IT Leader of the Year

Kirsten Simonitsch, Premera Blue Cross, Mountlake Terrace
Employees in Washington: 2,800

For any health insurance provider that serves 1.6 million people, making even modest changes can be a struggle. Yet senior vice president and CIO Kirsten Simonitsch has transformed not only the IT systems at Premera Blue Cross, but also the culture of the organization. Since her 2007 promotion to the post, Simonitsch has led the development of Premera Labs to challenge her IT organization to think differently. Successful initiatives have allowed all Premera members to track and analyze their claims data online. Other changes created mobile smartphone applications for managing health and made early inroads to supporting individual exchanges soon mandated by the Affordable Care Act.

Simonitsch has also brought her staff on board by soliciting ideas through the companys annual Innovation Challenge, a team contest to create solutions to real problems where the winners are given time and resources to implement them. Simonitschs leadership has changed things at Premera, and not just in her own department. Success of the Innovation Challenge is spreading the concept across the company to other business units, too.

[Second Place]
Weldon Butch Leonardson, Boeing Employees Credit Union, Tukwila
Employees in WA: 1,000

Where most executives like to build empires, BECUs Butch Leonardson likes to build a village. The senior vice president and CIO is proud that his IT department is 30 percent smaller now than when he started, even as the credit union has more than tripled its size in assets under management. Leonardsons 10-year modernization drive has created an award-winning framework of member care that creates unified service and provides innovative new ways to transact small person-to-person payments and deposits from home or work. Yet making waves hasnt created turmoil: Leonardsons empowering style boasts one of the lowest IT staff turnover rates in the industry.