By Staff
April 15th, 2024
BURLINGTON, ON
The City rarely sends out media releases on the hiring of new staff. Those that they do send out have, to date, been about very senior people.
The following came from the city this morning:
The City of Burlington is announcing the hiring of two new directors to Burlington Digital Services – Richard Liu, Director of Information Technology, and Chinelo Okereke, Director of Digital Strategy and User-Centric Services. These appointments support the delivery of the City’s Digital Business Strategy, designed to prepare and shift the organization for transformational changes in digital approaches and architecture.
In announcing the two new hires the city wants the public to know that people really do want to work for Burlington.
Chinelo (Chinny) Okereke and Richard Liu
Richard Liu
Mr. Liu has been appointed as the City’s Director of Information Technology, effective April 8, 2024. He joined the City of Burlington in November 2022 as the Principal of Digital Enterprise Architecture. Mr. Liu brings over 20 years of experience in technology leadership roles to the City. Prior to his most recent role at the City, he held senior leadership positions with the Government of Nova Scotia’s Digital Services, mostly notably as the Director of Enterprise Architecture for over 10 years. He has also held positions in the private sector at CGI Consulting, and CARIS Inc.
With a commitment to digital transformation, strategy, and enterprise architecture, Mr. Liu has been instrumental in spearheading major digital initiatives, including the implementation of public cloud strategies and migrations, artificial intelligence (AI) solutions, and the modernization of legacy technology systems.
Mr. Liu holds a Master of Computer Science from the University of New Brunswick and a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Southwest Jiaotong University in China. His professional certifications include a COBIT 2019 Foundation certificate, an Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) certificate, and designations as a Business Relationship Management Professional (BRMP), and TOGAF 9 Certified Enterprise Architecture Practitioner.
Chinelo (Chinny) Okereke
Ms. Okereke joined the City of Burlington as the new Director of Digital Strategy and User-Centric Services on March 25, 2024. Ms. Okereke is an accomplished senior technology transformation leader. Prior to joining the City, she was the Enablement, Transformation and Operations Lead for Walmart Canada’s Insights & Analytics Centre of Excellence, created to accelerate the organization’s digital transformation agenda. She has also held positions at the Royal Bank of Canada including driving the strategic enablement of the technology function, and program managing RBC’s global innovation accelerator for employees.
Throughout her career, Ms. Okereke has acquired extensive experience in driving large transformation programs and leading successful digital initiatives that increase customer satisfaction, user engagement and employee experience. She has also led the development of user-friendly digital platforms to transform customer interactions.
Ms. Okereke holds a Master of Management Sciences (Technology) from Waterloo University, and a Bachelor of Science, Economics from the University of Toronto. She has certifications in product management, change management and Agile Project Management. She has also served as a part-time instructor for colleges, teaching innovation, change management and business management.
In their roles at the City of Burlington, Mr. Liu, Ms. Okereke, and their teams will be responsible for helping to execute aspects of the City’s Digital Business Strategy. The strategy outlines actions and investments that take advantage of technology and data to optimize and transform the way City services are delivered. The strategy will guide the delivery of services and ensure they meet the needs of the community, are easy to use, and cost efficient.
So, there seems to be two rather different protocols/communications policies in play; open disclosure for significant “new hires” and ‘only if you ask us’ for notable “new fires”.
I think I get it, Blair. We all know the good felling that comes from go hire, rather than go lower. Hire is much more uplifting than lower such as hire scores or hire points, so in nearly every case except perhaps doing the limbo.
And new fires are dangerous. You can get burned by them, just like old fires that smolder away (low fires), but often new fires take a while to be discovered so don’t attract much attention while the media is still covering the old fires.
So there you have it – why more attention is paid to new hires than new fires. Hope that clears much of the smoke from the mirrors for you.