During her climb up the corporate ladder at SAS, the world's largest privately held software company, Suzanne Gordon, SAS's vice president of information technology and CIO, developed an air-tight strategy for how IT could work in lockstep with internal SAS customers to reinforce the company's success. A roadblock stood in the way of selling her idea to management. Meanwhile, she decided to move out of IT and into the sales consulting side of SAS. It was here that she saw IT from the customers' perspective.

In 2003 when the CIO position came opened at SAS, a company that provides 44,000 customers with analytics software, Gordon got the job. She now could turn her vision into a reality with her IT staff of more than 300 employees. In fact, that same year, Computerworld recognized Gordon's leadership talents by including her in the list of Premier 100 IT Executives for that year.

In this, her second interview with EnterpriseLeadership, Gordon talks about how the collaborative governance process makes IT project decisions, how the value of IT gets measured, how innovation gets carried out at SAS, and what it takes to develop a culture of trust between IT and its internal customers.

Bio
In 2003, Suzanne Gordon got promoted from vice president of SAS Information Systems Division (ISD) to chief information officer. She also served as the director of National Technical Consulting and acting vice president within SAS Professional Services Division. Before joining the professional services organization, Gordon headed the management information services department in ISD for about 20 years. She joined SAS in 1980. She received a bachelor's degree in math and computer science and a master's degree in statistics from North Carolina State University, where she a member of the board of trustees.

Resources
SearchCIO - SAS CIO Sets Example for the Whole Company
LocalTechWire - SAS Exec Suzanne Gordon Builds Success Around Persistence and 'Short Memory for Negative Things'
LocalTechWire - Head of IT at SAS Sees Risks, Opportunities

Production Credits
Elizabeth Ferrarini, Executive Producer
Tom Parish, Host and Audio Producer
Doug Marcis - Audio Editing