Chris Kowalsky was chosen as the CIO Choice Winner for the 2020 CIO Of the Year Awards to recognize a lifetime of achievement in Pittsburgh's tech industry. The event is set virtually for July 15, 2020.
Transcription:
I'm saying it right now, we're in for a real treat tonight because we're doing a double deep dive with our 2020 CIO of your choice award. This is good stuff. Great.
I've had some music in the background to really play. You know, that would be like, Good old rock and roll.
I like it.
That would be kind of cool, man. I think we should maybe try to do that. And that would be good.
I just don't get the glory. That's why I like the CIO awards. They never they don't get the glory in their world. So thank you so much for joining us.
Yes. We have Chris Kowalsky here, our CIO your choice award. It'll be honored virtually this year on July the 15th. Well, first time we've done a virtual CIO of the Year awards, but Chris, I'm telling you right now, people are very pumped about the fact that we're doing this event and doing it virtually. Because I think I think there's there's Extra people and like this extra energy you're gonna get, so that it's gonna be the gift that keeps on giving.
That's because he can keep watching it over and over. So I got to be very careful what's said and how it said and things that are they absolutely. But here is the table on this really quickly into beat get the Choice Award, you're actually nominated and actually selected by your peers, right. So that's what makes it even better. And I love sitting in and listening to people when they talk about their peers. And there you have.
Yeah, I absolutely appreciate it. You know, obviously, it was a bit of a surprise. I didn't expect I mean, I didn't know anyone's be talking about me this year. And, you know, I've been retired as a CIO since 2015 to mid 2015, and teaching Carnegie Mellon since that time, and actually for 33 years, teaching at Carnegie Mellon. It management and all the things related to that. So when I got the I got the announcement, you know, in an email, I was I was shocked, surprised, happy, you know, wondering, you know, what's, you know, what's the next step? Who How did it happen? Who was involved things of that nature. So I, you know, absolutely thrilled and appreciative of all those, as you say the peers absolutely appears they've reached out to me in various forums through LinkedIn and social media very seriously. They take very seriously so it was really, it's always cool to sit in and listen to them because I don't vote on that. So it's just great that they close the doors and they kind of duke it out for a while and they come out all bloodied and they're like, here's our winner. It's Chris quality this year.
I'm sure like to see who had the blood on him. That would be a winner. But Chris, interview with you for our tg magazine where we have coverage coming out and your background just kind of blew my mind. I'm like, man, there's anyone that's been that done that in the IT world over the past 3540 years. It is you. And that's how I told Adria said we need to give a little extra space on tech by talking about all the work that Chris has done because I know you got to be paid stories and we were talking on the phone when you were just like blowing my mind and all things are we gonna jump into? I think we just started this early years like what got him into it in the first place?
Yeah, well, yeah, that's a good question.
Point is when you got into this.
I look that way. We're on zoom video right now. Nobody can see that. No, it wasn't quite that early. But you're absolutely right. It was close to that. So you know, interestingly enough, I was gonna, you know, in high school years, I wanted to be an artist and a drummer in a rock band around dolls. I was I was thinking this is Yeah, I was thinking this is going to be where I was going to go. Okay, really seriously. You know, we were in things happen. It didn't really work out that well. I was taking art classes at the artists to the Pittsburgh and summer in the summer. My summer class we did in the summer. You know, playing, but that I had some some readings that I came across and I read some things about businesses using computers. And so after graduation, I took some computer classes and continue my education at Carnegie Mellon and fortunately got hired by IBM. And was they put me through a thorough amount of education training, and I have the light programming. Okay, and I said, I can't believe I'm getting paid for this, to me, like to code Oh, much games. I love that. That's so cool. Absolutely, absolutely.
