The hiring range for this role is:  

The Chief Information and Technology Officer is a key member of the executive team responsible for driving enterprise-wide technology strategy and innovation, ensuring secure and scalable infrastructure, enabling digital transformation and supporting a best-in-class IT experience for employees across BCBSA and in support of its strategy.

This leader will provide vision, strategy and leadership across all technology and data strategic and operational priorities at BCBSA and drive execution against key BCBSA priorities including modernization efforts, cybersecurity, data, technology, core IT and infrastructure services and managed services strategy and performance.

To position the Blues for collective success and make strategic recommendations to drive affordability, access, outcomes and experience, close partnership with Plan leadership across the Blues System will be critical. This includes discussion and strategic alignment around leveraging innovation and technology, including data strategies, to drive impact, including but not limited to ML, GenAI, and cloud.

Primary Job Functions

• Shape the technology vision and strategy for BCBSA and lead efforts to scope and prioritize the strategic and operational priorities to scope, indexed on outcomes and value/impact

• Build out a long-term roadmap for technology and data with measurable outcomes and critical milestones for BCBSA and its member plans

• Lead digital transformation initiatives, execution against long-term roadmap to drive innovation, modernization of legacy systems and scalable data platforms

• Partner closely with Plan and BCBSA leadership to bring insights based on a deep understanding of the external environment and changes that will impact our industry, strategy and approach to achieve affordability, access, outcomes and experience for our members

• Collaborate with the Blue Plan CIO and CITO community and liaise with Chief Information Security Officers to promote best practices and establish thought leadership

• Maintain an active network of colleagues and insights/knowledge on emerging technologies and innovation and applicability and impact on the payer landscape and the Blues

• Build and lead a high performing team to drive execution, achieve success with our results, and to foster our culture at BCBSA

• Enable the leadership team to recruit, develop and retain a highly skilled and dedicated technology workforce to execute and deliver against critical outcomes

• Develop and execute strategic outsourcing plans to ensure efficient use of outsourced IT staff and internal teams

• Ensure the security and integrity of organization-wide data, proprietary information and related intellectual property through leadership of the Chief Information Security Officer and team.

• Lead IT Operations and Infrastructure including cloud, network and infrastructure strategies, architecture and interoperability

• Engage and lead across teams as needed to deliver on high priority projects (e.g. application strategy, other technology initiatives like cloud migration)

• Drive success and results, leveraging a management process and active performance management in support of the BCBSA North Star and ensuring delivery on technology priorities and engaging in work across BCBSA as an enterprise leader

• Lead and enable strategic evaluation for large scale projects, including software and hardware, to scope the costs and benefits to BCBSA and make recommendations based on insights on the path forward

• Actively manage performance against expectations across projects, understanding drivers of results and developing plans and strategies to succeed

• Leverage current and emerging technologies to improve the quality of products, effectively engage consumers and optimize services delivered throughout the organization.

Education, Experience, and Certification

Education

Required: Bachelors Degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Business or related field

Preferred: Masters Degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Business or related field

Experience

Required: 15 years of Experience including:

• 10+ years of IT leadership experience, including at least 5 years in a senior leadership role within a healthcare payer, provider, or large enterprise

• Deep expertise in healthcare IT, cybersecurity, data interoperability, cloud computing, AI/ML, and enterprise architecture

• Strong knowledge of regulatory compliance

• Proven track record of leading digital transformation initiatives

• Experience managing large-scale and complex multi-year projects and budgets

• Strong understanding of payer operations, systems, and technology

• Experience fostering change management, leading change in a large organization, fostering collaboration, and providing oversight of strategic planning, stakeholder engagement, and organizational leadership

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

You'll be a great fit for this position if you have a proven track record demonstrating:

• Exceptional strategic leadership, stakeholder engagement and communication skills, with the ability to influence C-suite and Board leadership

• Building and supporting high performance teams who are successful at delivering on results and outcomes for both strategic and operational initiatives

• High EQ and a collaborative and trust-driven working style to quickly build relationships, internally and externally, to enable our work and culture.

• Positive impacts on culture and the ability to foster close collaboration and partnership across stakeholder groups and within your teams

• Comfort with dynamic and sometimes ambiguous settings, showing the skill to bring a structured, proactive approach to prioritize and execute in partnership with fast-paced and dynamic leaders

• A deep understanding of the external environment and the ability to apply deep insights to inform strategy and prioritization and deliver results

• A deep understanding of the healthcare industry, specifically the payers, and the underpinning technology and how it will be impacted by technology and technological advancement

Leadership Competencies include:

• Strategic thinking, including the ability to develop robust insights from various sources, grounded in data and objective analysis, with the ability to make concrete recommendations and outline clear action steps to enable results.

• Strength in execution, a drive for results and a commitment to excellence and follow-through using robust organizational skills, program management, collaboration and communication

• Articulate and succinct communication, including complex concepts, verbally and in writing, and use synthesized communications to drive execution and results.

• Executive presence and organization to support a team of senior leaders (internal to BCBSA and externally with BCBS Plans and otherwise) to ultimately achieve success, growth and results against mission and vision.

• Business and financial acumen and the ability to translate technology and innovation considerations into the opportunity and investment required to achieve outcomes in the business

• Ability to learn quickly and leverage critical thinking and perseverance to take initiatives, solve problems, operate with autonomy and succeed against outcomes with proactive management and communication

• A deep focus on the customer and an understanding of stakeholders, their needs and an approach to a plan and execution to delight

Financial Responsibilities

Revenue Responsibility: Yes - Enables $1B revenue via support to the business

Budget Responsibility: Yes - $300M

People Management: Yes

Role Designation

Chicago Location, Hybrid

Travel Requirements: 15-20%