< The 2014 Tech 50: Moving Out of the Lab and Into the Cloud
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Gary Scholten
Chief Information Officer
Principal Financial Group
Last year: 38
Chief information officer of Principal Financial Group since 2002 and as of this year an executive vice president, Gary Scholten describes his current priorities in simple, pragmatic terms: “We want to build self-service capabilities to make us easier to do business with.” At the same time, he insists on a certain amount of blue-sky thinking. “All companies are just scratching the surface when it comes to using data in their businesses,” he notes. How these efforts play out could change the way corporations operate, and Scholten wants Principal, a Des Moines, Iowa–based global investment manager and insurer with $483 billion of assets under management, to be prepared. Last year he oversaw a major upgrade of the global research platform for equities, allowing traders and managers using any type of device to integrate external data and complex algorithms into their models. “We can leverage broad amounts of data [in ways that are] really important for risk management and investment performance,” says the 56-year-old, who joined Principal as an assistant planning analyst in 1980 after graduating from the University of Northern Iowa. This year Scholten is focused on “the customer experience,” including website designs and mobile applications. Meanwhile, information security has become an obsession at Principal, and “we’re thinking outside the box,” sharing information with other companies about vulnerabilities and solutions.
The 2014 Tech 50Click name to view ranking profile.
| 1 | 1 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
| Thomas Secunda Bloomberg | Jeffrey Sprecher Intercontinental Exchange | Catherine Bessant Bank of America Corp. | Stephen Neff Fidelity Investments | Lance Uggla Markit |
| 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
| Robert Goldstein BlackRock | David Craig Thomson Reuters | Phupinder Gill CME Group | Anna Ewing NASDAQ OMX Group | R. Martin Chavez Goldman Sachs Group |
| 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 |
| Deborah Hopkins Citi Ventures | Dan Mathisson Credit Suisse | Daniel Coleman KCG Holdings | Michael Spencer ICAP | Michael Bodson Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. |
| 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 |
| Joe Ratterman BATS Global Markets | Dominique Cerutti Euronext | Ron Levi GFI Group | Gaurav Suri D.E. Shaw Group | Charles Li Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing |
| 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 |
| Lou Eccleston S&P Capital IQ | Lee Olesky Tradeweb Markets | Richard McVey MarketAxess Holdings | Seth Merrin Liquidnet Holdings | Antoine Shagoury London Stock Exchange Group |
| 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 |
| Christopher Perretta State Street Corp. | Kevin Rhein Wells Fargo & Co. | Peter Carr Morgan Stanley | Hauke Stars Deutsche Börse | Robert Alexander Capital One Financial Corp. |
| 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 |
| David Gershon SuperDerivatives | Chris Corrado MSCI | Joseph Squeri Citadel | Tanuja Randery BT Global Services | John Bates Software AG |
| 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 |
| Gary Scholten Principal Financial Group | David Gledhill DBS Bank | Simon Garland Kx Systems | Cristóbal Conde FinTech Innovation Lab | Jeff Parker EidoSearch |
| 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 |
| Kim Fournais & Lars Seier Christensen Saxo Bank | Kenneth Marlin Marlin & Associates | Tyler Kim MaplesFS | Jim McGuire Charles Schwab Corp. | Jim Minnick eVestment |
| 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 |
| Steven O’Hanlon Numerix | Sebastián Ceria Axioma | Yasuki Okai Nomura Research Institute | Niki Beattie Market Structure Partners | Mas Nakachi OpenGamma |
