The Heller Report: October Roundup of New C-Suite Tech Appointments

Insurance giant State Farm named Joe Park, former Yum! Brands chief digital and technology officer and president of Byte by Yum!, as its executive vice president and chief digital and information officer; Bridge Specialty Group, a division of Brown & Brown, appointed Steve Emmons, former director of corporate services for infrastructure at another division of the company; Trellix, a cybersecurity services company, promoted Randy Doherty, its vice president of global infrastructure operations and strategic sourcing, to CIO; Kratos Defense and Security Solutions elevated Brian Shepard, its vice president of IT, as to be CIO; and Amway, the health and wellbeing company, welcomed Ryan Talbott, former vice president and global CIO for BorgWarner Inc.

The costs of getting AI wrong — from wasted spend to brand damage — are far higher for mature enterprises than for startups. In this article, Joe Topinka, founder of CIO Mentor, and Saurabh Shah, vice president of IT at Shaw Industries, present a framework to guide AI decision-making, including a list of common pitfalls to avoid and a “quick screen” filter to help executives determine whether an idea for deploying AI deserves to move forward.

Generative AI is so easy to use that sharing its results at work without careful thought can harm an organization’s productivity, researchers from Stanford University and BetterUp Labs write in Harvard Business Review. Poorly crafted GenAI results produce what the researchers call “workslop” that clogs colleagues’ inboxes. Their survey found “41% of workers have encountered such AI-generated output, costing nearly two hours of rework per instance and creating downstream productivity, trust, and collaboration issues.” It’s the job of leaders “to develop guidance for employees to help them use this new technology in ways that best align to the organization’s strategy, values, and vision.”

Heller was recently retained to recruit a Chief Information Officer for Redwood Services. Founded in 2020, Memphis-based Redwood Services is building a family of people-focused essential home service companies, actively investing in the HVAC, plumbing and electrical trades throughout the United States. For this role, we placed Shayne Mehringer who most recently served as Chief Information Officer of Premium Service Brands. Prior to that, he held the Chief Information Officer role at Propelled Brands and Neighborly. Congratulations, Shayne!