Executive vice president and CIO, Capmark Financial Group Niraj Patel’s rise to CIO at the Capmark Financial Group (formerly GMAC Commercial Holding Corp.) was more than meteoric — it was nearly an overnight leap, from working at the help desk in his first job out of college in 1994 to running the IT department at GMAC two years later.Today, as he oversees an IT staff of 403, three watchwords mark Patel’s core management tenets: listen, help, and value. “You can never stop learning to help,” Patel says.“To have the ability to build the technology in-house, and get the business to go global … is a lot of fun, and it creates value,” Patel says. His team, strong believers in Microsoft .Net, developed InvestorQuery, a Web site for the commercial mortgage industry that was the first to deliver timely information to investors and rating agencies during the week following Hurricane Katrina. “I’ve always been not just into technology, but the applications and the value those applications create — not just for yourself and your business, but for other people,” Patel says. Software Development