Technical Advisors Larry Wolff
Technical Advisor
Professional Skills
Awards, Recognition, & Publications
Awards:
Arizona CIO of the Year 2024 Orbie Awards finalist within Healthcare
Grand Award Judge, International Science and Engineering Fair | 2016–2022
Judge, Broadcom Masters | 2019
Contributor to the ATD Handbook for Training and Talent Development
Public Speaking & Thought Leadership:
Frequently quoted speaker and author on multiple topics, including digital transformation, disruptive technology, and IT strategy.
Quoted in Wall Street Journal, USA Today, CIO, Information Week, and other business and technology publications on topics of business transformation, technology leadership, and strategy.
Podcast guest on numerous topics related to innovation, disruption, transformation, and strategy.
See my articles on the Wolff Strategy Partners blog at https://wolffstrategy.com/blog/
Recent Public Speaking:
Anthology Together Annual Conferences
How to Justify Your Student Information System Investment
California Assisted Living Association Annual Conference
Disruptive Technology
EFM AZ IT Symposiums
Digital Transformation Strategy
Measuring the Value Contributed by IT
TribalNet Annual Conferences
Alignment of Technology Strategy and Vision with Business Operations
Technology – Your Best Offense
MSS Phoenix Cybersecurity Forum
Developing the CIO, CDO and CISO Relationship
Physical and Cyber Threat Convergence Forum
What Cyber Strategies Does the Holistic Security Professional of the Future Need to Develop right now?
Larry Wolff
Larry Wolff is a strategic advisor to companies at an inflection point. He is the founder & CEO of Wolff Strategy Partners, a lean, next-generation firm built for speed, clarity, and alignment during pivotal transitions—whether you’re scaling, repositioning, transforming, or modernizing your business.
Larry has served as a CEO, COO, CIO, CTO, head of strategy, and management consultant for public, private, international, and emerging growth companies. He advises Boards and CEOs on complex, high risk technology issues and corporate strategy, driving industry disruption, revenue and earnings growth, customer satisfaction and employee retention. In addition to C-level roles with Global 500 companies, Larry served as CIO and SVP of Corporate Strategy for a $400 million public company in for-profit education, President and COO for a professional services company with 3,500 clients worldwide, and Managing Partner with the number one provider of technology leadership.
More recently he served as Chief Digital Officer for an industry leading study abroad company and CTO for a healthcare software startup.
Positions
Founder & CEO, Wolff Strategy Partners, CIO, COO, CDO, Advisor, Board Member
Education
B.S. Computer Science with minor in Mathematics
Case Studies
Digital Transformation Initiatives
Problem: Microsoft was seeking transaction fees for travel services and Reed Elsevier published the Hotel & Travel Index, the world’s deepest and broadest database of hotels and destinations.
Solution: As a Reed Elsevier CIO, we partnered with Microsoft to create Expedia, redefining the travel industry and generating millions of dollars of new advertising revenue.
Technology Forecasting and Strategy
Problem: Legacy IT systems and processes stalled the corporate strategy and held back growth in a $350 million public company.
Solution: As CIO, developed a strategic plan that turned around IT in 18 months, reduced costs, made IT a strategic asset to drive company growth, introduced predictive analytics that saved $50 million a year in marketing and sales expenses, and was appointed by the Board to also manage corporate strategy, growing customer enrollments by 23%.
Cross-Functional IT Team Leadership
Problem: Centralized corporate IT organization inhibited innovation and delayed growth across 15 distributed U.S. divisions of a $600 million public company.
Solution: Upon being promoted to CIO, distributed corporate IT across the divisions, organizing the top divisional network engineers into a geographically distributed team, doing the same with customer support, and software development. The result was stronger alignment with division strategies, faster response time, increased resilience of the infrastructure, and we grew the company to over $1 billion in three years.
IT Talent Management and Upskilling
Problem: Across numerous Global 500 and mid-market companies, IT team members were pigeon-holed in their traditional roles with limited growth opportunity.
Solution: Set clear objectives in alignment with corporate strategy, held team members accountable, enabled them to earn growth opportunities and, today, dozens of former team members are in C-level roles across the country.
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Implementation
Problem: $600 million public company was 18 months and $18 million into a global ERP implementation with no deployments.
Solution: As Interim CIO, removed the system integrator, removed 45 third-party contractors, and brought in a team of six people to rescue the project, ultimately saving the company $27 million a year.
Healthcare IT Innovations
Problem: Software startup in the dementia care space had a monolithic view of their product.
Solution: Rearchitected the product as a universal platform to support any neurocognitive disease, resulting in 90% effectiveness across conditions, enabling new markets, and driving the company valuation.
Professional Experience
Wolff Strategy Partners (2009–present)
Founder & CEO
Strategic advisor to mid-market, and Fortune 1000 companies at an inflection point with transformation, scaling, repositioning, or modernizing. Rescued the Agile transformation for a $10 billion public company. Rescued a global Oracle Financials implementation for a $600 million public company, and saved $27 million a year. Executed a six-month IT restructuring, established SOX controls, and saved $1 million annually for a $200 million public company. Completed a 20-day IT assessment for a privately held mid-market company, showing them how to save $10 million to $15 million a year.
Ouelette & Associates (2017–2018)
President & COO
Strongly differentiated IT professional development firm, coaching CEOs, CIOs, and their teams on digital transformation and the human side of technology, serving over 3,500 clients worldwide. Doubled revenue in 18 months by introducing new products and forming three strategic partnerships to expand service offerings, increasing the valuation and enabling the successful sale of the company.
Fortium Partners (2016–2017)
Area Managing Partner
Tasked with growing a nationwide firm of world-class CIOs and CTOs, solving complex, high-risk business challenges. Advised Fortune 1000 business and IT leaders on digital transformation strategies. Engaged with private equity firms for IT due diligence, acquisition integration, and interim CIO services.
Universal Technical Institute (2005–2008)
CIO and SVP, Strategy Management
$400 million leader in for-profit education with campuses nationwide. Transformed IT into a strategic asset by aligning IT with business strategy, scaling systems, and implementing outstanding customer service, advanced system integration technologies, and Agile software development. Generated nearly $50 million in annual savings by optimizing marketing and sales functions through predictive analytics that identified which sales leads would become students in school — with 97% accuracy. Increased student enrollment by 23% in one year by implementing a rigorous strategy management methodology.
Reed Elsevier (1987–2003)
Chief Information Officer
$1B division of a $10B global information provider to legal, science, education, and business-to-business markets. Led global technology initiatives to streamline worldwide publishing operations and enable future integration of the businesses. Managed up to $42 million in operating budgets, $60 million in capital budgets, and 350+ team members across 15 U.S. divisions, driving operational excellence, digital transformation, and over $14 million in profits attributed to technology initiatives.
Member of the 10-person executive team that grew Reed Business Information from $600 million to over $1 billion in less than three years through M&A and organic growth. Delivered 40% profit improvement and transformed Reed Business Information by collaborating with customers to replace 42 online products with a single, scalable platform.
Played a key role in creating Microsoft Expedia, disrupting the travel industry. Applied industry-leading data management techniques to operate the highly profitable list rental business for every major competitor. Led IT due diligence and technology integration of numerous acquisitions.
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