You've Been Heard

Tim Armstrong runs IT for a construction company with a team of four serving 175 staff. His take on the biggest mistake IT makes: gatekeeping support behind ticket systems instead of helping people first. Tim Armstrong is 90 days into his role as Manager of IT at PROCON, a design-build construction company in Hooksett, NH. With a four-person team serving 175 staff, he has had to build trust fast,...

Nathan Kaufman built CMMC compliance from scratch at a defense contractor with SSH open to the internet and no Active Directory. Then he learned the hard way that technical wins mean nothing if you can't communicate your value. Nathan Kaufman walked into a $100 million defense contractor with 80 employees, zero IT infrastructure, and two years to become CMMC Level 2 compliant or lose all DoD contr...

Stephen Chen spent seven years learning digital transformation isn't about technology. Then he discovered the business problem you choose to own defines your entire career.

Bill Markut, IT Director at Gränges Americas, built a five-year roadmap to transform manufacturing IT. From the Department of No to the Department of No, But. And why AI won't fix a decade of infrastructure neglect. Bill Markut spent 36 years avoiding management, preferring hands-on technical work. Then he became IT Director at a manufacturing company running 25 years behind the tech curve and dis...

Michael Murray manages 120 project candidates but calls them exactly that—candidates, not projects. Then he learned why the Department of No should actually be the Department of Why.

Roy Cherian spent 25 years watching IT leaders pretzel themselves explaining budgets to executives who don't speak tech. Then he learned why 95% of AI deployments fail: everyone's picking tools before finding use cases.

Josh Tanner runs IT and cybersecurity solo at a Goldman Sachs-backed behavioral health company. 350 users. PHI everywhere. His argument: stop checking boxes and start building an actual security program

Thomas J. Sweet runs IT for a PE-backed company with eight acquisitions and three people. His most reliable hiring signal? Home labs beat credentials every time.

Karl Weber spent 30 years in technology sales before becoming CIO at Rolfson Oil. His biggest insight: stop selling to the CIO and start solving the business problem.

Brian Rowe got hired to build security at a 100+ year old manufacturing company. Then he discovered the real problem: you can't bolt security onto IT that's still running like a mom-and-pop shop.

David Williams spent years thinking his CIO title made him a leader. Then he learned the difference between managing and leading: 'The title that you have does not make you a leader. It can make you a manager.'

Bryan Shanafelt manages IT across 8 offices with just 4 people. Then he learned the secret to building teams that solve impossible problems: hire for personality, not just skills.

Craig Gehrke consolidated 14 ERPs into one and won the 2025 ORBIE Award. Then he learned the secret to getting IT heard: 'Move their cheese occasionally.'

Bradley Stokes has done six private equity turnarounds using the same five-step IT playbook. His secret: stop being the department that keeps the lights on and become the business partner that drives value creation.

Dana Kline built an IT team from 1 to 11 at a PE-backed energy company. Then he created a vendor scorecard so tough that an Oracle VP said 'nobody ever measures us like this.'

Sandeep Shenoy has spent seventeen years integrating AI into medical devices at Viant Medical. He's not anti-AI. He builds it every day. But he's watched the industry rush to deploy systems trained on data sets that were never designed to be fair. The problem isn't the technology. It's the history baked into the data. "When AI makes a mistake in finance, you lose money. When it makes a mistake in...

Shane Petty works in midstream oil and gas where margins are tight and every dollar counts. He inherited a 30-year-old ERP that only twelve people in the country could support. Leadership thought SAP was running the show. Reality? One guy with an Excel spreadsheet was keeping everything alive. "If I don't have that opportunity to speak into those things, well, then I'm just a robot, making sure th...

Dr. Sergio Sanchez has sat in seats most IT leaders never will. Operating rooms. Gaming studios shipping Call of Duty. Apple's Genius Bar. Catholic Church administration with 72-year-old nuns who never touched computers. His diagnosis? IT speaks a language nobody else understands. "We assume that everybody has the same knowledge that we do," he says. Meanwhile, users with AOL accounts become prime...

Ken Widner has a psychology degree, not a computer science one. That's not a footnote. It's the whole story. He was supposed to do marriage counseling. Instead, he became CIO at Do It Best, running IT for 9,000+ retail locations while integrating True Value out of bankruptcy. His insight? IT leaders fail because they lead with logic instead of emotion. "Nobody cares if the system is up, if it's ho...

John Doherty is CIO at Columbia Forest Products, but he started in marketing. That accidental path gave him something most IT leaders don't have - he speaks business first, technology second. The problem he keeps running into isn't technical. It's structural. IT gets called in after the business has already decided what they need. Someone shows up and says "we need SAP" and by then it's too late....

Juliano Giannerini runs IT at Baker Construction and fights the same battle every IT leader faces. Someone walks in wanting a new CRM. They need Spanish speakers at the service desk. They saw a demo and it looked amazing. Nobody asked what problem they're trying to solve. When an HR director demanded Spanish speakers for IT support, Juliano asked why. Turns out craft workers weren't calling IT abo...

Tim Elhefnawy came from operations before technology leadership. That combination gives him a perspective most IT leaders don't have. He's watched tech leaders disconnect from the room in real time. Leading with technical objections when business needed risk discussion. Explaining integration test cycles that meant nothing to anyone while ignoring deal commitments. The pattern? IT leaders who prac...

Mark Baker is VP of IT at Block Imaging in Michigan. They service legacy medical equipment. Big iron MRI and CT machines that hospitals can't replace. Which means Mark deals with Windows systems no longer patched, medical device regulations, and security frameworks spanning three decades of technology. The fundamental challenge hasn't changed since Mark started at a small computer shop. Back then...

Chris Pacifico is Director of IT and infrastructure strategist at a healthcare company focused on mobility devices. He's spent 30 years in IT, moving from programming to hardware to security, and he's learned some hard truths about team leadership that contradict popular wisdom. Chris walked into a six-person team that wasn't actually a team. It was six individuals doing six separate jobs with zer...