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Story URL: http://www.silicon.com/research/specialreports/cio50-2008/0,3800014745,39239804,00.htm

The CIO's route to the top
CIO50 2008: Is tech the best way up the ladder?

By Andy McCue

Published: Wednesday 11 June 2008

Being a techie isn't necessarily the best route to the top of the IT tree, with most CIOs on the silicon.com CIO50 2008 list starting out in non-tech backgrounds.

Almost half of the 50 CIOs on the list revealed their educational background and a crude analysis of those shows only a third studied a computer science or related degree at university.

Maths and other science subjects featured strongly, with almost a fifth studying maths and a fifth studying engineering, physics or chemistry.

Beyond that there are a wide variety of degrees among the CIO50, including accountancy, architecture, economics, English literature, history, marketing and politics.

And not every CIO has a degree. Unilever CIO Neil Cameron, number three on the CIO50 2008 list, admits quite happily to being a failed art college dropout.

Beyond university, many of the CIOs on the CIO50 list also took an alternative route to the top than the traditional 'tour of duty' up through the IT department.

Ailsa Beaton - director of information management at the Metropolitan Police Service where she manages the force's IT strategy and £300m tech budget - actually studied chemistry, then opted for a career in accountancy before being lured into the world of IT through a finance department computer modernisation project. She eventually made the step to CIO after 11 years in consulting with PA Consulting.

Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBOS) CIO Heather Jackson also started her career with a short stint as a trainee accountant after graduating in History from Oxford University.

Another accountant turned CIO is Gareth Hill at Reckitt Benckiser, who graduated from the University of Cape Town with a degree in commerce.

One of the most unusual CIO career paths is that of Ben Wishart, change and information director at Whitbread. Wishart, who has a degree in geological sciences and a PGCE teaching qualification spent five years running white-water rafting trips in Kathmandu and outdoor centres in Wales before joining Hoskyns (now Capgemini) in IT recruitment sales.

A few of the CIOs on the CIO50 2008 list even have - shock horror - liberal arts backgrounds. Martin Taylor, group CIO at clearing house LCH.Clearnet is an arts graduate with a masters in English Literature but then started his wide and varied career at British Airways in 1976.

David Lister has almost come full circle in his career, recently joining Royal Bank of Scotland as chief architect - Lister started out as the other kind of non-technology architect.

Even for those with a software engineering background, the route to the top isn't always through IT. Gordon Lovell-Read, who has just left Siemens UK where he was CIO and director of corporate business technology, has a programming background but rose to the role of CIO after spending 17 years at HP in a number of senior management posts across the business - including sales and marketing.

Of course, there are many other CIOs on the CIO50 2008 list who took the more traditional route to the top of the IT tree but an analysis of everyone on the list shows the diversity of educational backgrounds and career paths among the CIO profession.