I mean, it's not for everyone. In fact, some of my students, especially undergrad, I say, how many how many you want to be coders when you graduate and you know, maybe 30% put their hands up, they want to be something else. It's a very broad field, as you know. And so, but me I got into the programming and from there, I was able to, you know, I always joke around and say that my penalty for being a pretty good programmer was they put me in a Management. And so I started. Yeah, that's what happens right? When you did something, they put you in a bad position like in management. So I actually got into that pretty early on the programming manager, then systems of programming manager, then I have some opportunity where they needed somebody to run the systems programming group, the Operating Systems Group, and it plus the data center. So I got that. So I had all these different component parts happening. I loved every different thing that I was doing. I had a passion for what I was doing, and I really wanted to take it to the next level no matter what I did. And you know, back in 1980, St. Francis General Hospital is what was called time, which was the largest hospital in Pennsylvania, Western Pennsylvania, I should say, Southwestern Pennsylvania, had an opportunity to head up it that time was called data processing, you may recall and you know, they hired me at 31 years old and but because I had so much of this experience in different areas, that they felt I have some capabilities that can be helpful with but not thing was automated in the hospital? Is it is that nothing, you know? Wow, seriously, I had nurses didn't have computers, doctors didn't have computers. There were some instruments in our lab but they did not interact it did not have lab computers did not have radiology computers did not. Everything was not integrate. I mean, it was just ground floor opportunity. We had the first ever model IBM mainframe back in 1981. Like, yeah, it was amazing. And you know, so we went on and on and on. And so, the digital transformation, you know, started back in the 60s 70s, and definitely in healthcare in the 80s. So I was with St. Francis for the all the episodes of technology being involved, you know, to be able to increase the patient care, to the next level to be able to put the tools in the hands of the patient care providers. You know, what I did was to to be able to discuss with my team that we were indirectly Patient care providers so what we did was everything we did in it was a sort of the customer and the customers internally and externally. So that my career went on and on after that and some amazing telemedicine communication etc. A picture archiving communication so it we got involved with everything as sort of a You can call me to pioneer in, in digital transformation. It was truly digital transformation. Everything was going from automated manual paper to computerization. It was amazing.
Yeah, listen, what is your advice? What what's your wisdom that's come out of this good. You can't boil down a career like this and have just sort of one tagline. But as you have an opportunity, and as you received this award, what are what are what's the advice? What are you going to tell other people in terms of your journey?
Well, but you know, it is a journey. Obviously, it's a journey and there's a lot of component parts to it. And you have to have vision in terms of what it is that you want to achieve in your career. To have that vision you have to have the background, the experience and knowledge and it's not something you get, you know, you know, in high school and college, it's a continuing education situation. That's that's where my teaching has been so valuable for 33 years parallel careers, being a CIO and also an adjunct professor at Carnegie Mellon, in information technology management, constant learning cost and teaching, you know, you got to, you got to have the passion, you have to have the vision you have to call this thing the blue flame, you have to have that inside you to know what it is and but but you can't just want it you have to be able to accomplish it through continuing education through working with others, having mentors, working with people that know more than you hiring people that know more than you thank God for that, that I hired people that know more than me and I'll tell you what, five of my education management as a CIO education management, five of my IT leaders have become CIOs. I mean, so when you talk about What kind of US state? Yeah. So you talked about wanting to have people around you that can take can help you, you know, to get that vision complete to have to have passion like you do want to do more and better for the customer experience internal and external. That's what you have to do be around people that know more than you keep learning all the time. learning from them, teach coach and mentor, you know, so take what you know and take it to the other level as well.
Great stuff. This is why I said we needed a double deep dive with you so much more to nerd out on I cannot wait to learn more about your teaching and your your continuous learning and we think it is heading so we're heading back with more. Chris Kowalski, our CIO the year Choice Award for 2020. This is Jonathan Kersting.
And this is our trivia. So the Pittsburgh Technology Council did a PGH tech.org and go register because it's free event this year you can attend to see it with your awards. We want you there to help honor and celebrate guys like Chris promised everybody we're coming right back with a lot more Chris glossy our 2020 CIO of your choice award winner, you better happening on July the 15th. All on zoom, and we're going to make a awesome time out. It's going to be a celebration of some of the most unsung heroes in the tech sector, our CIOs and our CI s O's. We got some great candidates this year. I can't wait to find out who the winners are this year, but we know who the Choice Award winner is. And that is chris wallace. Chris, thanks for hanging out with us here on tech buds tonight.
