Chris Austin Email & Phone Number

Waterloo, Ontario, Ca

Waterloo, Ontario, Ca

I am extremely excited and proud to be launching a new venture to service the great companies of South Western Ontario and beyond! Leveraging 30 years of technology experience I’m offering my experience, technology savvy and leadership skills to companies from small to large. Is your company growing and your IT needs to grow and adapt with you? Is your medium to large company in need an IT refresh or the guidance of a senior IT leader without the addition of another senior staff? Do you have an ERP or other medium to large project that needs someone that has been there and done that? Are you receiving the guidance you need to manage unforeseen circumstances?Introducing fracCIO – Fractional CIO Services! fracCIO will provide the CIO you need with the economy of part-time or temporary services. One day a week – no problem. Need a senior leader for a few months – no problem. Need help finding the right vendors – also, no problem. See more details at fracCIO.ca or email info@fracCIO.ca .

London, Ontario, Ca

Responsible for all technology operations within the school, its two Leadership Centres (London, ON & Toronto), Hong Kong Campus and Ivey Foundation Businesses (Ivey Publishing, The Ivey Academy). Ivey offers its students and faculty cutting edge audio/visual, LMS and collaboration technologies. Salesforce and complex in-house applications provided cutting edge tools for the School's 150+ managment and support staff. Maintaining and renewing these technologies to provide a reliable and user friendly environment was mission critical. Built strong collaborative partnerships with Western Technology Services and key vendors, particularly in support of Ivey's Salesforce platform and AV systems. I provided leadership over the infrastructure, HelpDesk, Classroom Technology, Development and BA teams ensuring the highest level of customer service. A key member of the Senior Operations Committee. Responsible for the building and delivering the IT strategy, project roadmap and budget. Proudly served as a member of University Technology Risk Assessment Improvement Committee which streamlined the processes of audit and risk review for technology purchases across the University.

As the VP of IT, I fulfilled the roll of CIO for Discovery Air, acting as a valued member of the Senior Leadership Team with responsibility over all IT operations internationally. Responsibilities included creating the IT strategy and vision to support the global growth objectives of Discovery Air and its six subsidiary companies. I managed and developed an IT team of 13 skilled professionals that supported 25 locations, six business units, 800+ staff. Played a key role in growth plans as part of "due diligence" team. Vendor management was a key skill for managing several key IT partner organizations that supported ERP and other operations systems.Discovery Air Inc. moved from 6 discrete operating units to a "shared services" model. My role was to ensure that infrastructure, support staff, development teams, policies and vendors were in place to successfully implement that model. Having this model in place assisted the company with global expansion into the US, Chile, Germany, and Peru. Implementing Video Collaboration systems with 24 endpoints in four countries (room systems, personal systems and extended to key business partners) allowed for a distributed leadership team to easily meet "face to face".

Toronto, On, Ca

In this role I oversaw all IT operations, budgeting and strategic planning across North America, reporting to the President of both the Canadian and US divisions. I was involved in the Executive team that guides the company's strategic direction. The IT team is dispersed across 5 cities in Canada and the US, with 8 direct reports, and 31 total staff in the department.

Toronto, On, Ca

Managed all staff, resources and budget for network infrastructure, desktop PC's and laptops, servers and Oracle development environment.

London, Ca

Department management - budge, curriculum, hiring staff.Teaching - computer science and data processingBoard writing team - member of team that created "innovative" Internet course (1995)Presenter at several educational conferences and seminars.

Master The Entrepreneur Skillset, Entrepreneurship/Entrepreneurial Studies

Microsoft Project Comprehensive Introduction

Bachelor Of Education - Bed, Physical Education, Education

Bachelor Of Arts (Hons. B.A.), Computer Science/Physical Education

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