On November 22nd, in the heart of midtown Manhattan at the Grand Hyatt Hotel, an illustrious collection of CIO’s and IT professionals gathered to celebrate a select few who have accomplished incredible feats in the space of information technology through their ability to lead. The New York CIO of the Year ORBIE Awards had never been hosted in New York City prior to this event and it was made possible this time around through the generous sponsorship of companies like Techolution.

As a gold-level sponsor, Techolution was given the honor to present the ORBIE Award for the Enterprise Group of CIO nominees. The award recipients for the day were selected through a rigorous, independent peer review process, which included many previous winners of the prestigious ORBIE award.

Here we have our very own, Luv Tulsidas, CEO & President of Techolution, presenting the Enterprise Group Orbie award to Len Peters, CIO for New York University.

The New York CIO Leadership Association was in charge of orchestrating this ceremony, but they are a part of a larger national association called the Inspire CIO Leadership Network with 15 other chapters spread across major U.S cities. Since 1998, InspireCIO has nominated over 800 CIO’s as finalists and over 200 CIO of the Year winners have received the ORBIE award.

Every year, there is a keynote speaker who is invited to share their experiences as an IT executive and offer some professional advice to their CIO peers. On Friday, Becky Blalock, former CIO of Southern Company who is now a bestselling author and Managing Partner at Advisory Capital LLC–was asked to say a few words.

During her keynote speech, she emphasized how important it is for IT executives to cultivate their professional relationships because in moments of difficulty and adversity, you can reach out to a colleague and ask for guidance. She said, “It’s in our DNA to connect and be a part of a tribe. I encourage you to connect and build your tribe.” The concept of building up this “tribe” is a foundational principle for InspireCIO and it has fueled their association’s nationwide growth as more and more CIO’s across the country have joined the InspireCIO network.

We are honored to have sponsored such a great event and look forward to being a part of future InspireCIO events in the metropolitan area.

If you are a CIO experiencing some IT business challenges in the areas of cloud transformation, user experience and IoT, set up some time with us to discuss your short-term and long-term objectives. Email us at: consulting@techolution.com