FABIO ROSA
Americas CIO / IT SVP at Amplifon Americas
Can you please provide a little introduction about yourself
I have led IT for Amplifon Americas for the last 2 years, based in Minneapolis, MN, where I live with my wife and daughter. Amplifon is the Global Leader in Audiology solutions and services. The company is well established in Europe and growing at an accelerated pace in the Americas. My current role is as exciting and fulfilling as it can be. I get to lead an amazing team serving our operations in the US, Canada and 6 countries in Latin America, developing innovative technology solutions to help our Hearing Care Professionals give the gift of sound to our customers and their families.
What has your journey to your position been like? What path have you taken?
I strive to be the best I could in what I engage in: family, friendship, academic studies, jobs. I also always tried to surround myself with people I could learn from and environments that would challenge me to become a better version of who I was before. My supporting and demanding parents gave me the conditions to initiate a good academic path and I had the privilege to cross paths with lots of generous people who embraced me as part of their careers and gave me the opportunity to do what I knew and learn what I didn't.
Through my experiences in different countries and industries I worked with different areas of technologies and applied it to different industries. First 8 years of my career were in Telecom and IT companies, where I could practice most of what I learned at University in real life. I'd call that the technical and methodological part of my career. Then, in 2007 I had the opportunity to start an Infrastructure Management position in beverage industry (Coca-Cola and AB-Inbev). I gradually grew in scope and took larger challenges in that industry for 10 years and in 3 countries. There I had the opportunity to exploit my technical knowledge, double down on methodologies, incorporate Lean to my repertoire and focus a lot on technology transformation, service improvement and cost optimization, but also open another, probably the most important chapter of my development, exploring relationship and team management.
In 2018, after a long period focused on IT Infra and Operations, I made a move to another country and another industry to lead the EMEA Enterprise and Infrastructure Services at Whirlpool Corporation. That gave me the opportunity to reconnect with Application management, discover another language and culture and connect with my ancestry in that country. During 4 years I explored how to reconnect with business processes and use my responsibility on Ops and Services to influence the company systems landscape in the region and lat
Has it always been your vision to reach the position you’re at? Was your current role part of your vision to become a tech leader?
The role yes. I've always aspired to solve bigger problems, take larger responsibilities and CIO is a destination role when you love technology and have these aspirations. The transition from Whirlpool to Amplifon though, was really not in my plans, as I've committed to a house (our first) and provide some stability to my family on our return to the USA in 2020, after having lived in 4 countries (Brazil, USA, Belgium and Italy) the previous 6 years. Then one of those defining moments happen and I crossed with an opportunity too good to let pass in multiple angles: first, reconnect with a former leader and mentor that was defining in my career and personal growth, second, opportunity to lead that company's IT as a whole for the Americas Region and third, connecting to a purpose higher than any one I've worked before: helping returning the emotions of sound for our customers and their families.
Have you had a role model or mentor that has helped you on your journey?
I've had the opportunity to work with people from multiple nationalities and backgrounds. Even if not with that official title I've been mentored and learned from a lot of great individuals. The learning changed through time and with experience as well as I mentioned on my trajectory. Right out of university, I wanted to be as good as I could on technical matters, then I quickly learned technology alone doesn't make that much of a difference, so I focused on connecting with individuals that could help me develop my business acumen, process and thinking frameworks. That learning focus in the next 10 years was much more on methodology, stakeholder management and leadership. More recently I'm focusing more on driving transformation and creating safety for collaboration, key aspect of building high-performance teams, mentored by our Region President Alessandro Bonacina and Andrea Ciccolini, our Global CIO.
How do you see the role of the technology leader evolving over the next 5 years?
There is a lot of hype and buzz around Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and how technologies will continue disrupting ways of working and engagement. So much so that the latest conversations have been on how technology will start to disrupt technology jobs next.
I'm a firm believer that the best employment of technology is to make human lives better. The obvious part is to reduce manual work, optimize and democratize data, and support real-time better decision-making.
The less obvious part, in which I believe the technology leader role needs to be more decisive is to resolve complex problems, we may need to employ (or even tolerate, if some exponential trend hits you mid-way through your roadmap) multiple types of technology together, which may cause unintended consequences.
That requires tech leaders to evolve from team builders and program managers into 'nexialists', who will drive value by embracing diversity in all it's forms, connect different contexts and continuously reassess scenarios, to mitigate risks and drive the intended results. For that to happen, we will need to get closer to multiple stakeholders and help them identify the right opportunities and the right ways to drive enhancement or transformation.
What skills do you think leaders of the future will need in order to thrive?
With the advancement of remote work, thanks to technology and the pandemic, some aspects of human engagement have become even more evident than before. Communication and collaboration are changing dramatically, and the leaders of the future will be the ones able to keep teams together, concise and motivated through geographically distributed setups. In short, it means being able to convey a vision, structure successful remote ways of working, and create a safe intra- and inter-function environment where everyone can have space to challenge and be challenged.
How do you keep current with new skills, technologies and personal development?
I never truly stopped learning and studying. I believe it is important to formally and informally keep your mind busy and learn new frameworks and ways of engaging to become more effective as a human being and a problem solver in communitary environments. I'm an incorrigible curious and I try to be an early adopter of technologies on a personal basis. On the formal side, I average 1 formal education step every 5 years in my career. I didn't have the discipline to read as much as I wanted, so I started listening to around 20 books per year since 2020. I look for podcasts and seminars that go over topics of interest in technology and human relations. Investing in training your organization and incentivizing them to also study and share their findings with me and the broader team is a very effective way to stay tuned on what is going on around.
What do you see as the next leap in technology that will impact your business or industry in particular?
I've been in the technology industry enough to learn that not necessarily the latest shiny disruptive technology (currently AI trained in large text databases - ChastGPT/GPT3/LaMDA/Bard) will be the one really causing a leap. What I focus on is what technology that has reached enough maturity can develop areas still not explored enough. In hearing care, for instance, we are heavily investing in IoT and video collaboration solutions to allow remote testing and care for patients with limited mobility or in areas underserved from a clinic perspective, which improves care for patients and allows the company to be more efficient.
"Take care of your physical and mental health, learn and connect to other people."
If you were mentoring a leader of the future, what advice or guidance would you give to help them on their way?
Take care of your physical and mental health, learn and connect to other people. The next business and leadership opportunities will be more available for those who can make good use of technologies for solving unexplored social and business problems.
Is there anything in particular that you would still like to achieve in your career or what is the next step on your journey?
I always like to test limits. Being able to solve bigger problems and help more people has always been my motivational fuel. I currently feel very engaged and see a large space for personal and company growth at Amplifon and in my current role. My current goal is to develop my team the best I can and implement our solutions to give the best hearing care treatment we can for patients across the Americas. I trust that through that journey, new challenges will appear to keep me busy and motivated.
If you could change one thing in the world, what would it be?
The expression that says the "The Future is Already Here, it's Just Not Very Evenly Distributed.” has never been more true. At the same time we've never been so aware of human rights, access to food, health and basic education inequalities. My dream is that some of the technologies we see emerging can help minimize these inequalities and create conditions for small communities and economies to thrive with dignity.
A big thank you to Fabio Rosa from Amplifon Americas for sharing his journey to date.
If you would like to gain more perspective from Tech Leaders and CIOs you can read some of our other interviews here.
