Straight Talk Special Issue: Financial Services - 7

7
technology innovation in order to handle vastly
larger quantities of data in ways that we never
could before. That will enable us to become
a more integral part of our customers' lives,
showing up at the moment when customers
need our services.
We also made changes to our physical work
environment. I believe people naturally like to
collaborate and move quickly and get things
done. As we started to scale our agile approach,
we recognized that this way of working required
more physical interaction. We created new
open workspaces that enable interaction. We've
adopted new technology solutions to foster
collaboration across geographic locations. We
also introduced a scaled agile framework to
enable multiple teams to work together on larger
programs.

A MOVE TO
THE CLOUD

I

An Unusual
Career Path
I'm not your typical CIO. I served in the Air
Force, was a strategy consultant at Bain & Co.,
and earned an MBA at Harvard Business School.
I've been at Capital One for 18 years and have
spent a good portion of that time working in
the lines of business. But while I don't have a
tech background, my experiences have served
me well.
In the Air Force, I developed missile systems,
which gave me insight into how to manage
huge projects. Business school broadened my
mind, and the case study approach trained me
how to think and speak like a business manager.
My time as a consultant provided a continuing
education in business strategy, because you
are typically tackling some of the most difficult
problems a company is struggling with.

n addition to growing our software engineering
capabilities, we have reimagined how we
deliver IT infrastructure. We chose to take a
cloud-first approach to software development,
with AWS as our predominant cloud
infrastructure provider.
We don't want to be in the business of
building infrastructure. There are companies
that have invested an awful lot in that and have

I believe people naturally like to
collaborate and move quickly and
get things done. As we started
to scale our agile approach,
we recognized that this way of
working required more physical
interaction.

At Capital One, I've spent a lot of time in our
credit card and lending businesses. At one
point, I "volunteered" to lead an infrastructure
overhaul of the credit card business, which was
the largest IT system replacement program
in the company's history. It was a big, risky
program that would take several years. But
we pulled together folks from throughout
the business-operations, marketing, and
technology-to get it done. By the time I was
named CIO, I had acquired a good skill set for
the job. But I couldn't have guessed how much
more I had to learn. And that continues today.
One of my favorite parts of my job is continually
learning from the talented people I work with.
Straight Talk Special Issue: Financial Services

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