IT's Best and Brightest: Premier 100 IT Leaders 2007

This Year's Honorees

Honor Roll

WHAT MAKES A WINNER?

A few parts technical know-how, a dash of diplomacy: The Premier 100 share their top must-have skills.

It's not an easy road, even for high-powered IT leaders. These are the issues that vex them daily.

IT leaders say success in meeting their CEOs' goals requires deft handling of human relations.

No longer are IT leaders simply supporting business strategies. Instead, many are helping to design, evolve and innovate new business models.

For many Premier 100 IT leaders, the key to building successful relationships is reaching out to other executives to better understand their needs.

Need tips on becoming a better IT Leader? Read Computerworld's top stories from 2006 on leadership and management skills.

LEADER PROFILES

How 10 leaders played to their strengths, taking 10 very different paths to the top.

Patrick Bennett of E! Entertainment Television says being able to quickly respond to market demand is more important than ever.

Capital One Auto Finance's Dick Daniels has learned to build bridges by moving around within IT and applying lessons from other disciplines.

Lennox International's Linda Ann Goodspeed learned about leading IT from working on the business side.

Mark Hopkins of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center says administrative management positions helped expose him to the business side of health care.

J. Clark Kelso, California's CIO, drew on his decades of legal experience when he helped restructure a scandal-plagued IT department.

Janice Malaszenko of Xerox Information Management has combined global understanding with technology knowledge.

Kathleen McNulty of The Schwan Food Co. says being a problem-solver has been the hallmark of her career.

James Onalfo the New York Police Department's CIO, a job assignment early in his career piqued a lifelong interest in technology.

Procter & Gamble's Filippo Passerini uses lessons learned from playing competitive chess as a teenager in his professional life.

Donna Seymour of the U.S. Maritime Administration built a successful IT career by learning and enhancing her management skills in every job she held.

THOUGHTS ON LEADERSHIP

MULTIMEDIA and INTERACTIVE

Have questions about leadership? Premier 100 honorees respond to reader queries in our regular Ask a Premier 100 Leader feature. Submit your query to AskALeader@computerworld.com.

Frank B. Modruson answers readers' questions about assuming a leadership role, hot career choices and more.

Do you need to make the IT-business connection for your team, department and enterprise? Check out Computerworld's Premier 100 IT Leaders Conference, March 4-6 in Palm Desert, Calif.

Webcast: Most companies' secrets are all in a computer somewhere. Yet, guidelines for determining employees' rights of access to digitized information are typically based solely on behavior models of the brick-and-mortar world. In this Premier 100 conference session, Michael Theis, chief of cyber counterintelligence for the National Reconnaissance Office, outlines some intriguing changes in human behavior observed in cyberspace and discusses how they can impact enterprise security.

Webcast: In 2005, a series of Gulf Coast hurricanes disrupted operations at thousands of companies, as data centers were ravaged, employees went missing and entire communities were evacuated. Panelists offer a candid view of where and how their IT and business continuity plans worked, what they didn't see coming and how they plan to prepare and respond the next time disaster strikes.