Title: Vice president, benefits administration division

Company: Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana

Mentor: Helen Cousins, CIO, Dex Media Inc.

What's been your career ladder? I worked at Graduate Health Systems in the information systems department for 10 years, and then moved to Coopers & Lybrand (which became PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting) as a principal consultant in the Solutions Through Technology practice. One of my clients was Cendant Mortgage Corp., whom I went to work for as a vice president in the IT department, responsible for operations improvement. I then moved from the mortgage business to the corporate offices as vice president of applications development and support. My mentor, Helen Cousins, was corporate CIO. I worked with Helen for about three years and left there in 2003 to go to Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana.

What special skills do you bring to your job? I have strong analytical and management skills. I'm able to empower the people who work for me and encourage them to take risks. I'm an experienced systems development manager, so I can bring large projects to closure. We're getting ready for a go-live for a US$45 million core operations systems implementation that will replace our 30-year-old legacy system, for example.