Telstra gets new CIO from Qantas

Stan Beer
Friday, 10 February 2006 03:44

IT People - People

Telstra Chief Executive Officer, Sol Trujillo, has announced the appointment of Qantas CIO Fiona Balfour as Telstra's new Chief Information Officer. Ms Balfour will report to Chief Operations Officer, Greg Winn.

Ms Balfour will join Telstra in early April after 14 years with Qantas, the last five as CIO. As CIO at Qantas, Ms Balfour was known for revamping the airline's IT operations, which included dramatically paring down the IT department and replacing staff with outsourced IT relationships worth about $1.5 billion to two major suppliers, Telstra and IBM.

Ms Balfour will be responsible for leading Telstra's centralised IT organisation and core IT programs as well as overseeing the company's Operations Support System and Business Support System transformational programs over the next 3-5 years.

Ms Balfour has 26 years experience and commenced her career as a graduate recruit in the Victorian Public Service in 1980 before moving to the Commonwealth Government. Between 1985 and 1991 she worked in management consulting with WD Scott and the DMR Group. She joined Qantas as an IT senior executive in 1992 and held a variety of positions before being appointed CIO and a member of the Qantas Executive Committee in 2001. Her portfolio was expanded in 2004 with the creation of Qantas Business
Services that delivered Information Technology, Procurement, Property, Transport and People services to the Group.

Mr Vish Padmanabhan has accepted the role of Deputy CIO. He joined Telstra in 2004 and prior to this spent 20 years with IBM.