CIO Leadership, Right-Sized for Your Organization
Fractional and interim CIO services: strategy, budget, security, vendors, and a steady hand, days per month instead of headcount.
Many organizations of 25 to 300 people make CIO-level decisions without a CIO. Security, vendor contracts, cloud spending, and now AI adoption fall to an operations lead, a managed service provider, or whoever knows the most about computers. A fractional CIO gives you executive technology judgment for a set number of days each month, without the cost of a full-time executive.
An interim engagement covers a gap. If your technology leader has left, or a major project needs a steady owner, I step in, stabilize the work, and help you hire or develop the right successor.
What I take on
- A technology strategy and roadmap tied to your business plan, with a cost, an owner, and a reason for each project.
- The technology budget, including licensing, renewals, and cloud spending.
- A security program built on NIST principles, with immutable backups and a disaster recovery plan.
- Oversight of vendors and managed service providers, so the people you pay are accountable for results.
- Plain-language reporting to your leadership team and board.
- A practical plan for AI that fits the rest of the roadmap.
What I bring to it
I spent 12 years as CIO of a professional services firm of about 410 people, leading a 26-person team and a budget of more than $7M. I moved that firm to the cloud in 2018, gave every employee full remote capability in 2019, and moved its accounting platform out of the server room without missing a close. Those projects taught me that good technology leadership is mostly sequencing, communication, and follow-through.
How it starts
We begin with a conversation about where things stand. If it makes sense to continue, I start with a short assessment of your systems, spending, and risks, and we agree on the number of days per month that fits. The goal is a stronger organization, including the people who will run it after I step back.
- Your firm's AI policy needs a second page
California's SB 574 and the Third Circuit's ROSS ruling change what a law firm's AI policy has to cover. Gail Jefferson on the legal shifts, and Christopher Fryer on the vendor terms, monitoring, and gateway controls that a one-page policy now needs behind it.
- Managing training and data retention across Claude plans
Training and retention are separate controls on every Claude plan. What each plan does by default, how to stop training, where zero data retention is actually available, and what I would configure for an individual, a small firm, and a law firm.
- Your staff are already using AI. Start with a one-page policy.
A ban on AI hides the risk instead of removing it. A one-page policy tells staff what they may use, what they must never share, and whom to ask, and it takes about a month to put in place.