Until a few years ago, the Canadian oil & gas industry enjoyed more than 100 years of relatively steady progress.

Executive Insights is a new videocast series featuring exceptional leaders. Nasheen Liu, Partner and SVP of CIO Program Strategy at The IT Media Group speaks with C-suite officers and aspiring executives across industries to share best practices for navigating through challenging times.

Fear is normal and something we all experience, but if we don’t stand up to fearful thoughts on repeat, we become paralyzed by fear. In this article, I want to talk about what fear is, why it stops us from taking action—especially at work—and how to flip fear on its head so we can move forward instead of feeling stuck.

If you ever get a chance, I HIGHLY recommend talking to people.

Not just people around you *most* of the time, like your immediate or extended family, or the nosy neighbor, or the mail professional who happily delivers package upon package of online orders to your porch on what seems to be an hourly basis.

I didn’t go to Vegas looking for the next big thing. I went as a Canadian media delegate to attend Hitachi NEXT, Hitachi Vantara’s annual smart data conference. The event brought together 10,000 people with the goal of sharing insights and knowledge about data, the new currency for the digital economy.

Q & A with Bryan Rutledge, Regional Vice President and Canadian Country Manager, McAfee

I recently had the opportunity to participate at MPOWER, McAfee’s annual cybersecurity summit where several major announcements were made. I was looking forward to meeting with Bryan Rutledge, McAfee Canada’s General Manager, to understand a Canadian perspective.

At MPOWER 2019, McAfee’s annual cybersecurity summit, I had the opportunity to interview Bill Woods, Senior Director Security Intelligence. His career has taken him from assault pilot, to FBI Special Agent in Charge, and finally to leading McAfee’s world-wide security operations. Bill’s journey is a case-study into how seemingly unconnected professions can lead to extraordinary results for organizations struggling with the onslaught of cyber threats.

The manufacturing world is putting on a new face, and the makeover it is receiving from powerful new technologies has the potential to help Canada reaffirm its position as one of the world’s leading manufacturing nations and win back work that has migrated to low-cost countries.

The challenge for CIOs is that IT has long been the neglected child of the Canadian oil and gas industry, not much understood or valued by senior management and left out in the cold with respect to corporate strategy. Now CIOs must find a way of making their voices heard in order to ensure that their companies take the right steps along their digital journey, and they must change the corporate perception of IT from cost centre to cost reducer and revenue generator.