson Elser LLP.

Arcadian Health has a new CIO. Rick Click joins the company from Abraxis BioScience where he was global CIO. Click has also held senior positions at Molina Healthcare, eBay’s PayPal unit, Honeywell International and Zenith Electronics.

Acutrack, a provider of media production, print, inventory, assembly, and fulfillment services, recently announced that Asheesh Barman is the company’s new CIO.

Barman joined Acutrack in 2000, prior to which, he was a co-founder of Accudigital Media Services.

And from the files of “Life After CIO”…

Private equity firm Exigen Capital announced that former Fannie Mae CIO Rahul Merchant has joined the firm’s investment team as an Operating Partner. Merchant brings to Exigen Capital nearly 20 years of Information Technology and Financial Services experience

Recently retired General Motors’ CIO, Ralph Szygenda, has joined the Compuware board of directors.Widely recognized for his business and technology leadership, Szygenda has received numerous awards recognizing his contributions in driving the information age. 

Thanks to my friend Cathy Hotka for a truckload of people news in the retail industry

Tom Keiser, CIO of Limited, has been named the CIO of Gap. Keith Pickens, former CIO of Claire’s, is the new CIO at Christopher & Banks.  Bill White, formerly of Saks, Inc., is now Sr. Partner, Professional Services/PMO for Teradata. Steve Katsirubas has been promoted to CIO of Clarks, NA, and  Bill Baumbach has been promoted to CIO of Harry & David.

Anne Teague has been appointed CIO of SaraLeeCorp.  She will be based in Utrecht, The Netherlands.  Teague most recently served as CIO of Sara Lee International. She joined Sara Lee from Heinz in 2006 where she was the European information services account manager and senior project consultant.

Thanks for tuning in; please continue to send me news. Next installment is in December. Happy Thanksgiving!

Martha Heller

ZRG Partners

mheller@zrgpartners.com