Bhavani Amirthalingam, SVP & Chief Digital Information Officer with Ameren Corporation is a finalist for the St. Louis CIO of the Year Orbie Awards in the Enterprise Category.
The ORBIE Awards program recognizes executives driving innovation and harnessing technology for their companies across the nation.
This year’s five categories include:
- Large enterprise: Over $8 billion in annual revenue
- Enterprise: Over $2.5 billion in annual revenue
- Large corporate: Over $1 billion in annual revenue
- Corporate: Up to $1 billion in annual revenue
- Health care: Hospitals, health care, and other nonprofit health organizations
Nominees were evaluated by an independent peer-review process led by prior ORBIE Award recipients and were evaluated on innovation; leadership; business value created as a direct result of IT operations; and community involvement. Additionally, they must hold the title of chief information officer or an equivalent senior IT executive position, be a member of senior management and be primarily responsible for the IT operations of an organization or subsidiary based in St. Louis.
Winners will be revealed at a virtual event on Dec. 3. A special section will run Nov. 26, both online and in print in the St. Louis Business Journal.
Bhavani joined Ameren in 2018 as senior vice president and chief digital information officer. She is leading Ameren’s digital transformation to deliver a differentiated customer and co-worker experience, leveraging emerging technologies to enable the grid of the future while driving operational excellence at scale. She is focused on accelerating technology solutions to enable greater safety, security, reliability and productivity at scale.
Amirthalingam brings to Ameren both a breadth and depth of experience as a customer-centric innovator. Starting in 2015, she worked as chief information officer and business transformation leader of North American Operations at Schneider Electric, a Fortune 500 corporation specializing in global energy management and automation solutions integrating technology, software and services. There, she drove the organization’s digital transformation across the United States, Canada, Mexico and Central America. Previously, at World Wide Technology (WWT) Inc., she served as CIO and vice president of Customer Solutions and Innovation.
She earned a bachelor’s degree in computer science from the University of Madras, India, and an MBA in information management from the S.P. Jain Institute of Management & Research in Mumbai. Amirthalingam serves as a member of the Forbes Technology Council and an executive member of the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) Information, Communication and Cyber Security (ICCS) Committee.
Amirthalingam is as passionate about giving back as she is about driving results. She serves on the board for the St. Louis Ballet Company and the board of Soorya Performing Arts, promoting South Asian performing arts in North America. She also has been a mentor and coach for FIRST robotics competitions. She lives in the St. Louis area with her husband and two children.