Global Finalists

Colin Boatwright is a technology executive with more than 30 years of experience leading global IT, digital transformation, cybersecurity, data, and AI initiatives. He has held CIO and senior technology leadership roles across healthcare, life sciences, logistics, insurance, and technology organizations. Known for driving innovation, operational excellence, and business value through automation and emerging technologies, Colin specializes in aligning technology strategy with enterprise growth, customer experience, and organizational transformation.

Our greatest accomplishment was transforming multiple acquired companies into a single global technology organization with unified leadership, governance, and operations. We consolidated systems into global platforms aligned with our operating model, reducing complexity and cost while improving scalability. We embedded AI into core logistics, customer service, and productivity workflows, enabling smarter decision-making and greater efficiency. Finally, we achieved ISO 27001 certification across all global regions, establishing a consistent, world-class security and compliance posture. Together, these initiatives created a more integrated, intelligent, and secure technology foundation supporting operations in 220+ countries and more than 6.6 million shipments annually.

Sean Gallagher is Vice President of Information Technology at Hayward Holdings, where he leads enterprise technology strategy, cybersecurity, ERP transformation, data, infrastructure, and responsible AI adoption. With 20+ years of experience across manufacturing, consulting, healthcare, and technology-enabled transformation, he has held leadership roles at Sealed Air, Carlisle, EY, and UnitedHealth. Sean holds degrees from Penn State, the University of South Carolina, and Texas A&M, and serves on the boards of Apparo and ISSA.

Under my leadership, IT’s key accomplishments focused on advancing transformation while strengthening resilience and business partnership. The team drove a major enterprise system initiative, improving governance, alignment, readiness, and change enablement to support more standardized processes, better data, and scalability. We also established a formal AI governance model—enabling responsible adoption through structured intake, risk-based reviews, and prioritized use cases—while demonstrating productivity gains from early deployments. Finally, we enhanced cybersecurity resilience through stronger controls, incident preparedness, and improved risk visibility. Collectively, these efforts position IT as a strategic partner delivering secure, scalable, and innovative capabilities to support ongoing growth.

Jeff Gill is CIO at AFL, leading global enterprise technology and digital transformation. Since joining AFL in 2018, he has built a global shared services organization and advanced initiatives that strengthened scale, resilience, customer experience, and business value. Jeff is passionate about developing people, building strong teams, and aligning technology with business outcomes. He holds a degree in Information Science from Robert Morris University and serves on nonprofit boards supporting higher education.

Over the past three years, AFL has delivered extraordinary growth. IT has been a critical enabler of that performance, building the global systems and operating model needed to scale toward the company’s 2030 vision. Key initiatives included consolidating 14 ERP instances into one standardized global platform, improving efficiency, controls, and risk management, and achieving ISO/IEC 27001 certification to strengthen customer trust and compliance. Throughout this transformation, IT maintained service reliability while advancing data, automation, and AI capabilities, helping AFL grow revenue and output without proportional cost increases and positioning IT as a measurable driver of business value.

Rachel Hayden most recently served as Senior EVP and Chief Information Officer at ScanSource, where she led enterprise technology strategy, product development, cybersecurity, and AI-enabled innovation. With nearly 30 years of experience across manufacturing, distribution, financial services, and consumer products, she is known for transforming IT organizations into trusted business partners that strengthen operational excellence, accelerate growth, and foster innovation. Rachel is committed to building high-performing teams and mentoring the next generation of technology leaders.

One of my greatest accomplishments has been transforming IT from a traditional support function into a trusted business partner that helps shape business strategy and create measurable value. By fostering a solutions-first culture grounded in accountability, collaboration, and continuous learning, my team strengthened operational resilience, modernized enterprise technology, embedded AI capabilities into our operating model, and improved the customer experience. We invested as intentionally in people as we did technology, building a high-performing organization that increased business agility, solved complex business challenges, accelerated growth, and positioned the company for future success.

Mike Montello is CDIO of Syneos Health. Prior to joining Syneos, he led GSK’s digital transformation, as Senior Vice President, R&D Digital and Tech, helping to increase therapy success rates. He served as the CIO of Quintiles, now IQVIA, accelerating clinical research. Montello held IT roles in biotech and spent more than a decade as a management consultant. He has an engineering degree from Penn State University and MBA from the London Business School.

What I’m most proud of in my career is the opportunity to work with exceptional teams to make a real difference in healthcare. Through the application of technology and data, we’ve helped bring innovative medicines and vaccines to patients across areas like cancer, infectious disease, neuroscience, respiratory, and rare conditions. Knowing that our work contributes to accelerating life-changing treatments to patients is incredibly meaningful to me.

As a logistics technology executive, I bring 25+ years of deep industry expertise, designing and scaling global technology, infrastructure, and operations. Before Armstrong, I spent 19 years delivering enterprise-scale digital transformation initiatives for Fortune 50 logistics giants like Southwest Airlines, FedEx, UPS, XPO, and Ryder. At Armstrong, my focus is centered on advanced automation, driving customer efficiencies, and ensuring our proprietary software handles high-volume digital commerce and freight scaling.

I led innovation strategy including rebuilding core foundation, a hybrid business model and flexible architecture to deliver strong operating leverage by automating workflows, real-time insights, and enabled data-driven decision-making across the enterprise. This resulted in successful expansion to LTL, and digital services, 3X revenue growth via rapid expansion across business units, and geographies.I transformed the team into an AI-enabled, business partner driving strategic, de-risked product portfolio, with improved operational efficiencies and enhanced productivity. The growth and scale are the greatest accomplishment as it positioned Armstrong as a technology-forward logistics provider, capable of scaling into new services faster.