Temple University’s Institute for Business and Information Technology (IBIT) honored three accomplished digital leaders at its 22nd Annual Information Technology Awards.
The awards event, held Wednesday, May 1, 2024, in Philadelphia, brought together an elite group of tech leaders, innovators and disruptors for an engaging evening of celebration amongst the IBIT community. Dean Chip Hunter started the program by welcoming the participants. The rest of the evening spotlighted the honorees who shared their expertise and vision.
Jeff Hamilton, Chief Information Officer, Teva Pharmaceuticals received the 2024 Information Technology Leader Award. Hamilton is responsible for technology systems and infrastructure in 60 countries and 50 plants at Teva. Previously, Hamilton was Senior Vice President, Pfizer Digital with responsibility for manufacturing, supply chain and finance systems. He directed Pfizer’s digital efforts to rapidly scale COVID-19 vaccine production and distribution of billions of doses to more than 170 countries.
Chris Wink, cofounder and CEO of Technical.ly, received the 2024 Information Technology Innovator Award. Wink, a journalist and entrepreneur, co-founded Technical.ly, a news and community resource for technologists and entrepreneurs. Wink is the lead organizer of Philly Tech Week and in 2022, he was named one of Pennsylvania’s most influential impact leaders, and in 2017 Folio magazine named him one of the 100 most innovative media leaders in the country.
Fran Geatens, Vice President, Technology Infrastructure, Operations, and Experience, Merck received the 2024 Information Technology Award for Distinguished Alumni. Geatens is responsible for managing Merck’s worldwide technology infrastructure and business applications. He led Merck’s accelerated cloud transformation that is enabling new ways of working. Geatens is a graduate of Temple University’s Fox School of Business.
This year’s group of honorees are truly exceptional and we are proud to recognize them as digital innovation leaders.
Munir Mandviwalla, Executive Director
A sub-committee of the IBIT advisory board including George Llado (committee chair), Sondra Barbour, Michael Bradshaw, Andrea Stewart, and Bruce Fadem (board chair) identified nominees for the 2024 awards from a list of 62 candidates. These nominations were submitted to and approved by the entire board. Fadem, Barbour, and Llado also introduced each award recipient at the event.
The impact of the 2024 awards was rated highly on IBIT’s new Impact Model with an average score of 5.94 on a scale from 1 to 7 with 7 being the highest rating. The highest rating of 6.43 was for the value of participating in the activity, while the lowest rating of 4.92 was for contributing to the success of the activity. The following is a sample of comments included in the above responses.
It was even better than the last year. I loved it.
Student Participant
Great to see the strides the program has made and industry connections to strengthen IBIT’s place in the market.
Industry Participant
The event was the best so far. Excellent choice of venue, everything was very professionally run.
Industry Participant
For more about the IT awards and honorees, visit https://ibit.temple.edu/itawards/. To see the event pictures, click here.
For more details about the impact assessment, visit: https://ibit.temple.edu/impact
Contact us at ibit@temple.edu.
