GeorgiaCIO announced the winners of its 25th annual ORBIE® Awards. GeorgiaCIO recognized technology executives in seven key categories – Lifetime Achievement, Global, Large Enterprise, Enterprise, Large Corporate, Corporate, and CISO. The Awards were presented at the Georgia ORBIE Awards at Hotel at Avalon.

"Member-led, non-commercial programs like the ORBIE Awards, build meaningful professional relationships with colleagues facing similar challenges, solving problems and avoiding pitfalls," said Marcia Calleja-Matsko, GeorgiaCIO Chair. "Successful leaders understand the 'superpower' of trusted relationships. In any gathering of technology leaders, the answer is in the room."

The 2023 Georgia ORBIE Award winners are:

• Marie Mouchet, SVP & CIO, Colonial Pipeline (ret), received the Lifetime Achievement Award.

• Amir Kazmi, Chief Information & Digital Officer, WestRock received the Global ORBIE for organizations over $10 billion annual revenue & multi-national operations.

• Rohit Lal, EVP & CIO, Saia, Inc. received the Large Enterprise ORBIE for organizations over $2.8 billion annual revenue.

• Jeff Davey, SVP & CIO, Artera Services received the Enterprise ORBIE for organizations over $2 billion annual revenue.

• Robert Sheesley, CIO, Wrench Group received the Large Corporate ORBIE for organizations over $1 billion annual revenue.

• Brian Benn, CIO, Atlanta Housing received the Corporate ORBIE for organizations up to $1 billion annual revenue.

• Tim Callahan, SVP, CISO, Aflac, Inc received the CISO ORBIE for Chief Information Security Officers.

The ORBIE Awards is the premier technology executive recognition program in the United States. Since inception in 1998, over 700 technology leaders have received the prestigious ORBIE Award. The ORBIE honors chief information officers and chief information security officers who have demonstrated excellence in leadership. Finalists and winners are selected by an independent peer review process, led by prior ORBIE recipients, based upon:

• Leadership and management effectiveness

• Business value created by technology innovation

• Engagement in industry and community endeavors

The Georgia ORBIE Awards keynote was delivered by Julie Sweet, Chair and CEO of Accenture, who was interviewed by Laura Miller, EVP & CIO of Macy's. Nearly 800 guests attended, representing leading Georgia organizations and their technology partners.

The 2023 Georgia ORBIE Awards was made possible by the following sponsors:

• GeorgiaCIO Underwriters: FPT Software, Google Cloud, Insight, Lumen, SoftServe

• Gold sponsors: Capgemini, Culture Partners, Fortinet, Okta, PwC, Verinext, VMware

• Silver sponsors: Appian, Cloudflare, Comcast Business, Grant Thornton, Key2 Consulting, Palo Alto Networks, Tata Consultancy Services

• Bronze sponsors: AHEAD, Between Pixels, Celsior Tech, Cleo, Datum Technologies, Deepwatch, Ernst & Young, Global Payments, InfoCenter, Island, iVision, Juniper Networks, Nagarro, Needling Worldwide, Persistent Systems, Protiviti, Publicis Sapient, Snowflake, T-Mobile

• Media partner: Atlanta Business Chronicle

• National partner: Year Up