Catherine Doran CIO50 2008

As a member of the executive management team at Network Rail, Catherine Doran is responsible for a huge, complex IT operation in a high profile and visible organisation.

This includes an IT budget of almost £140m, supporting all the tech needs of Network Rail's 17,500 employees spread across 460 locations around the country.

Doran's key priority is defining and building the strategic IT direction for Network Rail as well as delivering the technology - infrastructure and applications - that support its mission-critical engineering and rail operations.

Comms and mobility is also a big issue and Network Rail recently signed a deal with O2 to provide 23,000 staff with voice, BlackBerry and other mobile data services.

Doran joined Network Rail from BT, where she was director of transformation and technology. Of the change she says: "One of the interesting things for me when I moved from BT to Network Rail was moving from a company where everything was governed by what was happening in the next quarter and how the numbers would play in the City to a company where a 30-year investment decision feels OK."

Prior to BT Doran was European CIO at Capital One and head of retail information systems at NatWest.

She embarked on a career in technology after initially studying maths and geography at university in Ireland and has played a lead role in improving the performance of major organisations through IT transformation programmes.