Thoughts from the CIOs of the Year

The CIO of the Calendar year Awards wrapped up final week, highlighting main details officers’ achievements more than the earlier calendar year. 

The had been 5 awards offered the winners were being:

• Matt Pedalino, CIO of Harrison Pensa LLP: Subsequent Technology Leader of 2022
• Mazen Joukhadar, vice president and CIO of Renovate Shared Assistance Corporation: 2022 Not-for-Financial gain CIO of the Year 
• Mohammad Qureshi, CCIO and affiliate deputy Minister at the Ontario Federal government: 2022 Public Sector CIO of the calendar year
• Rex Lee, CIO of Canadian Tire Corp.: 2022 Personal Sector CIO of the 12 months
• Julie Levesque CIO and govt VP of functions at Banque Nationale du Canada: 2022 Non-public Sector CIO of the Yr

Listed here is what some of the winners and members of the CIO Association of Canada experienced to say about their achievements and the get the job done that went into them:

Mohammad Qureshi: a staff hard work

Inside of Govt Information and facts Technological know-how Ontario (GovTechON), Mohammad Qureshi prospects an corporation of more than 4,000 technologists to energy the Government of Ontario’s intention to be the leading digital jurisdiction.

In accepting his award, Qureshi credited a lot of the really hard function above the past two yrs to his workforce. 

“I really feel like the staff need to genuinely be accepting this award rather of me. They did a lot of tricky perform, they actually strike it out of the ballpark… Undertaking the operate through the pandemic, they really introduced their A match,” he said. 

For the duration of the pandemic, Qureshi led a team that applied the growth of and stood up several contact centres to support Ontarians. These contain “Stop the Spread” hotline, the vaccine scheduling line and the “Ontario Together” portal.

Heading into the write-up-pandemic era, Qureshi explained the upcoming actions are to concentration on performing with the federal government on opening back the financial system and rebooting Ontario. 

Rex Lee: facing difficulties in the pandemic

Rex Lee and his group have been responsible for rebuilding the Canadian Tire Retail e-commerce system so that it could go from dealing with 5,000 orders for every day in advance of the pandemic to 120,000 for each working day for the duration of the peak of the pandemic lockdowns.

Two decades truly worth of get the job done was completed in just 6 weeks and resulted in Canadian Tire Corporation e-commerce progress of 30 for each cent, achieving C$2 billion very last yr.

Lee claimed he and his crew did “the impossible” in the course of the height of the pandemic. 

“We experienced cases wherever no earnings was coming into the company, shops ended up shut down, e-commerce could not tackle the large load that it was using on. Remaining the confront of terrific persons seeking to do fantastic points has been amazing and I experience extremely privileged and lucky to get to symbolize that,” he mentioned.

Lee mentioned 1 of the even larger problems he and his staff confronted this 12 months was trying to obtain a alternative to seamlessly function the technological know-how the firm essential to thrive. 

“The overall firm is relying on know-how to operate, to be in a position to pay payments, to hold the lights on, and [if] it is not working—that’s a big quantity of pressure,” Lee explained. “Everybody jumps in, no matter of their official title or official function. Everybody’s united and aligned and we had to solve problems that were ‘unsolvable’, and the groups figured it out.”

Philippe Johnston: again to in-individual gatherings

Philippe Johnston, chief info officer of the Nationwide Study Council and president of the CIO Affiliation of Canada, said right after the cessation of in man or woman gatherings thanks to the pandemic, currently being ready to begin them once more is a phase in the appropriate way.

“Our top secret sauce for the association has been activities like we’re carrying out nowadays [CIO Awards], which is meeting in particular person and exchanging strategies. And so we have not been capable to do that in particular person, so like everyone else, we’ve been carrying out these virtually.”

Nonetheless, while the business was in a position to regulate and shift into on the net situations, to make it work for the problem, Johnston claimed they are slowly and gradually shifting ahead.

“We’re really on the lookout forward to obtaining additional of these varieties of matters across the nation around the following number of decades. It’s certainly pleasant to see persons all over again.”