CTO with a cause

MEETING OTHER CTOs is a key component of my job at InfoWorld — it helps me find content for this column and helps me understand what issues other CTOs face in their work day to day. On an individual level, there is no “typical” CTO, but mostly, I meet CTOs who work in the usual vertical industries such as finance and insurance, for software companies, or for IT infrastructure companies.

At the CTO Forum this year, I met Dave Simon. Dave’s path to his position as CTO of Sierra Club is unique in many ways, but it proves that the role of the CTO can extend beyond the usual corporate world. Technology is so central to our lives now that all organizations — corporate, nonprofit, or otherwise — need someone who understands how to apply technology solutions to problems at hand.

Last week, I visited Dave at the Sierra Club’s offices in downtown San Francisco, and we talked about his role and the technology infrastructure that supports the organization. As Dave explained to me later in an e-mail, he spent two years in the Peace Corps in Cameroon before joining Andersen Consulting, where he spent 10 years working in a variety of industries.

While commuting to work in Vancouver, British Columbia, where he was working on a 14-month project for Andersen, Dave drafted an open letter to environmental organizations offering his services, but ultimately didn’t send it. Shortly after that project ended, a departing colleague at Andersen mentioned the Sierra Club opening to Dave so he called the next morning. Dave got the job. As Dave explained to me, “While I am proud to have put in systems for HMOs, utilities, and government agencies, it just seemed like I wanted to do something more vital that would have a greater impact on the world.”

Although the focus of the “business” at hand is quite different from running a Fortune 500 company, a lot of the issues are the same ones that any CTO faces. When Dave described the Sierra Club’s many lines of business that had to be aligned with technology — conservation activism, book publishing, magazine publishing, Web sites, adventure travel, membership/fund raising — the conversation began to sound like the conversations I have with industry CTOs. The Sierra Club is a complex operation with more than 700,000 members, and with each of those members comes online transactions, mailing lists, and databases.

One of the biggest challenges in the technology group at the Sierra Club is resources. I have yet to meet a CTO who doesn’t have the same problem. Dave also mentioned the usual challenges of attracting, hiring, and retaining top technical talent. Even in a tough economy, this is a challenge for all CTOs. Dave also works hard to keep up with new and emerging technologies, yet he must continually and cost-effectively leverage an array of key legacy systems (Sierra Club was founded in 1892) to keep the core business running.

I like to spend my free time outdoors enjoying the stunning natural beauty of California and the Bay area. Aside from the buzz of the technology industry, that beauty was what brought me here from the East Coast. As John Muir, the first president of the Sierra Club wrote, “Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul alike.” CTOs need this as much as any other overtaxed executive. After meeting Dave and learning about his work, when I’m hiking in Yosemite and come across a particularly beautiful vista, I’ll think of the ways unsung CTOs such as Dave are preserving that experience for everyone.