Yes, thank you, Chris. So Chris was chosen by his colleagues for the work that he's done over the course of his career. And it's quite an esteemed honor to do that. And these and all the people that were on the committee were spoke so highly of you, and just as a person, and as a professional, and I think that's what makes this award So, you know, lovely, because it's really about the whole person. So we've been talking to Chris a little Bit and finding out a little bit about his journey and how he started and data centers and disparate systems and what what the world world was in terms of digitization, essentially, everyone talks about digitization now. It was happening in the 70s and 80s. It wasn't anything new. So you, what did you learn in in medicine, you know, in terms of that field of healthcare, like, what is surprised you in terms of where we are now and what has not surprised because we were really at the ground floor, working at what was called St. Francis hospital.
Right. So St. Francis General Hospital then became St. Francis Medical Center, then it became St. Francis health system that I spent a little time at Allegheny general in taking over to when they expanded over to Philadelphia. So that's the healthcare I spent a little time but it's St. Claire as well. Because of St. Francis, as you know, was bought by UPMC. But what surprises me now is that we're not further along in terms of the integration of all the different databases within each hospital systems that know about what a patient is both locally and nationally. We started back in, you know, the 80s to develop these databases about results of a patient's diagnosis. So their illnesses, they're in our lab results, they're all the results of their testing. And so that goes back to the 80s. And that that was shareable information back then, even with the technologies we had in the 90s. We transmitted images in the 90s and was able to able to store this information and make some sense out of it in terms of database analytics. Today, there's some effort being done in the analytics portion that using data from the past UPMC stone a lot of lot in that area as well. I work with them on a couple projects with that, but What I'm surprised about is that there's not more and we're not doing more in this space with the amount of data that we have gets that gets to not having enough data scientists being produced, there's not enough people that are that are in the various professions that understand and know how to use information. That's been all this data has been collected through the many, many implementations of different parts. So the healthcare system over a period of time, it's there, we can figure out, we can figure out what's wrong ahead of time, we could look to see what the what we do relative to the expert advice from colleagues throughout the country. So if databases were just not there yet, and I think that, you know, shame on us in that regard. We started it and, you know, just a lot of, you know, you said use the word disparate before, hospitals from disparate ways they don't don't integrate as well as it could be. It should be there's been some network advances, but not like it can be in the United States.
So what do you think though, don't you think for me Your experience all these years and you teaching and getting a chance to work across so many different strategies. What do you think about COVID? Do you think it's accelerated from where you sit, accelerated some decisions in terms of?
Well, we think that from the standpoint of development of a vaccine, that they're using a lot more computerization to try to determine what works and what doesn't work relative than having people testing and things of that nature. So the, the ability to, to identify regions, we have Carnegie Mellon, which you probably know, has major efforts for identification of hotspots. The predictions of where things may end up in terms of, you know, various people being infected, and their ability to be able to be here heal and be being made well. So there's some databases that From that standpoint, but but I think that, you know, we have the ability to use artificial intelligence much better than we do today. We have predictive analysis. I think a lot of those, you know, are being spawned off now because of the need because of COVID. Yeah, COVID is not being it's not done. It's right in front of us. It's an increasing and whether or not the vaccine is going to be out there for us, you know, the year beginning next year is anybody's guess at this point. They say, Well, you know, who knows some of you saying that tell us that. But, but, but I think that to your point, I think that what we've started databases that are available in a kind of technology, it's available today with machine learning. But there's a lot more systems here that can be done. We just need to get to that and do it now.
In your career, in healthcare across different settings. Has there ever been this kind of outbreak or this kind of medical situation or health situation that you were immersed in? I mean, I'm Trying to think about what I mean, was it aids was it we probably didn't get hit with the bola. I don't know how you know SARS had no part of anything that had this kind of fanatic phonetic.
I guess there was the bird flu that was scaring people that I could. Yeah, back in 2002 or so three, hey, you know, from a CIO perspective, I was scared to death big back then we didn't have as much cloud as we're talking today. And people were going to come in and you know, kick the computers running and things of that nature. That was a real scare back then. But from a healthcare standpoint, I don't I really don't recall any type of disease that men you know, that took that kind of focus as we have today. But we did have, we always had the need to try to figure out what we can do better with the medications that were given to patients. Like for example with a big project was done. So several years ago to figure out why bleeds and were happening. And after surgery for, for like knee and hip and things of that nature, and looking at all the medications that were given before the surgery during the surgery and after the surgery to see what was going on for clots and bleeds. And it turns out after all this analysis and artificial intelligence, machine learning and algorithms produced that the best medication was aspirin.
