Spotlight on Carole Hill

Carole Hill is Chief Information Officer for Wilbur-Ellis. She is focused on enabling employees and customers with user-friendly, innovative, and purposeful technology, while helping ensure accurate data and insights are available to support informed, data-driven decisions.

Before joining Wilbur-Ellis, Carole built a career in agribusiness and chemical manufacturing, leading information technology and data initiatives across system implementations, business intelligence, data strategy, custom development, and IT management. Carole holds a Bachelor of Science in Finance from the University of Maryland and a Master of Science in Information Technology from the University of Denver, and she resides in Denver, Colorado, with her family, where she enjoys hiking, camping,  and fly fishing.

Fun fact: I'll cut a coupon to save $2 on bread but spend $K on experiences.

Learn more about the Denver CIO community here.
 

Give us a brief overview of the path that led to your current role.

My career started in finance, where I managed billions in capital expenditures for a telecom company. The more financial analysis we needed, the more data we had to collect and cleanse. This data curation challenge led me to business intelligence, data engineering, and system implementations, with the mindset that someone would need the information along the way to make decisions.

As my passion for system processes and data flow grew, my ability to execute pragmatically and deliver on strategic initiatives led me to a CIO role. I continue to focus on data, insights, and the role they now play in AI.
 

What is one of your guiding leadership principles?

One of the guiding leadership principles I have found successful is fostering accountability: empowering my leaders and teams to achieve their goals through autonomy, open dialogue, feedback, and innovation. We all work better as a team when we are trusted and feel ownership in our successes.
 

What is the greatest challenge CIOs face today, and how are you addressing it?

Security continues to be the biggest challenge I face. All the software in the world can't prevent human behavior and we continue to chase ways to mitigate their actions. With the introduction of AI and ease to be a novice developer utilizing AI tools, we have more to focus on and stay ahead of. One bad day in security can be costly and difficult to recover from. 
 

What is the key to success for someone just starting out as a CIO?

As a C-level, you need a strong leadership team you can trust, empower and support. It's impossible to know everything and relying on core team members to execute on yours and peer C-level's strategies is important. Be humble, open to new ideas and supportive. 
 

How do you measure success as a leader?

I measure success on outcomes and innovation. Leading teams through growth, autonomy and innovation typically results in more thoughtful solutions, accountability and expectations exceeding the initial ask. It's important that my IT organization are trusted partners to our customer and employees delivering tech and data enablement that compliments their strategic KPIs.

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