Winners of 2022 Tennessee CIO of the Year ORBIE Awards Announced

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InspireCIO Leadership Network

Jun 17, 2022, 11:30 ET

Executives from National HealthCare Corporation, Nissan Americas, GEODIS, Tractor Supply Company, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, University of Tennessee Medical Center, & CKE Restaurants Recognized for their Achievements

NASHVILLE, Tenn., June 17, 2022 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- TennesseeCIO announced the winners of its 2022 CIO of the Year® ORBIE® Awards. TennesseeCIO recognized chief information officers in seven key categories – Leadership, Super Global, Global, Large Enterprise, Enterprise, Large Corporate, & Corporate. The Awards were presented at the Tennessee CIO of the Year ORBIE Awards at the Omni Nashville Hotel.

"Every organization is technology-dependent, but strong leadership is the X-factor that can turn mundane IT into a remarkable strategic differentiator," said Andy Flatt, TennesseeCIO Chair. "The ORBIE Awards are meaningful because they are judged by peers – CIOs who understand the challenges of technology leadership. Increasingly, having strong business-centric, executive technology leadership is key not only to success, but to the very existence of the business."

The 2022 TennesseeCIO ORBIE Award winners are:

Andy Flatt, SVP & CIO, National HealthCare Corporation received the Leadership ORBIE.
William Orange, VP & CIO, Technology Product Management, Nissan Americas received the Super Global ORBIE for organizations over $10.5 billion annual revenue & multi-national operations.
Pal Narayanan, EVP & CIO of the Americas Region, GEODIS received the Global ORBIE for organizations over $3.5 billion annual revenue & multi-national operations.
Robert Mills, EVP, Digital, Strategy & Technology Officer, Tractor Supply Company received the Large Enterprise ORBIE for organizations over $3.5 billion annual revenue.
Keith Perry, SVP & CIO, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital received the Enterprise ORBIE for organizations over $1 billion annual revenue.
Michael Saad, SVP & CIO, University of Tennessee Medical Center received the Large Corporate ORBIE for organizations over $500 million annual revenue.
Phil Crawford, CTO, CKE Restaurants received the Corporate ORBIE for organizations up to $500 million annual revenue.

The CIO of the Year ORBIE Awards is the premier technology executive recognition program in the United States. Since inception in 1998, over 500 CIO of the Year winners have received the prestigious ORBIE Award. The ORBIE honors chief information officers who have demonstrated excellence in technology leadership. Finalists and winners are selected by an independent peer review process, led by prior ORBIE recipients, based upon:

Leadership and management effectiveness
Business value created by technology innovation
Engagement in industry and community endeavors

The TennesseeCIO ORBIE Awards keynote was delivered by Anil Cheriyan, CTO & EVP, Strategy and Technology, of Cognizant, who was interviewed by Jonathan Frye, President & Co-Founder of InspireCIO. Almost 400 guests attended, representing leading Tennessee organizations and their technology partners.

The 2022 TennesseeCIO ORBIE Awards was made possible by the following sponsors:

Underwriters: Concord, Google Cloud, Lumen, Qentelli, & Veristor
Gold sponsors: Fortinet, Tata Consultancy Services, & Zscaler Inc
Silver sponsors: Accenture, ClearDATA, CMAC Inc., DXC Technology, Infosys, Tanium, & Tech Mahindra
Bronze sponsors: AHEAD, AWS, Between Pixels, Gozio Health, Internetwork Engineering, Island, MEDHOST, Palantir, Patriot Talent Solutions, R1 RCM, SentinelOne, ServiceNow, Snowflake, True Group, Inc., & VMware
Media partner: Nashville Business Journal

About TennesseeCIO

TennesseeCIO is the preeminent peer leadership network of Tennessee chief information officers. TennesseeCIO is one of 25 chapters of the InspireCIO Leadership Network, a national membership organization comprised exclusively of CIOs from public and private businesses, government, education, healthcare and nonprofit institutions.

TennesseeCIO is led by a CIO Advisory Board, supported by an executive director and staff. Underwriter executives ensure programs remain non-commercial and exclusive to qualified CIOs and members.