Gareth Lewis CIO50 2008

Gareth Lewis was appointed group CIO at energy company Centrica in November last year and he has wasted no time in getting to grips with the role by reorganising the central tech team and focusing better delivery of shared group services.

Lewis joined Centrica from Richard Branson's Virgin Group, where he spent six years, first as CTO and then CIO. During his time at Virgin, Lewis took a lead role in the establishment of a number of new Virgin businesses worldwide, mainly in the telecoms sector, and he established a successful offshore outsourcing programme resulting in around $40m per year in ongoing cost savings.

Before that he was VP of professional services at Interprovider and a partner in KPMG's internet, communications and entertainment business. In the early 1980s Lewis created a voice messaging system before moving on to various development and management roles at Cable & Wireless, Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) and Unisys.

Outside of Virgin, the Cambridge-educated Lewis is a non-executive director of mobile services software supplier Elata, a member of the customer advisory board for Tideway Systems and a board member of the Telecommunications Management Forum.