Career update

??? #CAREERUPDATE MOVING FORWARD# ?? - In my last update I announced that I am moving into new waters after my journey with Conscia as Group CTO. Time to follow up on that promise.

If your interested and got this far please read my background story here :)

Years ago I ran my company Strategic Consulting Alliance for years with Enterprise architects in Consulting as well in Enterprise architecture training and coaching after I have been a consultant for several companies and a dozen assignments. I have coached and trained 100+ architects and been the lead architect for several financial and government companies.? I shaped some of the largest e-government platforms, websites and systems and have been co-author of architectures such as Gemma and NORA. At a certain point in time I felt ready for the next step.?

I felt i had to make a choice between two options;

1. CIO/CTO - go further up in the leadership hierarchy into a CIO or CTO position role and extend my Enterprise Architecture and Leadership skills.
2. Startup - Go start a new company based on a new transformative idea.

I went to Sa?d Business School, University of Oxford and did a management program to help me decide on the next steps.?So i made a choice.

Although Choice 1 seemed an obvious choice I decided to go for the more risky Choice 2 and I started building a startup called Cloudplaats (first cloud broker) in the Netherlands and I was even on radio channels such as BNR business radio. The related app was in the Appstore Top10 most downloaded Business apps for a couple of months. It was too early though for the market and I had difficulties in finding the right pricing model and business model. I read every entrepreneurial and marketing book I could find.?

So after a year (this was in 2014) and burning a lot of my own cash,? I learned so much and had a lot of fun doing it but I decided to move on. I thought this entrepreneurial adventure (and some other small startup initiatives) would give me a good mix of Innovation, Strategy and Enterprise Architecture expertise and it was time to go into C-level positions.?These experiences that you collect at first don't seem to be related but overtime the are really something you can put in your backpack and start strengthening each other.

## Now - 10 Years Later I have been (Group) CTO of 3 very different companies ##

A) The first was Delta Lloyd ( OHRA, Deltalloyd, ABN AMRO Insurance) , one of the Top5 insurance companies (now part of NN group) in the Netherlands where I was the Group CTO running the CIO functions such as Enterprise architecture, Innovation, Projects and some of our digital transformation initiatives.

B) The second was 富士通 where I have been part of the Western Europe Leadership team as CTO and also worked as the EMEIA CTO for Financial services for all the large accounts as well as the largest bids in the region. I was responsible for our innovation approach with startups all over Europe to select the ones we wanted to work with and showcase them on the web summit as first Japanese IT company ever done so. I have also been driving some of the largest accounts and deals in the region as well as shaping our Horizon Europe activities. Fujitsu is one of the Top10 largest IT vendors in the world.

C) The third was Group CTO of Conscia. A 1100 FTE fast growing company in Cybersecurity and Infrastructure, Private Equity owned and active in 7 countries. Growing 20% YOY and several M&A acquisitions around the region. As group CTO and part of the Group leadership I have been driving our technology strategy, product development and our internal platform developments as well as shaping our Network of Knowledge.

Now this fulfilled my idea of building strong my CTO competences in ;

A) a large corporate (bank / Insurance)

B) a large international IT integrator (top10 worldwide)

C) a fast growing international?company/scale-up owned by Private Equity and strong path of M&A acquisitions.

So you might be wondering what’s next. Well .. it's time to sail on. I have had many interesting CTO opportunities passing by in the last years for local CIO roles, worldwide CIO/CTO roles, large vendors roles (such as on cybersecurity) , large banks roles and roles in Saudi but I decided to stay loyal to the companies I was working with.?

You also might be wondering what happened to Cloudplaats. Over these last 10 years Cloudplaats evolved into Clateway Media . A company that runs C-level roundtables and events all over the world with CIO’s, CTO’s, IT Executives . Over the course of the last 2 years over 100 sessions with thought leaders have taken place worldwide. Under the slogan "Inside DX talks" topics on cybersecurity, Identity management, customer experience and digital transformation" have been discussed in over 5 different local languages (incl Italian, Spanish, German, Dutch, English) with moderators from McKinsey, BCG, BAIN and the Clateway Technology Council.

Next to that the Clateway platform evolved into the first worldwide platform that that uses #AI for #CxO insights and vendor selection with an App “Clateway” in the App Store.?This is still in its first steps but has great potential to become the next AI Strategy/IT Consultant that helps CTO's and CIO's on a daily base. Plz check it out if you are interested.

?? So what will i be doing next? I am Happy to announce that a new service will be launched which is the fractional and Interim CIO/CTO services and I will be driving it as co-founder of Clateway. ??

Next to that I will be open for assignments for Interim and Fractional CIO/CTO roles myself for ;

• Enterprises , Corporates and government
• Startups and Scale-Ups
• Investors and Private Equity and portfolio companies
• Vendors

So i will put my skills and experience to work for other companies to help you build, grow and change. Looking forward to work with you.

Please reach out to me (see link in profile) to book a meeting directly to see how I can help you moving forward.? I am hoping for some good wind and sun moving forward. Let's join forces.Love to hear from you in the comments.

Greetings, Pascal

#Fractional #CIO #CTO #Interim #leadership #strategy