TITLE: Chief Information Bear
COMPANY: Build-a-Bear Workshop Inc., St. Louis
ANNUAL REVENUE: $437 million
INDUSTRY SECTOR: Retail and entertainment
CORPORATE LADDER: Hired as director of IT in 1999; named CIO in 2007
FIRST JOB: A dishwasher at Mexican restaurant called Don Diego's in Utah. The pay wasn't great, but you could eat as much as you wanted.
BEST ADVICE EVER RECEIVED: A saying from my Scottish grandfather, "No airs or graces." I don't treat my CEO any different than a person here in our call center.
BEST CIO DECISION: Setting up a steering committee and meetings with our executive leaders. We meet quarterly with the executive team and monthly with our president, CFO and CEO.
BEST TECHNOLOGY DECISION: Interactive technology at our store kiosks. We built the application in-house and just moved it over to a platform from Nanonation.
FAVORITE PASTIME: Fly-fishing or golf. Utah's got some great fly-fishing.
GOLF HANDICAP: Probably between a 10 and a 12. In a Scottish family, if you don't play golf, you're drummed out.
TECHNOLOGY YOU COULDN'T LIVE WITHOUT: BlackBerry
TECHNOLOGY YOU WISH YOU COULD LIVE WITHOUT: My BlackBerry -- everybody's blessing and curse.
FAVORITE STUFFED BUILD-A-BEAR: The Curly Bear
Linda Tucci is senior news writer for SearchCIO.com. Write to her at ltucci@techtarget.com.
This was first published in June 2007