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2025 Nominees: CNA Financial, DeVry, First Student, KraftHeinz, Pace Systems, Sentinel Technologies, State Farm, Treehouse Foods, UL Research Institutes, WinTrust Financial Services, & Women's Business Development Center

AITP Chicago and its Program Partner, the Pan Asian American Business Council (PAABC), are proud to announce the kick-off of the 2025 "Most Effective Technology Team Award" and are actively seeking nominees and sponsors.

This award recognizes high performing technology teams that have done an outstanding job of improving the success of their companies’ business.  Teams will be selected for 1st, 2nd and 3rd places.  Relative performance will be used to adjust for company size.  Judging is done by a panel of CIOs, Directors and Senior IT Executives.

The Process: The awards evaluation process occurs over a 6 month period, culminating in an in-person Awards Dinner in late June 2025. Each Team must submit a comprehensive written application covering Innovation & Team Collaboration, Organizational Change Management, Business Value Creation and Community Service.  The submissions are scored by the Judging Panel and the top 6 are promoted to the interview stage.  Finally, the Judges select the 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd Place Winners.

The Team Awards have been a great way to recognize the hard work of the staffs that makes a CIO, Director or other Technology Executive successful.

Since 2008, the "Team Awards” have been presented annually by AITP Chicago and PAABC to recognize high performing teams that have done an outstanding job of improving the success of their companies’ business.   Teams will be selected for 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd places.  Relative performance will be used to adjust for company size.  This is a serious award.  Judging will be done by a panel of CIOs, Directors and Senior IT Executives.

In addition to recognition by their peers and industry experts, winners will receive team trophies and a framed Team picture.  Members of the six finalist teams will be invited as our guest to the awards dinner and representative of all of the teams completing applications will also be invited as our guests.  Attendance at the Awards Dinner and Ceremony is limited to the nominated teams, the judges and 3 representatives from each of the sponsors.

The Awards presentation is one of the most highly respective technology leadership events each year.  We look forward to seeing you at this event and recognizing and congratulating all of the award-winning teams.  

Eligibility

• Nominees need not be a member of AITP Chicago or PAABC
  
• Nominees can be any Technology Team within an organization that has demonstrated high performance.
• Nominees can be via self-nominations or from nominations by Executive Leaders (sponsors). An AITP representative will follow up with the Executive Leader of a self-nominating team.
• The effort covered by their submission must be technology driven.
• The effort must have generated an “output or outcome”.
• At least part of the effort must have taken place in 2023 or 2024.
• The organization must be with the greater Chicagoland area.
• The nomination must be approved by the Executive Leader (sponsor) of the Team.

Most Effective Team Award Criteria

Nominated teams will be judged and awarded points on these effectiveness categories:

1. Innovation and Team Collaboration (30)
2. Organizational Change management (20)
3. Business Value creation (40)
4. Community service (10)

The awards are designed to recognize the achievements of the teams as well as the significant role that teams play in the overall success of an organization and contributions to the technology community as a whole.

Timeline:

Nominations are due  February 16, 2025.  Nominees will be sent applications that need to be submitted by April  16, 2025.  Judging will take place between April 16 and May 31.  Selections and notifications for Finalists will be notified on June 1.  Finalists will be interviewed via Zoom between June 1 and June 15.  The Awards will be presented in late June at an in-person Awards Dinner.

Prior winners include:  West Monroe, Cook County Health, Byline Bank, Stericycle, Inland Real Estate Group, HCSC, John G. Shedd Aquarium, PSAV, CIBC Bank USA, Delta Dental Plans Association, Illinois Student Assistance Commission, Zurich Services, Nuveen, City of Chicago, Mesirow Financial, Connect Hearing, University of Chicago Medicine, Jenner & Block, USG, Tate & Lyle, Association Management Center, True Value Company, tradeMonster Group, Kraft Foods/Mondelez Int’l, DeVry, Crowe Horwath LLP, Motorola Mobility, Hallmark, Chicago Public Schools, Cardian Learning Group, Options Clearing House, Loyola University, and Littelfuse.

For More Information Contact Paul.Dittmann@aitpchicago.com or Sally.Martin@aitpchicago.com   

Please Thank our 2025 Program Sponsors  (Click on Link to Visit Websites)

Robert Half.com

              Talentfish.com

                  https://business.comcast.com/

See your logo here!

