Sumit Nagpal
Title
Co-founder and chief architect, LumiraDx Holdings
Employer
Co-founder and CEO, LumiraDx USA
Location
Waltham, Mass.
Career highlight:
I worked with Steve Jobs, and he was my mentor and colleague. He helped me define my passion to make a difference in the lives I touch.
What emerging tech has captured your interest?
Wearable and diagnostic devices and home monitoring technology — they’re the next wave of healthcare delivery.
How are you using reverse-mentoring?
I have an open-door policy. I welcome ideas, novel approaches, innovations and disruptors who think outside the box.
Skills you’ll hire for:
Coding and analytic graphing.
How do you find time to innovate?
Innovation is my passion. It is in my everyday life, my existence, my being.
How are you working with startups?
We encourage them to bring us their ideas and solutions. They are often worth the risk.
Robert Napoli
Title
CIO and senior vice president
Employer
Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest and the Hawaiian Islands
Location
Seattle
What emerging tech has captured your interest?
Within my primary industry, there are several technologies that have great potential, such as mobile health, the internet of medical things and blockchain, among others. However, it is my belief that the triumvirate of artificial intelligence, machine learning and big data have the greatest potential to improve patient outcomes and truly be transformative.
Personal leadership style?
I am a flexible, situational leader with many different styles based on the business objective, the individuals I’m working with and the challenge we’re facing. Regardless of the ways in which I communicate with or motivate my groups, I am accountable for creating a people-first culture within my organizations, and that is the basis for all my interactions.
How do you find time to innovate?
I am fortunate that my CEO recognizes the value of innovation and that she challenges me to find ways that we can transform the business through technology. It takes discipline, but I set aside time each week to focus on innovation and process improvement opportunities, using this time to research the latest trends and generate ideas.
Rafat Naqvi
Title
Vice president, IT Services
Employer
Avanade
Location
Seattle
Skills you’ll hire for:
I see adding to our skill set in the areas of communication, marketing, campaign management, brand awareness and adoption, primarily through some combination of training current team members and hiring from outside.
How has your vendor management strategy changed in the past few years?
Vendor management has become an important focus, especially within the past year. There’s been increasing recognition of its value, and we have strong leadership engagement in putting effective systems in place that make vendor management a cross-functional capability rather than the responsibility of a particular person.
How do you find time to innovate?
We regard innovation as an ongoing perspective rather than independent activity, so I don’t struggle to make time for it. From my perspective, the biggest challenge with innovation is creating a culture that celebrates failure along with success.
How have you created work/life balance?
I prefer the term “integration” to “balance” because the real challenge is bringing together important parts of our lives into a whole. For working parents and members of a global workforce like myself, the key factor is a flexible work environment like the one my staff and I enjoy.
Sarah Naqvi
Title
Executive vice president, CIO
Employer
HMSHost
Location
Bethesda, Md.
What emerging tech has captured your interest?
The connected experience (internet of things) has been an area of interest for our company. Our plan is to drive business transformation through the use of various technologies (wearables, self-service tools, electronic wallets, tabletop systems, scanning, inventory management, optimization technology support, exception-based reporting and applications) all driving speed and excellence of service for customers.
Personal leadership style?
A more dominant style is participative, where I seek to build consensus and make sure the team is engaged so they can drive decision-making. If there is a need, I’m not afraid to get into the mix and support the team through challenges.
Fast ROI project:
A heat map that puts the pulse of the business in managers’ hands. It sources sales, labor and air-traffic information and presents it in an actionable way. If an area is understaffed, resources can be shifted to accommodate demand. This tool has created the freedom to nurture sales from the floor.
How do you evaluate emerging technologies?
In a facility we call the ImagineIT lab, associates and technology providers can test and demonstrate new technology tools in a replica airport terminal. As an incubator of ideas, the lab delivers a critical opportunity to work with technology partners in generating innovative solutions for restaurants.
Steven Narvaez
Title
IT director
Employer
City of Deltona
Location
Deltona, Fla.
Career highlight:
Being invited to join Thornton May’s Value Studio. This is an exclusive invitation-only event held quarterly. Attendees include corporate Fortune 50 and Fortune 100 CIOs and select government CIOs. I’ve had the honor of being invited to this event for the past 10 years.
How are you using reverse-mentoring?
Working as a mentor to Daytona State College students. I teach about corporate life, and in return, they teach me patience and a new perspective to situations to which I have developed a patterned response, allowing me to adjust and adapt my behavior.
How do you find time to innovate?
