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Summer break is over, but the tech C-suite didn’t take time off. Here’s who’s in and out for August.
Steve Hagerman joins Truist as new CIO
Truist Financial announced Aug. 8 that Steve Hagerman will join the company as CIO on Oct. 28. Hagerman, currently Wells Fargo CIO of consumer technology, has 25 years of tech experience, including over 17 years at JP Morgan Chase in a variety of engineering and other tech-heavy roles.
At Truist, Hagerman will head up the financial institution’s enterprise team, focusing on security, AI, and data and analytics, among other concerns.
Berta Rodriguez-Hervas is new AI chief at Pfizer
Pfizer, perhaps looking to inoculate its business from cyber competition, chose Berta Rodriguez-Hervas as the company’s new chief AI and analytics officer. Rodriguez-Hervas’s appointment was announced Aug. 12 in a LinkedIn post by Pfizer CTO Lidia Fonseca, who wrote the new executive “has an extensive background in AI, machine learning, and analytics, with a track-record of quickly developing AI solutions and delivering them at scale in large global organizations.”
Rodriguez-Hervas was most recently VP of AI, algorithms, and ML ops at Stellantis, a position she held for over two years. She worked with Nvidia for more than four years and Tesla for a little over two years.
Shopify turns to Mikhail Parakhin for CTO position
Microsoft CEO of Advertising and Web Services Mikhail Parakhin is joining e-commerce giant Shopify as CTO, the company announced on Aug. 28. Parakhin’s background in AI was a major motivator for his hiring, the company said in its statement.
With over 20 years experience, including two spells at Microsoft bookending five years as CTO at Yandex, Shopify said it expects Parakhin to “push Shopify to the cutting edge, not just in ML and AI, but in everything we’re building.”
Citadel poaches Goldman Sachs CTO Atte Lahtiranta
In a move that Bloomberg termed a “now-familiar jump” from Wall Street, investment management firm Citadel hired away Atte Lahtiranta to head up its core engineering group. Lahtiranta, who until the move was Goldman Sachs’ CTO, was hired in part because of an emphasis on AI that has made senior tech-focused executives a top priority for companies in a number of industries.
Before joining Goldman Sachs in 2019, Lahtiranta had stints at Verizon, Yahoo, and Nokia, as well as founding ShopAdvisor.