Richard Williams CIO50 2008

As CIO for pharmaceuticals giant AstraZeneca, Richard Williams is leading a company-wide IT transformation which has already seen boosted business performance through the use of shared services along with improved customer connectivity and IT infrastructure.

As AstraZeneca CIO - a role he took up in April 2006 - Williams is responsible for worldwide application development, information management, tech infrastructure and telecommunications at the company. He was previously the VP of commercial information systems for the US arm of the pharmaceutical company where he led CRM and patient/physician connectivity projects, along with the development of the company's online capabilities.

One of the founding members of the Astra-Merck joint venture in 1992, Williams stayed with the Swedish company as it grew into the multimillion dollar pharmaceutical business that merged with UK-based Zeneca in 1999.

Before joining Astra, Williams worked at audit and consulting firm Coopers & Lybrand where he led a number of IT strategy and application development programmes working with various pharmaceutical and consumer companies.

Williams has a computer science degree from Temple University and an MBA from St Joseph's University - both in Philadelphia.

In addition to his CIO role at AstraZeneca, Williams is also a member of the IBM Board of Advisors and the Research Board.