Georgia CIO of the Year® Awards Announces 2011 Winners

Friday, October 28, 2011 – Atlanta, Georgia – The Georgia CIO Leadership Association (GCLA) announced the winners of the CIO of the Year® Awards this morning at an Awards Ceremony held at the Cobb Galleria Centre.

The CIOs of the Year® were: Bill VanCuren, NCR Corporation in the Global category, Wes McDowell, Georgia Power in the Enterprise category, Jay Ferro, Chartis Aerospace in the Corporate category, and J.L. Albert, Georgia State University ­­­­in the Nonprofit / Public Sector category. The Lifetime Achievement Award recipient was Becky Blalock, SVP and CIO, Southern Company (Retired).

The Global category represents a company with 2,500 IT users and a multinational operation, the Enterprise category represents over 1,000 IT users, the Corporate category represents up to 1,000 IT users, and the Nonprofit / Public Sector category represents any not-for- profit organizations, government agencies, schools in the public sector.

Since 1998, the Georgia CIO Leadership Association (GCLA) CIO of the Year® Award Event has recognized excellence among C-level executives in the IT/ IS space.  The winners of this event were announced this morning and honored at an exclusive ceremony comprised of the “Who’s Who” of the Georgia technology community. This year’s finalists were a group of highly qualified nominees representing the leading companies from within the local business community.

The GCLA is proud to recognize and thank the following sponsors who have made the 2011 CIO of the Year® Awards possible:

Gold sponsors: Spencer Stuart, NIIT Technologies, Inc, SunGard Availability Services, Polycom, Inc. and Recall Corporation.

Silver sponsors: OnX Enterprise Solutions Inc, MATRIX, Tribridge, Wipro Technologies, MD&E Clarity, CenturyLink, First Data, Extreme Networks, Bank of America, Gartner, Oracle, Insight, Salesforce.com and Dell Services.

Bronze sponsors: Abacus Solutions, AutoTrader.com, Verizon Wireless, Avaya, Presidio Networked Solutions, The Coca-Cola Company, Quality Technology Services, Accenture, Synergis, Southern Company, Slalom Consulting, PGi, Smartsoft Mobile Solutions, Veredus, Mike Collins and Associates, Symantec, NetApp, CDW, Gantec Corporation and McAfee.

About Georgia CIO Leadership Association (GCLA)

The GCLA is the preeminent professional organization for Georgia’s information technology leaders. Founded in 2003, its membership is comprised exclusively of chief information officers or individuals in equivalent positions at companies and organizations throughout the state.

The GCLA is underwritten by the following companies:

Deloitte, IBM, Intellinet, Morris, Manning, and Martin LLP and Microsoft.

The Georgia CIO of the Year® Awards is brought to you by the Georgia CIO Leadership Association, www.georgiacio.org and recognizes TechLINKS as the official event management partner.