Job Title : CIO

Organization : London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games

There can have been few higher profile IT roles this year than that of CIO of London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG), a position held by Gerry Pennell.

Pennell was tasked with leading the team of internal staff, sponsors, partners and suppliers that delivered the IT, telecommunications, audio-visual, results and timing and scoring technology behind this year’s London Olympic Games.

Pennell’s four years at LOCOG are not his first in a sports-centric organisations – he was also the 2002 Manchester Commonwealth Games director of technology, where he set up, ran and then decommissioned the entire IT operations for the event.

Between the two sporting competitions, Pennell held two different roles in the private sector, as CIO of Co-operative Financial Services, then as CIO of the Co-operative Group, where he helped lead a significant programme of modernisation and change.

Pennell also gained his experience in large-scale project and programme management in various roles in software houses, for a major UK clearing bank and for various financial services clients when working for the management consulting group within PricewaterhouseCoopers.