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

Mayo Clinic, the nonprofit health care leader, named Arun Kumar Bhaskara-Baba, the former CIO at Honeywell Aerospace and Defense, to be CIO; Financial services firm Capital Group announced Guillermo Veiga, the group chief information and operations officer at Standard Chartered Bank, is its new CIO; Patterson Companies Inc., a service provider to the dental health and animal health industries, hired Wasi Ahmed, the former chief technology information officer at Foundation Building Materials, as CIO; Seattle Children’s Hospital appointed Dr. Natalie Pageler, the former division chief of clinical informatics at Stanford Children’s Health and Standford University School of Medicine, as CIO.

Developing the people who outlast the work is the part of the CIO job that compounds – and it rarely happens by design, argues IT executive and advisor CIO Eduard de Vries Sands. Producing new leaders “is a discipline, and—like most disciplines—it costs something up front,” he writes. In this article, he explains several strategies for cultivating leaders including how to delegate important tasks while remaining available if needed.

Today’s demand for “AI-native” CISOs far outstrips supply. Interviewed for an IT Brew article on the trend, Heller CEO Martha Heller encouraged leaders applying for such positions to emphasize their expertise in how AI and agentic AI fit into the context of business processes in the industry in which they have worked. “Really understand yourself, cyber leader. Are you great with banking info? Are you great with HIPAA? What is your lane?”

“Solar-powered cars have a long, distinguished history of failing,” The Washington Post notes. Now, in spite of others’ stalled efforts – and its own past pause in operations – Aptera Motors in Carlsbad, Calif., says it expects to have its $40,000 solar-powered vehicle that can travel up to 40 miles daily just on sunlight, ready for the market by the end of the year. “Expect a ride closer to a Honda Civic or Volkswagen Golf than a luxury sedan,” a Post reporter noted after taking the teardrop-shaped, three-wheeled test vehicle for a spin. Aptera notes that about 50,000 people have put down a deposit to buy a vehicle that promises the equivalent to 340 miles per gallon.