CIO Panel: Building CIO Level Skills, Diversity and Innovation in 2015

- What skills do CIOs need to sell their ideas, build alliance and demonstrate IT’s value? How can the rest of us build these skills?
- How does diversity play a role in CIOs’ leading their organization today?
- Does being a female CIO a help or hindrance to their career development and leading IT?
- How do CIOs make innovation happen?

Join our popular annual CIO panel discussion to find out their thoughts on how they built skills to do their jobs well; how does diversity play a role in their own career development and the ITs they lead; and how they leverage innovation to invigorate their organizations in 2015.

Bonus: Sign up for a WITI membership to win a raffle for a 1 hour mentor meeting with a CIO! Current members will automatically be entered to win.

Parking is available in the front as well as in the parking structure to the right of the entrance.

Featured Speaker(s)

Michelle Bergquist, our Moderator, is a nationally recognized author, award-winning entrepreneur and professional speaker. Currently, Michelle is CEO & Co-Founder of Connected Women of Influence. She is Co-Founder to the annual and historic Business Women’s Mega Mixer events that celebrate Women’s History Month.




Sue-Jean Lin, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer for Allergan, a multi-specialty pharmaceutical company headquartered in Irvine, California. Lin is a senior business leader with over 25 years broad based management experience in both Financial Management and Information Technology. She joined Allergan in 1989 and has held a series of positions, each succeeding position accompanied with growing responsibilities. Prior to joining Allergan, Lin worked for Sierra Pacific Power Company in Nevada and Northrop Grumman Corporation in California. Lin attended the University of Nevada, Reno, where she completed a Bachelor of Science degree and later, a Master's of Business Administration degree. She is a certified management accountant.


Pandora Ovanessian, formerly Vice President of Management Information Systems at Thermo Fisher Scientific-One Lambda Inc., a healthcare and technology development company. Prior to Thermo Fisher, Ms. Ovanessian was CIO at Golden State Foods, and Alpha Therapeutic. Ms. Ovanessian also served as Division Manager-CIO at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Ms Ovanessian is a graduate in Business/Economics and minor in Pre-med from UCLA. She earned an MBA specializing in Information Technology from Pepperdine University.


H. Lynn Ryan is the Principal of ExecITCIO providing Executive consulting in Information Technology, Business Strategies and Operations. Previously, Ryan was Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer (CIO) of loanDepot, LLC. Prior to loanDepot, LLC., she served in Senior Vice President and CIO roles at CIT Group Inc., Novastar Financial Inc., Ameriquest Capital Corp. and Sanwa Bank.
Ryan is a Board Member of SCSIM and Board Advisor to WITI OC. Ryan earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Management from the University of Phoenix and has participated in executive IT and business programs at Harvard University, the University of Colorado and California State University.


Jeanette Sanchez is the Chief Information Officer for AMN Healthcare Services, Inc. and is responsible for the design, delivery and support of AMN technologies. Prior to AMN, Jeanette was Vice President, IT at CareFusion responsible for all technologies in the Medical Systems and has also served as Vice President at Mattel and Bausch & Lomb and also worked for Edwards Lifesciences, Baxter International and Allergan.



Schedule of Events

6:30pm - Registration, Networking and appetizers
6:45pm - WITI Overview and Speaker Introductions
7:00pm - Panel Discussion
8:15pm - Raffle Prizes!
8:30pm - Adjourn

Meeting Notes

Appetizers and beverages are provided. If you or your company wish to host or sponsor an event, please ask one of the leadership team members located on the WITI.com/networks/orangecounty home page.