Alex Galho

Founded over 50 years ago, Vivest is the largest private pension fund in Brazil and the firm is also the largest self-managed, not-for-profit health plan operator in Sao Paulo state. The company manages approximately US$7.1 billion in assets, and it has more than 100,000 people in its private pension plans and 145,000 health policyholders VIVEST is the fourth major private pension fund entity in the country and a leader in self-management in health in Brazil.

Implementing and Improving the Disruptive Technologies

Alex has a professional journey with over 30 years of experience in the market in strategic CIO and CTO positions, leading digital transformation, merger and acquisition, change and implementation of culture, and modernization of technology park, in the segments: Financial Services, Consulting, Private Pension, and Insurance. He participated in global innovation events including Gartner Symposium 2019, Oracle Vision 2019, EBC Microsoft 2019, Atlassian Summit 2022, Agile 2022, and CUBO Corporate 2022 to evaluate trends and opportunities. Alex has been enthusiastic about his knowledge and always looks for new ideas. Those experiences gave him a considerable background in disruptive technologies as well as a great perception of the latest tendencies in the global market. Today his main duty relies on making the best decisions. Alex has always been looking for cutting-edge practices in technology to implement at Vivest.

Overcoming the Challenges in Business Digital Transformation

The pandemic has been Alex's most difficult journey to date. All CIOs around the world went through huge challenges and they had to protect the people at first instance, without losing the quality of service. That was a truly forced Digital Transformation in the business. The major lesson that they got was identifying who the people behind technology were - the most important asset every single enterprise has. Robots, Data Science, and Artificial Intelligence - behind them, there are humans. Thus, technology as a whole depends on the people they are and will always be responsible for all disruptive movements. Every successful CIO depends on them through their journey, asserts Alex.

Primal Challenges in Undaunting Journey

At the start of Alex’s technology journey, he had to go through technical skills and specific knowledge to be able to step up from System Analyst to Developer, then to DBA, and finally from Project Manager to CIO. He believed the primal challenge is to reach C-Level. Once the C-Level demands an immense set of different skills such as managing budgets, mitigating risk, minimizing possible damages derived from internal and external crises, changing the scope of businesses, and, in Alex’s humble opinion, developing skills to motivate people, but the most important is self-motivation along challenges prompted by changes in the market. Alex would like to give a gift to his reader, something his mentors stated once – be an eternal learner and always get away from your comfort zone.

Empowering Attributes to Achieve Managerial Skills

Alex suggests that as a CIO a person should have three attributes firstly resilience, a person should be able to deal with any economic crisis, team conflict, or even a lack of hands-on people. Secondly passion, it is one of the most important feelings CIOs should have, because in many moments some people will think about giving up, but just passion will lead them to the finish line. Thirdly, lifelong learning is vital for success in this position. Since changes occur frequently, occur quickly, and typically span multiple levels of action, there will always be opportunities to demonstrate a person’s managerial skills.

Alex believes these are the three great skills that help anyone in this amazing journey to find out maturity as a CIO.

Innovating the Futuristic Products for The Target Audience

Alex believes that first, a person needs to understand the core business of the company, because innovating, in the overall experience, is to make something complex become simple, he means it by creating a valuable flow of ideas through a healthy environment, open to errors. Errors are the beginning of innovation, and they fuel the creation of valuable and successful products or solutions. He has been visiting many Innovation Business Incubators in Brazil and abroad and he saw a great boost of innovation, especially in teams that emphasize empowerment by using their creativity and learning from their mistakes.

Understanding and Anticipating Disruptive Technologies

Alex claims that the impact of disruptive technologies in real life now is brutal for all businesses they need to watch the market and seek the best technology for a business not only anticipating the next disruptive move but analyzing and comparing the real gains one would have by adopting them. Look around for new tendencies, build a network, and go benchmarking to learn about new technological trends.

Striving to Stand Out in The Market

Alex saw an immense transformation in the shape of new businesses and he believed the great challenge will be how to improve the experience of users. Nowadays there are many artificial bits of intelligence working on understanding and anticipating answers to all sorts of questions asked by users, but this is a great risk for everyone. All companies need to adopt disruptive technologies as competitive advantages such as artificial intelligence, data science, and IoT became outstanding in the market. science and others.

 Admonishing for Emerging Tech Leaders

Alex believes that one should be proud but not arrogant, and be strong but not rude because the technology journey is a climb, and all the time one will need is people. Behind all technology, there is a human with one´s traumas and one´s skills and beliefs. Respecting all people and “leaving flowers through the way” is important. Seeking to take a look at fields held such as Information Security, Management 3.0, Data Science, and other disruptive business technologies is recommended. A person should remember that he must be the captain of his crew, and needs to be an example for his team.

Quote: Empowerment means creating environments where people generate output not just deliver tasks and things done, it doesn't mean less management - it means management with value and purpose.

Management: Alex Galho, Chief Information Officer

Website: https://www.vivest.com.br/site/paginas/home