The time may finally have arrived when CIO no longer means “career is over.”

As technology drives nearly every business imaginable today, the role of the chief information officer in managing enterprise information technology is not only becoming more important, it is beginning to be viewed as a key stepping stone to top corporate leadership.

This trend can be seen in the number of CIOs who have moved on to become chief executive officers of major business units or companies. One of the earliest examples happened in 2004 when Dawn Lepore moved from her role as CIO of Charles Schwab & Co. into the top executive chair at Drugstore.com.

Since then, the CIO for General Electric Co., Jamie Miller, became CEO of GE Transportation; Anthony Watson, former CIO for Barclays PLC and Nike Inc. transitioned into the top role at Bitreserve/Uphold Inc.; and Stephen Gillett, previously the CIO at Starbucks Corp., moved on to lead Chronicle LLC, an Alphabet “moonshot” startup.

A survey of CIOs around the world conducted by Forbes Insights, Intel Corp. and VMware Inc. last year found that four out of five participants believed their positions had grown in importance. Contributing to corporate strategy, developing new revenue sources, and creating customer-facing solutions were cited as a few of the major reasons.

At the heart of this change is a key factor in the evolving role of the CIO: The IT organization must play a crucial role in dealing with customers, both internal and external.

“I’ve gone through culture change with my team,” said Cynthia Stoddard (pictured), senior vice president and chief information officer at Adobe Inc. “So when you build, think about self-service, think about APIs, think about the right architecture. It’s really getting them to take the customer view.”

Stoddard spoke with John Furrier (@furrier) and Jeff Frick (@JeffFrick), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the Adobe Summit in Las Vegas. They discussed the use of data to guide the customer experience, how functionally specific CIO roles are on the rise, and the importance of partnerships and collaboration in managing the IT infrastructure (see the full interview with transcript here). (* Disclosure below.)

This week, theCUBE spotlights Cynthia Stoddard in its Women in Tech feature.

Power of data

With the rise of a “cloudified” world, IT is now the gatekeeper for the digital enterprise. And the power behind that is the strategic use of customer data.

The task of enabling a stellar customer experience has increasingly fallen on the shoulders of the CIO, who has become more reliant on artificial intelligence and machine learning to channel massive amounts of data into actionable solutions that drive sales. It’s all part of what Stoddard has termed being a “customer-centric CIO,” standing firmly on the front lines to improve the client journey.

“The customer and their experience become front and center,” Stoddard said. “Now you have to be geared to knowing who the customer is, providing that right level of information through a number of different functions. You understand what the pain points are, what they’re using and not using, and really gear your product and your information to make that experience a lot better for the customer.”

An example of the CIO’s evolution can be seen in how the position is becoming functionally specific. This has led to the rise of new titles inside the IT world, where “marketing CIOs” are now beginning to appear within companies such as MetLife Inc.

After joining Adobe in 2016, Stoddard has made sure to maintain a close partnership with the company’s marketing group, mindful that marketers were sophisticated users of IT services because of their reliance on data analytics for campaigns.

“Bringing the two worlds together is actually a perfect marriage,” Stoddard explained. “The marketing discipline probably has some of the most mature data and analytics skills of anybody in the company. When I look at how my team works with our marketing organization, it’s blended; you would not know who’s IT and who’s marketing.”

New view of infrastructure

Building partnerships and collaboration within the organization also plays an important role in managing the company infrastructure itself. This has required an adjustment for many CIOs because developers are now key participants in how that infrastructure is shaped and run.

There was a time, as Stoddard recalled, when staff members would come to her to request a new server or additional rack space. And she would send them off empty-handed until they came back with proof of better efficiency. Today, she must focus on a different audience for education and awareness.

“Now that infrastructure is absolutely in the code, it’s in the hands of the developer, it’s in the hands of the engineer,” Stoddard said. “They need to understand how the decisions that they make impact performance and cost. It’s a whole different world.”

During interviews she gave after being hired by Adobe, Stoddard described how she did not set her career goal to become a CIO. But she was a self-proclaimed “math nerd” and trained to become an accountant, which set her on a path where any occupation that involved the use of metrics would draw her interest.

“I explain my career journey as a mix of ambition, education and opportunity,” said Stoddard in a blog post on the Adobe website.

Adobe’s CIO has acknowledged that involvement of women in technology has improved but could still be a lot better. Adobe is a sponsor of Girls Who Code, a non-profit organization dedicated to increasing the number of women in computer science. High school girls are hosted at an Adobe office and participate in an immersive summer coding program.

This is the kind of initiative that Stoddard believes will make a difference. She also offers advice for women in the industry to talk with people and build as many relationships as they can.

It’s advice she has taken closely in her own career and applied to the complicated task of steering an IT organization through the swirling waters of digital transformation.

“IT was behind this huge wall; that can’t be anymore,” Stoddard said. “The CIO has to be out there with their business partners. Relationships are really key.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Adobe Summit 2019. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Adobe Summit 2019. Neither Adobe Inc., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE