PhillyCIO ORBIE Leadership Award recipient: For CSL Chief Digital and Information Officer Mark Hill, leadership is measured by what you leave behind

When Mark Hill thinks about his career, the things he returns to again and again are the people he’s developed and the mission behind the work.

“The most enduring measure of leadership is the capability you build in others and the organization you leave behind,” said Hill, Executive Vice President and Chief Digital and Information Officer at CSL Limited. That belief has guided him through more than two decades in life sciences technology, from Schering-Plough to Merck to Gilead to CSL, each stop building on the last.

From Star Wars to COBOL

Hill grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, the middle child of eight, with four brothers and three sisters. Funny enough, his path to technology started with science fiction.

“As a child, I loved Star Trek and Star Wars and was fascinated by the idea that a machine could be programmed by a human to think,” he said. That curiosity led him to programming classes while still in high school, including COBOL. He remembers the instructor on his first day asking whether he was in the right place. He was, and it set the direction for everything that followed.

Before he launched his career, Hill served in the U.S. Army. His military service, he said, “established many of the principles that continue to shape how I lead: mission clarity, personal accountability, teamwork, and operating effectively under constraint.”

Building at scale, integrating under pressure

Hill’s corporate career began at Schering-Plough, where he moved through infrastructure, program management, the Office of the CIO, and eventually global clinical systems—where technology is “closest to the science and, ultimately, the patient.”

When Schering-Plough merged with Merck, Hill drew on his experience on both sides of the deal to lead integration of the combined clinical development platforms onto a single global system. He later led global IT for Merck's commercial organization, supporting more than 20,000 employees.

At Gilead Sciences, as SVP and CIO, Hill built the company's first enterprise IT strategy during one of its most significant growth periods, strengthening cybersecurity and business continuity while consolidating more than 120 vendors and 1,800 contractors into managed services. At CSL, he has led the company's Digital Core strategy and built the governance foundation to scale AI responsibly across research, manufacturing, and commercial operations.

Hill is candid about how his sense of mission and empathy have been shaped by loss. He lost a sister to colon cancer at 50 and a brother to complications from gout, and his wife lives with lupus. “These experiences have made the patient mission deeply personal,” he said, “and reinforced the idea that behind every strategy, system, and business decision are people whose lives may depend on the work we do.”

Advice to the next generation

Hill's guidance to rising IT leaders centers on business fluency over technical mastery alone: “Your value will not be measured by the systems you implement, but by the problems you solve, the outcomes you enable, and the trust you earn.”

Amidst all the challenges and changes brought on by AI, he urges the next generation to “stay curious and be willing to challenge established ways of working.”

Above all, he returns to people. “Invest in people,” he said. “Build strong teams, develop leaders, and prepare others to succeed you.” For Hill, that—not any platform or strategy—is what leadership is all about.