Cengage Chief Information Officer James Chilton Wins 2020 Boston Enterprise CIO of the Year Award
The BostonCIO Enterprise ORBIE® Award Recognizes Technology Leaders at Organizations with over $800M in Annual Revenue
James Chilton, Chief Information Officer of Cengage, an education and technology company, has received the 2020 Boston Enterprise CIO of the Year ORBIE Award. Presented annually by BostonCIO, the ORBIE® Awards recognize chief information officers who have demonstrated excellence in technology leadership. Finalists and winners are selected by an independent peer review process, led by prior ORBIE recipients across the country.
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“We are incredibly proud that James has received this award, recognizing his technology leadership in driving innovation and developing efficiencies that have allowed us to better serve the needs of today’s educators and students,” said Michael Hansen, CEO, Cengage. “Especially during these unprecedented times, James has been instrumental in ensuring business continuity throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. In March, James quickly mobilized his team to shift our global workforce of 5,000 employees from office environments to working remotely in a matter of days and without incident – a critical transition to make sure our employee base was able to efficiently and effectively serve our customers as they adapted to teaching and learning online.”
Chilton was recognized for his leadership in evolving and adapting technology solutions at Cengage to better serve the needs of learners and educators in the digital age. He led a comprehensive assessment of the Global Technology Solutions team – its culture, people, processes and technology – to develop best practices, improve operations and foster innovation. These efforts created improved efficiency and productivity among the Cengage workforce, scalable, innovative offerings for our customers and ultimately stronger business outcomes to drive the long-term growth and success of the company.
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Beyond his work at Cengage, Chilton is actively involved in Boston-area community work as a mentor and Advisory Board member for Apprenti. This non-profit organization is a proven, reliable pipeline for underrepresented groups inclusive of all races, genders and veterans to gain training, certification and placement within the talent-hungry tech industry. Motivated to make this part of the hiring process at Cengage, Chilton and the technology team have brought in a number of apprentices and plan for more in the coming years.
This marks the second consecutive year that the Cengage technology leadership team has been recognized by BostonCIO. In 2019, Chief Technology Officer George Moore received the Boston CIO of the Year Global ORBIE® Award for his leadership in taking the company’s transformation from traditional publisher to digital education company with Cengage Unlimited.
BostonCIO recognized chief information officers in eight key categories – Leadership, Super Global, Global, Large Enterprise, Enterprise, Corporate, Healthcare, and Nonprofit. The awards were presented at the Boston CIO of the Year Awards virtual ceremony on August 21.
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