Mark Schwartz

Enterprise Strategist, AWS

Mark Schwartz is an iconoclast and CIO and a playful crafter of ideas, an inveterate purveyor of lucubratory prose. He has been an IT leader in organizations small and large, public, private, and nonprofit.

As an Enterprise Strategist for Amazon Web Services, he uses his extensive CIO wisdom to advise the world’s largest companies on the obvious: time to move to the cloud, guys. As the CIO of US Citizenship and Immigration Services, he provoked the federal government into adopting Agile and DevOps practices. He is pretty sure that when he was the CIO of Intrax Cultural Exchange he was the first person ever to use business intelligence and supply chain analytics to place au pairs with the right host families. Mark speaks frequently on innovation, change leadership, bureaucratic implications of DevOps, and using Agile practices in low-trust environments. With a BS in computer science from Yale, a master’s in philosophy from Yale, and an MBA from Wharton, Mark is either an expert on the business value of IT or just confused and much poorer.

Mark is the author of The Art of Business Value, A Seat at the Table, and War and Peace and IT and the winner of a Computerworld Premier 100 award, an Amazon Elite 100 award, a Federal Computer Week Fed 100 award, and a CIO Magazine CIO 100 award. He lives in Boston, Massachusetts.

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War and Peace and IT

Available Now!
In the latest book from iconoclastic CIO Mark Schwartz, find out why and how executives and business leaders must create a shared strategy with their IT organizations to drive innovation, enhance their competitive positioning, increase revenue, and delight customers.

A Seat at the Table & The Art of Business Value – Two Book Bundle

For the first time, enjoy Mark Schwartz's two books on IT leadership in the modern enterprise world in one bundle. A Seat at the Table and The Art of Business Value pave the path for the modern CIO and IT department.

A Reader’s Guide to A Seat at the Table

A Reader's Guide to A Seat at the Table is intended to add another dimension to the original book. This reader's guide walks through A Seat at the Table chapter by chapter.

The guide includes additional material for each chapter on:
• What has changed between the Waterfall/contractor-control world and the Agile world.
• The key points of the chapter.
• The concrete actions that IT leaders should take away from the chapter.
• Questions to help stimulate further debate.
• And more.

A Seat at the Table

Iconoclastic CIO Mark Schwartz reveals how IT leaders must throw off the old attitudes and assumptions and claim their rightful seat at the C-suite table.

The Art of Business Value

Playful and thought-provoking, iconoclastic CIO Mark Schwartz explores what business value means, why it matters, and how it should affect your software development and delivery practices.