Cisco chief elected chair of NZICT Group

Cisco chief elected chair of NZICT Group

Geoff Lawrie, New Zealand manager of Cisco Systems is the new chair of the New Zealand Information and Communications Technology Group (NZICT). He was elected by the group’s board on 3 July 2009 for a 1 year term and succeeds Kevin Ackhurst from Microsoft, who was the chairman of the Establishment Board of NZICT.

Of his new role chairing the organisation that represents over 50 leading ICT companies, Mr Lawrie said, “There is already broad acknowledgement that the effective utilization of information and communication technologies is a critical component in enabling New Zealand to achieve the kind of competitiveness and prosperity that we are striving for as a country. NZICT came together earlier this year to ensure that the capabilities and passion of the leaders in our industry were focused on driving the best outcomes in this area.

“NZICT has a great work agenda set out for this year, focused around key issues such as productivity and innovation. In particular, we will be working to ensure that we have the ICT skills in place to maximise the returns we get - at a national, commercial and personal level - from the infrastructure investments we are making. There could not be a more critical time for us to play this role.

“We are fortunate to have a very capable and experienced Board and executive in place and, with the support of the ICT industry, we are looking forward to driving some material progress around these key issues over the next year.

” Mr Lawrie has held senior positions in telecommunications and IT services company GDC, Microsoft, Unisys and Brainz Instruments Ltd, a bio-technology start-up specialising in brain function monitoring. He has a BCom from Otago University, and studied at the post-graduate level at Sydney’s Macquarie University and Columbia University, New York.

The group’s board was elected last month. New members are Mr Lawrie (Cisco), Rhoda Holmes (Optimation), Bennett Medary (Simpl) and Pat Rossiter (Hyperion Management). Standing down from the board are Phil O’Reilly (Business NZ), Andrew Bonica (WorkforceIP), Alex Broughton (Microsoft) and Ralph Chivers (TCF).

The remaining 6 board members were also members of the ICT establishment board: Andrew Hunt (Kinetics), Daryl French (IBM), David Stone (Vodafone), Kevin Ackhurst (Microsoft), Richard King (Hewlett Packard) and Tony Skelton (ACE).

ENDS

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