  2024 Most Effective IT Team Awards

Congratulate our 2024 Most Effective Technology Team Award Winners

Two ties this year instead of 1st, 2nd and Third

         1st Place -Cook County Health ExpressCare Team

         1st Place -West Monroe Information Technology Team

2nd Place - Stericycle Global Infrastrurture & Cybersecurity Team

2nd Place - Byline Bank Business System Team

Winner's Panel - Byline Bank, West Monroe, Stericycle, Cook County Health

Stephanie Daugherty, Amit Shah, Jack Paterson, Keesha Love  

  2023 Most Effective IT Team Awards

The Chicago Chapter of the Association of Information Technology Professionals (AITP) along with the Pan Asian American Business Council are proud to announce the winners of the 2023 Most Effective IT Team Awards.  The 2023 winners are:

1st Place:  The Inland Real Estate Group,  LLC

2nd Place:  HCSC (Health Care Service Corporation)

3rd Place:  John G. Shedd Aquarium

Winners' Panel

  2019 Most Effective IT Team Awards

The Chicago Chapter of the Association of Information Technology Professionals (AITP) is proud to announce the winners of the 2019 Most Effective IT Team Awards.  This year’s team winners are:

1st Place - PSAV - Lighthouse Team

CIO Kathie Kozik - Team Lead Wayne Vincent

2nd Place:  CIBC Bank USA - CIBC Cross-Board Banking Team

CIO Dean Haacker - Team Lead David Bergman

3rd Place:  Delta Dental Plans Association - National Data Strategy Team

CIO Scott Jessee - Team Lead Fred Kwong

Winner's Panel

Fred Kwong, Wayne Vincent, David Bergman

____________________________________________________________________

2019 Applicants included teams from diverse organizations such as:  AAR Corporation, CIBC, Clerk of the Circuit Court, Delta Dental, DXC/United Air Lines, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America,  Gift of Hope, IAA (Insurance Auto Auctions), Partstown, PSAV, and Stratosphere Networks.

Judging panel included:  Patrick Maroney, CIO at Central States Funds & Former CIO of the Year; Craig Youngberg, Cyber Risk and Resilience at Accenture;  John Fisher, Transformational CIO & Chief Executive at rethinking IT. Inc. & former CIO of the Year;  Mark Griesbaum, Relationship Manager at RLF (Regional Leadership Forum) – SIM & former CIO; Ramnath Cidambi, CIO at Illinois Student Assistance Commission; Frank Yanan, SVP GIS & BISO at Bank of America; Dave Kamath, Managing Partner at Querion Services  & Former CIO; Gary Czubak, Partner @ Fortium Partners and Former SVP/CIO; and Larry Winkelman, Partner at Fortium Partners & Former CIO.

Prior winners include:  Illinois Student Assistance Commission, Zurich Services, Nuveen, City of Chicago, Mesirow Financial, Connect Hearing, University of Chicago Medicine, Jenner & Block, USG, Tate & Lyle, Association Management Center, True Value Company, tradeMonster Group, Kraft Foods/Mondelez Int’l, DeVry, Crowe Horwath LLP, Motorola Mobility, Hallmark, Chicago Public Schools, Cardian Learning Group, Options Clearing House, Loyola University, Littelfuse

The Keynote Panel:

The Keynote for the 2019 event was a panel consisting of representatives of the 3 Award Winning Teams.  The 3 representatives identified at the event each shared information about what their teams accomplished to win their award.  The following panel discussion was moderated by John Fisher and covered topics such as leading business transformation and building and maintaining high performing teams.

John is President and Founder of rethinking IT, a firm that helps client organizations think differently about their technology solutions.  Based on over 30 years of experience applying technology solutions to critical business problems, John has developed a successful approach to helping organizations select the appropriate technology strategies and solutions to improve their business.

John is a member of the Board of Directors of AITP Chicago and SIM Chicago.  He was recognized by Computerworld Magazine as one of their Premier 100 IT Leaders and named Chicago’s CIO of the Year in 2002.  He is a frequent speaker at industry events on topics such as negotiations, leadership and running IT as a business.  John is an adjunct faculty member at DePaul University where he teaches graduate level courses in IT Strategy, Social Media, Negotiation, Leadership and eBusiness Strategy.