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IT Excellence for Radical Technology Innovation

Digital Transformation and New Business Models Depends on Radically Improving IT.

Learn More

IT Excellence for Radical Technology Innovation

Digital Transformation and New Business Models Depends on Radically Improving IT.
Learn More

IT Assets

Inventory, assess, ruthlessly simplify and retire.  

Streamlines skillsets, teams, organizations.

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We evaluate, focus and accelerate technology initiatives for investors and enterprises.  We speak geek – and have decades of experience placing the right bets and bringing the most complex of technologies to markets and users in a context that showcases value and makes them understandable.

Responsible, Human-Centric Security, Privacy and Policy

We collaborate with and push you to design behaviors, policies, products and solutions that unite a better tech future by including new voices and  perspectives. As builders of technology and change agents, we are optimists that technology is a useful tool but realists that new approaches and informed policy is needed for wellbeing and human connection.

About Roberta K

LinkedIn

I work alongside technology and business teams, in large, mid and small enterprises, as well as start-ups, VC backed high growth and turnaround investments to Radically Improve Speed, Quality and Business Value of IT and Digital Investments.

Over three decades, I’ve held multiple roles in IT departments of midsize to large organizations, with a strong focus on data, applications and integration, solution architectures including several CIO/CTO leadership positions.  I’ve also worked in Director and Partner advisory roles at PwC, Strategy& and CSC Consulting.  Having worked in the trenches as a CIO/CTO and advisory through transformation in media, financial information, AEC (architecture, engineering, construction), online commodity trading   I’m an MIT educated futurist who speaks English, geek (and some French) and have been “in the trenches” excelling at innovation in enterprises faced with intense disruption,  complex technology choices and need for human behavior and job change.  I balance my spare time by turning off technology and cycling, walking, swimming, practicing to become a Pilates instructor, making art and music, reading, nurturing relationships and continuous learning. I am passionate about Tech for Good and think a lot about the unintended consequences of our increasingly mechanized, resource hungry, digital world, faced with virtue signaling, involuntary surveillance, cybercrime, data, privacy imbalances and focus on tiny screens.

I’m currently consulting with several innovative clients who are focused on both important (long term) and urgent (immediate business value) and who are inspired by the responsible use of digital technology that puts humans and public interest first. I’m also teaching at UBC Sauder School of Business. I enjoy writing and speaking (and intend to do more in the future). Though I have strong opinions, they are loosely held, in part due to the incredible amount of people, process and technology change I’ve lived over three decades. Roberta Kowalishin | IT World Canada

Most recently, I was CIO/CTO for DIALOG Design, a multi-disciplinary Canadian AEC architecture, engineering, construction design practice. I led technology as we transformed our team, internal infrastructure, our BIM design processes and contributed sustainability software and smart building, city and campus design thinking to improve DIALOG’s client projects – adding Operations/Facilities Technology (OT) and Design Technology (DT) to our portfolio. We created a Friends of Technology employee network that connected next generation employees to core IT teams to drive innovation, ideas and learn together. Our cloud-first transformation made our workforce ready to work remotely immediately when the pandemic hit. Though, we knew that more than smart infrastructure (like videoconference) would be needed for the digital disruptions ahead in the architecture engineering and construction industries. DesignIntelligence – Digital Thrivers And The Digitally Unequipped (di-mediagroup.com)

My work as Director at PwC, (Strategy& and Forensics, Records Management) included a few of the largest and most complex transformation projects and challenges of my career, working with many corporate governance models – from rapidly growing private equity firms, to Partnerships, privately held and public, regulated companies. I’m proud of the bets that have moved my employers and clients ahead of technology – many of which were technical but very newsworthy in their day. How Ariba Got Airborne | Business Week.

I also led technology as VP and CIO for highly innovative Hearst Corporation, in the News(papers) unit where we introduced many new paid and free digital news products while continuing to serve our traditional print newspaper customers, with rapidly declining revenues and margins. The tension of innovating while consolidating technology infrastructure and content and publishing was intense. We experimented and selected new approaches to technology like cloud and next generation content delivery (CDN) and were proud to be one of the first adopters of cloud technologies (Microsoft Azure) in the company.  Real-World Windows Azure: Hearst Newspapers Powers Premium Digital News Service with Windows Azure | Azure blog and updates | Microsoft AzureBy shifting to the cloud, people and budget resources were freed up to focus on Data and Analytics. The New CIO Is … an Analytical CTO? | WSJ

I’ve worked across several other industries and a breadth of technologies, teams and cultures and business processes. I have an MBA from MIT, Cybersecurity Certificate from Harvard and McGill B.Com in Economics. Want to discuss how to add a longer term perspective to your IT and innovation strategy? Please get in touch.

Contact Roberta

Send me a message and let me know how we can work together.

San Diego and Everywhere