Mark Schwartz

Mark is a sought-after technology leader, prolific writer, and frequent speaker. He has held C-suite positions at several organizations, large and small, where over time he earned a reputation for challenging the status quo in business, processes, and technology.

Mark is an outspoken advocate for Agile, Lean, and DevOps methodologies, and espouses a continuous improvement philosophy. Today he uses his powers for good by collaborating with enterprise leaders to create innovative, cloud-based strategies, and his experience is both wide-ranging and well-demonstrated.

While the CIO of US Citizenship and Immigration Services, he brought Agile and DevOps practices to the federal government. As the CIO of Intrax Cultural Exchange, he was the first to use business intelligence and supply chain analytics to place au pairs with host families. As an Enterprise Strategist for AWS, Mark is on a never-ending quest to articulate and substantiate the critical role that cloud plays in today’s enterprises.

For Mark, change isn’t something to be managed—it needs to be continuously embraced and adopted. Curiosity must prevail in the face of a “we’ve-always-done-it-this-way” attitude. And change is always possible in his mind. Even when things feel the most constrained – in the face of deadening bureaucracy, organizational politics, rigid processes, communication vacuums – Mark has the hammer to smash his way through.

It’s not really a hammer, of course, but Mark’s voice, pen, and experience as a leader in several organizations over the years gets the job done. Like that time when he was a new CIO of US Citizenship and Immigration Services and boldly questioned the musty technology practices of the federal government (ask him about the infamous document known as the “MD102,” but proceed with caution).

Through his influential blog, chockfull of biz-tech wisdom, or his on-stage appearances (where he shines at anecdotal storytelling and often brings tired convention-goers to giggles), Mark’s passion for evangelizing the business value of IT and cloud is clear.