Innovation opportunities come to everyone; you don’t have to chase them. You just have to be open and not afraid to be creative in your approach to solving problems. Try a new approach, take something designed for one thing and apply it to another. What have you got to lose? And the upside can be tremendously satisfying.
Timothy Newman
Title
Associate deputy assistant secretary, HR Automation, Systems and Analytics
Employer
U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs
Location
Washington
Coolest current project:
Establishing an HR IT strategy through fiscal year 2022 that links the acquisition process, employee life cycle and emerging technologies.
How are you using reverse-mentoring?
My younger generation often mentors me on the use of social media as it relates to data, information access and using apps for business process and communication.
Personal leadership style?
I have an open leadership style that creates a positive, professional environment that rewards staff for focusing on mission completion as opposed to micromanagement and task completion. I achieve accountability of deliverables because the team believes in what we’re doing.
How do you find time to innovate?
One must make time to think and innovate. I incorporate strategy sessions, block out meetings to see new technologies and collaborate with peers, and have quarterly off-site meetings to ensure we stay innovative in our direction, solutions and problem-solving.
Niel R. Nickolaisen
Title
Senior vice president and CTO
Employer
O.C. Tanner
Location
Salt Lake City, Utah
What emerging tech has captured your interest?
Cognitive systems. We are exploring using them to provide smart recommendations to our clients for things such as personal and employee well-being.
An innovative staff idea:
To access an IBM Watson service in the cloud for personality analytics.
What’s the most important task you’ve delegated this year?
To take on the deployment of our recently redone, standardized ERP system.
How do you evaluate emerging technologies?
We have an incubator centered around the goal of employee engagement for ideas, products and technology.
How have you adjusted your risk management strategy to align with the evolving technology landscape?
We have embraced agile principles and methods and do everything in increments. After each increment, we stop and evaluate (and possibly stop or pivot) before moving forward.
Jim Noel
Title
Vice president, software services
Employer
Veterans United Home Loans
Location
Columbia, Mo.
Coolest current project:
The continual improvement through developing additional features for our flagship online/mobile application, called MyVU. This one innovative product will enhance the lives of our borrowers and employees by improving and simplifying the VA mortgage loan process.
Personal leadership style?
Servant leadership — collaborating within and across all of our teams and departments to set a vision and goals for excellence in product delivery and teamwork. Then working together as a team in our journey to be the best we can possibly be in executing our vision and achieving our goals. As a whole, we are better than any one member of the team.
How do you evaluate emerging technologies?
We set aside 10% of our time each week to allow our team members to look at technologies, improve skills and innovate.
Anthony F. Norris
Title
Senior vice president, IT
Employer
FedEx Services
Location
Collierville, Tenn.
Personal leadership style?
I love working with business partners on strategy development for their respective areas and ensuring alignment within the IT organization. I provide my vice presidents with full autonomy to run their business and trust them to bring me into important or sensitive matters. They appreciate this empowering approach.
How do you find time to innovate?
FedEx has formal and informal innovation processes that produce amazing concepts for us to incubate. Personally, I spend a fair amount of time with business partners solving problems that lead to incremental improvements or breakthrough ideas. I also spend time meeting with customers, attending conferences and benchmarking with other companies.
How have you created work/life balance?
We all live in a continuously connected world, so it’s easy to fall into the trap of not being in the moment whether at work or at home. Different ringtones for different contacts, turning on phone notifications, relying solely on phone calls at night for important issues, and keeping sacred time with my children makes all the difference for me.
Ken Piddington
Title
CIO and executive adviser
Employer
MRE Consulting
Location
Houston
What emerging tech has captured your interest?
The internet of everything. I believe the possibilities are limitless and the ability to create unique value for an organization and its customers is tremendous. We implemented IoT in our Audix Insights product, an IT infrastructure solution that designed to help organizations discover valuable data insights about their IT environments.
An innovative staff idea:
Incorporating machine learning into Audix Insights. The idea was to utilize machine learning to analyze data collected from monitored devices and determine what good and bad results looked like. With this approach, Audix Insights should provide more accurate results with the available data.
Boldest prediction for the next 5 years:
Passwords will be obsolete. Through a combination of biometrics and some form of personal device (wearable or implanted), passwords will become a thing of the past. Access will be granted based on retina scans, facial recognition and/or through some form of unique personal ID.
Personal leadership style?
A servant leader, which stresses the importance of the role a leader plays as the steward of business resources and teaches leaders to serve others while still achieving business goals. My role is to facilitate and help both the people and the organization be successful.
How has your vendor management strategy changed in the past few years?
It is focused on relationships and not transactions. I have created a strategic partner program focused on developing strong relationships with our vendor community to achieve maximum value for our organization.