Interview with Mark Minehart, the US-based CTO: professional background, motivation for a new role, trendy technologies for 2023

Tell us about your previous experience and professional background

I have a business degree but have been in technology roles all my career. This has provided me with a well-rounded perspective on applying technology to business problems. I started my career over 25 years ago as a software engineer and really enjoyed the challenges of designing and delivering software for users. I moved into engineering leadership early in my career and find building healthy team cultures delivering software is what I enjoy most. I’ve led engineering organizations in the financial services, global real estate, healthcare big data, legal tech, human resources tech, and automotive industries. I have also coached early startups in sports media and mobile healthcare engagement to help them build founding engineering teams, introduce agile practices, and build early MVP products.

What motivated you to join EffectiveSoft in your new role?

The opportunity to help EffectiveSoft expand globally in this key leadership role is what attracted me initially. After meeting the team, it became clear there is a great culture fit for me here, and that was all the motivation I needed to be certain. It’s a great company and a fantastic opportunity for me to leverage the experience I have gained over my career.

What are the day-to-day responsibilities for the CTO role in a company?

This is a broad question, and it largely depends on the organization. At the highest level, a CTO is responsible for the technology needs and research and development functions of the business. At EffectiveSoft, our product is our talent providing R&D services for our customers. I will be directly focused on building and leading the expansion of our delivery teams and approaches in North and South America. I have worked in these markets with delivery partners as the client for a long time and it will be great to lead from the partner side of the relationship going forward.

Which technologies do you consider as the most promising?

I love this question. One of the most promising areas I see today is in the rapidly growing Climate Tech space. There are so many problems to solve in Climate Tech and we are early days in leveraging technology to address them. The recent global acceleration of funding in these areas will have a profound impact on our abilities to attack climate problems. A few areas I find most interesting are in carbon management technologies, green building management tech, and technologies to address circular economy challenges such as reverse logistics platforms. There is a clear data spin in everything climate related and much of my background has been data tech focused.

Healthcare tech that seeks to provide revolutionary healthcare outcomes for patients will hold nearly unlimited promise for decades to come. One of the most rewarding jobs in my career had the mission to “Improve healthcare for everyone.” We were leveraging petabytes of patient data to generate analytics used to help providers understand care gaps for their patients. The outcomes were real, and we made a difference. There are countless applications for technology in healthcare and many of them haven’t even been imagined yet.

Do you still code?

It’s been a while since I have been in a hands-on coding role but I do dabble a bit in the data space.

So now, regarding the position at EffectiveSoft, what milestones do you look forward to as a CTO?

We have aggressive growth goals for the company, and we are investing in the team and scale tactics to enable this growth. There is a strong foundation from all the great work the team has accomplished over the past two decades. I’m most looking forward to building on this foundation and working with the team to put the additional talent and systems in place to exceed these goals.

Looking ahead to 2023, what excites you the most?

I’m most looking forward to helping lead the rollout of our delivery teams into Latin America in 2023. The talent in the region is top notch and the people and culture are incredible.

What motivates you in life and work?

Growing personally through new and interesting experiences and surrounding myself with great people is what motivates me in both life and work.