Aubrey Stearn - CTO for Nationwide Digital Accelerator Platform, Nationawide Building Society
What's your proudest work-related achievement of the last 12 months?
I'd say the biggest challenge I've faced in the last 12 months was building an in-house engineering capability from nationwide. Transitioning from what was broadly a partner-led digital platform build out, now we have a nationwide digital vision that nationwide folks are driving towards (with the reduced but continued support of our partners) and really thinking about how we move the needle for the society.
What's the number one skill today's IT leaders need?
This is a very hard questions to tie down to just one skill that's absolutely top of the pick, personally I value my ability to remind folks I'm working with that culture more than anything comes from within as-well as above. Where I can be the umbrella/shield for my people and allow them to form their own culture and ways of working I absolutely will, I also think being able to technically traverse subject matter is important, but equally you're probably going to trade a lot of technical hands on time for other activities so being able to hire and grow amazing people is also right up there.
How many people work in IT in your organisation?
We have about 1000-5000 people depending on the combination of partner, DRC and permanent employees working in IT.
What's your top priority for the next 12 months?
We will continue to push the platform to an increasingly larger scale to handle more digital journeys whilst introducing more shared business capabilities and technologies for internal folks to take advantage of, the amazing thing about digital and being a mutual is just how focused everyone is on direct member value.
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