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Wednesday, October 21, 2009
The Mover
Harper's angling skills handy as Abt Associate's CIO
By Marc Songini, Special to Mass High Tech
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Mary Harper finds that her fishing skills help her steer major information technology projects.
Harper recently was named CIO of Cambridge-based Abt Associates Inc., a global firm that offers a number of consulting services to social, economic and health policy research. Her fishing hobby — mostly catch-and-release for bass and trout — is good practice for her day job, she says.
“Being an angler definitely helps. It requires all the things you need in order to be a good CIO: lots of patience and strategy,” she said. She is wrapping up a 90-day plan that will serve as a blueprint for improving global collaboration capabilities and support for 1,300 employees in 35 countries, and Harper’s goal is to use technology to improve operational efficiency.
After college, she worked as a software developer, which got her thinking about using technology to hone business work flows. “I guess my real love is improving process,” she said. “Early on, I found that being able to understand software allowed me to combine process improvement with a solution. It was very rewarding to me to solve that problem and develop an architected software solution.”
Thereafter, she oversaw networking, infrastructure and packaged software, giving her a holistic view of IT processes and resources in a company. She spent 13 years at General Electric Co. in a variety of jobs, the most recent being the executive director of the GE/Penn State/Oracle Software Center of Excellence.
“I think that my background at General Electric and process improvement is going to be a very good match,” she said. At GE, she learned about applying lean-manufacturing concepts and the Six Sigma process improvement methodology. It taught her to think through a project before committing funds.
She was drawn to Abt because its goal is “to improve the lives of people globally,” she said. “You feel an incredible sense of purpose that ultimately you are helping people. That’s great.” Also, the education levels among the employees are high, as are its overall standards.
Applying different technologies to improve processes and establish a uniform set of services across the world is a considerable task. For instance, she’s already been on site in Nigeria to work on a project to improve health services for remote villages. capabilities. There, employees face gaps in resources as basic as power and networking capabilities.
Marc Songini is a freelance writer in Mansfield.
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