George Eapen
Global CIO
Petrofac
George Eapen is currently the Group CIO for Petrofac, one of the world's leading Energy Companies with 12,000 employees and an annual revenue of $3B in 2021, as well as Global Board of Advisor for IBM Security.
Previously, he was responsible for defining cybersecurity strategy for Enterprise IT & OT for General Electric (GE) International as a Chief Information Security Officer for GE Global Growth Regions. George serves as a non-Executive Board member and advisor for many cyber organisations, cyber committees and technology companies and is a recipient of multiple CIO and CISO awards globally.
Learn more about the UK & Ireland CIO community here.
Give us a brief overview of the path that led to your current role.
I started my career journey with American multinational conglomerate General Electric in 2006. I worked in multiple industries within IT and in multiple geographies. While I was with GE, I also graduated from three leadership programs in GE.
I started my career with Petrofac in 2018 as their first Chief Information Security Officer. The first major challenge I had to go through was a cyber security breach of the company which happened immediately after I took over the CISO role. My goal was then to rebuild the state and bring back the business continuity. We also had a chance to rebuild our internal cyber security state.
In 2020, I was promoted to group CIO right at the time of the COVID pandemic outbreak. My team and I had to quickly role out multiple solutions to ensure our workforce was productive and could meet our customer commitments.
What is one of your guiding leadership principles?
Your team is your biggest asset. Nurture, retain and take care of your people and they will take care of your priorities. Take personal accountability and make others accountable, but don't create a stressful work environment.
With disruption being a key theme of recent years, where do you see the CIO role going in the next 1-2 years?
C-suite leaders will continue to focus on the real business risk to ensure resiliency of their business operations. We are going to see rapid adoption of newer technologies which will transform the way we work, and C-level technology leaders will be driving business innovations more than ever.
What advice would you give to someone just starting out as a CIO?
Never chase another organisation's success. Pace yourselves, you can only run as fast as your team. Don't blame things on your predecessors as you don't know the context in which they were operating.
Tell us a few fun facts about yourself.
I am an avid traveller, and have travelled to close to 40 countries.
What is the value of joining an Evanta community?
I believe collective defence is the way to go and networking has a multiplier effect. Evanta will give me a platform to reach out to peers to get different perspectives and solutions to a problem statement.
Evanta Governing Body members share their insights and leadership perspectives to shape the agendas and topics that address the top priorities impacting business leaders today.
by CIOs, for CIOs
Join the conversation with peers in your local CIO community.