Published on the 27/08/2024 | Written by Heather Wright

Kiwibank’s Hamish Rumbold takes top CIO award…

Kiwibank’s Hamish Rumbold has been named New Zealand’s CIO of the Year with Mercury, Foodstuffs South Island and New Zealand Red Cross among the companies honoured in the annual CIO Awards.

Just six awards were up for grabs in this year’s event.

“The judges were impressed by the balance between execution and review.”

Rumbold bet out finalists Samir Ranchhod from Tāmaki Health, Foodstuffs South Island’s Shanye Tong and Mercury NZ’s Tim Ansley to take the top award for his work leading with ‘compassion and ambition’, inspiring and motivating teams to take an owner’s mindset and be transformational.

Tong and Ansley didn’t leave empty handed, with their teams taking out the awards for Best ICT Team Culture and Inclusion and Business Transformation through Digital and IT, respectively.

Foodstuffs shared its award for Best ICT Team Culture and Inclusion – recognition for its work transforming from a traditional ‘hierarchical IT function’ to one of dynamic collaboration – with New Zealand Red Cross, whose six strong IT team provides the digital backbone for 600 employees and 10,000 volunteers.

Mercury New Zealand’s win, meanwhile, came on the back of a multi-million dollar migration of Trustpower telecommunications and power retail customers onto Mercury Energy’s technology systems.

“The judges were impressed by the balance between execution and review, the focus to hit milestones and deliver as well as the ongoing review, risk management and continuous improvement to feedback into the transformation and continuously improve.”

In one of three individual recognitions for the night, Port of Auckland’s Manvi Madan took out the Emerging ICT Leader of the Year category. In her role at Port of Auckland she has helped shape a common data platform migration to the cloud, while enabling operations via data to day data reporting and has stepped into temporary leadership voids ‘to ensure a successful outcome’.

Specialist STEMM (science, technology, engineering, maths and Mātauranga Māori) education partner Tōnui Collab took out the Community Tech Champions Award for its work encouraging youngsters into technology.

The final recognition came through the Outstanding Contribution to ICT in New Zealand award, presented to Dianne Daniels for her work championing digital inclusion, including through Computers in Homes, Digital Wings and more recently working with Digital Inclusion Alliance.