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

Healthcare provider Centene Corporation named Bradley Bolivar, most recently senior vice president and CIO for Fannie Mae, as its new CIO; Mars, the global food company, appointed Varun Kakaria, most recently Reckitt’s CIO for North America, as chief digital and information officer of Mars Pet Nutrition North America; medical technology company BD hired Arthur Hu, most recently the senior vice president, global CIO and chief technology and delivery officer for Lenovo’s solutions and services group, as chief digital and information officer; and national grocery chain Trader Joe’s selected Prabash Coswatte, most recently chief operating officer overseeing store operations at Heritage Grocers Group, as its new CIO. 

West Monroe CIO Kevin Rooney is building a "board" of AI advisors alongside his human ones, with agents built for specific jobs: one to argue the other side of every decision, one to draw on philosophy and his own values, and one to catch his blind spots. A key move: “I started by building the agent that could tell me when I was wrong,” he writes.

If you commute near Los Angeles, you know traffic. Maybe you have seen the live freeway traffic feeds. Now you can listen to musical interpretations of cars and trucks making their way past Studio City thanks to “The 101 Plays Itself.” The data visualization assigns a note to every vehicle passing through the camera view. Users can select from among 16 instruments – including theremin, electric piano, bells, strings and drums – to create their own soundscape. Creator Jay Judah, a senior member the Machine Cinema AI filmmaking community describes this project as “turning the live freeway into a musical instrument.”

Heller Search was recently retained to recruit a Director, Digital Technology for Oshkosh Corporation. Headquartered in Wisconsin, Oshkosh Corporation is an industrial technology company and manufacturer of purpose-built vehicles and equipment for the access, defense, fire and emergency, refuse collection, concrete placement and aviation ground support markets. For this role, we identified Vikesh Jugjivan, who most recently was Head of IT and Digital Transformation at Oerlikon. Jugjivan holds a B.Sc. from the University of the Witwatersrand. Best of luck, Vikesh!