Venki Rao was named the global CIO of GE Automation & Controls in August 2016. Prior to that he was the CIO of the Digital Energy business for GE since December 2010. He was responsible for driving the IT strategy for Digital Energy, synergies, operational efficiencies, key digitization initiatives and enhancing business’ go-to market efforts with their smart-grid solutions. Additionally, he works closely with the Software Solutions business team to grow it and strengthen connections with Utility CIOs.
Prior to this role, he was the CIO of Global Application Management Services (GAMS) at GE Energy since March of 2007. In this role, he was responsible for leading GAMS organization, providing continual operational support for production applications while improving performance and availability, and leading the strategy & governance of strategic enterprise applications such as ERP, CRM, PLM & BI to enable business simplification and growth. In this position, Venki also provided strategy & managed GE Energy’s IT outsourcing efforts.
Venki joined GE Energy in 2001 as the IT Leader for Sales, Commercial Operations and Marketing. In this capacity, he successfully managed the launch of several hardware and digitization initiatives & Global Sales Collaboration Platforms. In 2002, Venki was appointed as the CIO of Contractual Services business, a division of GE Energy to develop and drive the execution of its digitization strategy and, in particular, Supply Chain Management, ERP Implementations, Long-Term Forecasting & Modeling Systems and Customer Value programs. He then joined GE Sensing business as the CIO, where he led the rollout of multiple ERPs in sub-business & in regions and drove the integration to create “one IT” team at the GE Industrial level - increasing productivity and reducing cost.
Prior to joining GE, Venki was the Principal Director for Software Services at Calico Commerce, Inc. He has also worked at BDO Siedman, LLP as eBusiness Practice Leader and at Prudential Healthcare as Regional IT Manager. His experience spans across all facets of Monitoring & Diagnostics, Software R&D, Product Management, Energy Management Solutions and Enterprise Solutions for the Insurance, Healthcare, Utilities and Manufacturing industries.
He received his Bachelors of Science degree in Mathematics, from Osmania University in Hyderabad, India, an MBA degree with specialization in Management Information Systems from De La Salle University in Manila, Philippines, and a Master of Science degree in Computer Science from Florida Tech in Melbourne, FL. Venki lives in Atlanta area with his wife Anitha and their two sons.
