First Person Meets… Jim Wilt – CTO | Chief Architect | Distinguished Architect – WVE
We meet Jim Wilt, a voraciously curious CTO, distinguished chief architect and engineering advocate. Jim’s enjoying a stellar career with roles as CTO, CDO and chief architect across a multitude of enterprise organizations. In this conversation we learn about his success and failures, and how he may have learnt more from the latter. He takes us from being inspired by a Disney movie to learn to code on paper because he couldn’t afford access to a computer, to working in medical research and winning prestigious awards for huge organizations. He describes a great boss in McDonalds who taught him the value of giving your best to everything you do, including the story of the janitor at NASA who sent a man to the Moon. Jim shares how he needed to be convinced of his own expertise, and shares the view that material success follows passion and focus – don’t waste your time being safe.
First Person Meets… Arno Schilperoord – Director Global Architecture & Digital Innovation at The HEINEKEN Company
We meet Arno Schilperoord, a global leader for Heineken who believes that coding is magic and poetry, offering the opportunity to create something from nothing and infinite possibility. Arno tells us how studying physics and using computer models and writing computer code to help in the analysis was his way into IT. He says that in IT everybody was learning things for the first time, and explains how designing resilient high-performance solutions was just a small step from his current practice of architecture. Arno tells us that great bosses are able to spot and resolve problems early, and that great leadership isn’t just about technical expertise, it’s about awareness, timing, and creating a culture of high performance and creating an environment where people feel safe and feel supported.
First Person: David Jones – Chief Architect – WVE
We meet David Jones – a chief architect, CTO and CIO who describes his work as elevating business technology strategy through architectural excellence. David introduces himself as someone who loves collaborating, doesn’t do politics and is always honest. He tells us how he got started by choosing to study electrical engineering inspired by his brother and a French pen pal, and espouses the value of practical, in-industry training over academic learning (although he returned to his own school to teach). David tells us how he was supported to accelerate his career by studying bleeding edge tech whilst he was working in an operational business, and how that taught him a valuable architectural lesson: the best solution for the organization you are in may not always be the most current technical solution. David’s message to those starting out is to follow your passions, learn, and be open and curious – you never know where life will take you.
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