Yeah.
So you think about all the different medications that used to, you know, to collect blood and things of that nature to stop bleeding? You know, it really so things like that can be done and have been done and have been done recently. And you know, but that's about as close as I can think about something that the technology has solved the problem.
Right. So, Chris, what's going on time, Ching has been a passion of yours. I think it's one of those things that really made you wonder, cio choice because you're about giving back and teaching the next generation. Why are you so passionate about teaching and how important is it to be like a lifelong learner in that Yeah, sure what the Gianna says it's funny. It's, uh, I don't know how I could have been a CIO for five, four decades. It was crazy 33 years without my ability to learn continuously. And that's not that I teach everything myself that people in a classroom learn. I bring an expert teachers that are that are expert in security or expert in procurement or expert in some development, life's design, software design, strategic planning, and a lot of them are friends of mine CIOs, known locally and nationally. And I've been doing this for, like I said, 33 years teaching it management courses like this. And I've been bringing in guest speakers even even in contract negotiation, I would bring in lawyers that one would take the place of one will take the position of the vendor one would take the position of the customer buying in a way to sort of a point counterpoint type going from One of our students in terms of how you negotiate good contracts for, for it type of services. So I learned a heck of a lot. So everyone needs to in this profession needs to understand that what you've learned to get into this profession isn't going to keep you there. And we've had so much increase so much progress in best practices. So many different technologies have been developed. You know, it's a very complex, very highly specialized, if you're going to run an IT department, you're going to have to understand and know so much more than just, you know, got an input and output and processing going on. You have all these specialties and concerns and issues and innovations and how do you get to that? So we have courses like this, we teach in the master's program. We have a Chief Information Officer, Executive Education Program, and chief information security officer program. Yeah, he's a fantastic programs they teach with the practitioner typing programs where you learn you get remedial information or you're getting new information if you want to be a CIO. So Carnegie Mellon, I think it gets it numb, very happy for that process. Yeah, that's great. Let's say you, you are still going to teach, you're going to, you're going to have a chance to be celebrated. And, you know, you have been someone who has seen healthcare go through quite a journey, even though we're not where we need to be. We're never where we need to be right. I mean, it's always going to be a milestone that we need to achieve. Hopefully, my hope is through the pandemic, that we will have accelerated some of the solutions like telemedicine integration, and the capabilities there. I was hoping that we would have virtual reality. But I just want to thank you, first of all for, for being with us telling us a little bit about your story. I know there's more to tell. And we're going to have some fun with you as we celebrate the work that you've done in the work ahead, because you're not going to PhD. dot org sign up for it. And Chris, who's your favorite drummer?
Buddy Rich.
I guess I think I could say Gene Krupa, but Betty Richards my favorite.
Ginger Baker. If you remember,
Chris, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Love Buddy. Rich.
Really? Please tell me you have a drum kit down in the basement. Right?
Well, you know, I had many different drum kits in my life. And right now I don't have any Ah, but but I keep thinking about getting the electronic drums. Oh, oh, yeah, I keep I keep looking at him and think about my family wants me to do it and he wants me to get it but it's the idea. Yeah, it's not like getting in front and jamming with others. You know. So like, if somebody said when I got in jam, I probably go out and buy a set of drums right now and do it. There you go.
We'll probably find people for you. Do it. Please
let me know. Give me a call tonight. Okay, Audrey, I'm waiting.
Now you're gonna put me on it. I'm gonna think about that. loop. I can't wait, listen. Wait. No, thank you so much for being with us. And thank you my pleasure.
It's Chris I do thank you for the great work both of you do you know I hope I hope a lot of people listen to you and you know I do this and I'm walking out of the podcast. It's been amazing learning different aspects and dimensions that you bring about and guest speakers you put on. So thank you for that. It's a great devalue out.
Thanks for taking a quick break. Got more tech by radio Chris walski CIO choice, go to PGH tech. org. This is Jonathan Kersting.
And this is Audrey Russo
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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