Administrative and Support Services
Consumer Services
Holding Companies
Hospitals and Health Care
Manufacturing
Professional Services
Retail
Technology, Information and Media
Transportation, Logistics, Supply Chain and Storage
Wholesale
Available

Germán Rivera R.

CIO · CTO · Head of IT · Enterprise Architect · Board Advisor | Retail · e-Commerce · Manufacturing

About Me

• Senior technology executive skilled in delivering transformative solutions by leveraging emerging technologies, accelerating digital capabilities, and modernizing legacy systems to exceed company goals. Expert in optimizing and automating processes that elevate business performance, strengthen employee engagement, and enhance the organization’s ability to deliver customer value. • Strategic visionary who partners with executive teams to shape high-impact initiatives with their implementation roadmap and enabling technology frameworks. Actively contributes to board-level decision-making to ensure alignment while leading multiple concurrent initiatives and driving digital transformation through advanced technologies and the deployment of robust cybersecurity solutions. • Servant leader committed to developing IT talent and high-performance teams by fostering a culture of mentorship within a diverse workplace—driving sustained employee engagement across the organization. Experienced in leading large, globally distributed teams and orchestrating multicultural, cross-functional collaboration to deliver complex initiatives with strategic impact.

Jurisdiction

Mexico | United States | Canada | Spain | Italy | France

Notable Employer

  • CIO, CTO, Head of IT at Elektra Stores (Grupo Salinas)
  • Head of IT Strategic Services at Walmart

Experience

Seniority LevelExecutive
Years of Experience20+ years
Current StatusActive
Head of Technology, Chief Information OfficerAleatica
2022 - 2025

Recruited to direct the homologation, standardization, and governance of all IT activities across 7 countries in Europe and Latin America, enabling Aleatica to operate as a true multinational and drive both local and global transformational initiatives. • Defined and executed a 5-year global IT strategy, driving cloud adoption for customer-facing operations and core business processes to accelerate value delivery for customers and stakeholders. Increased value extraction from SAP. Deployed a global telecom network to securely manage data exchange among business units and corporate sites. • Led the deployment of a federated global IT Organization, enhancing IT skills and capabilities across corporate areas and business units. • Rolled out a global, full-cloud-based Business Intelligence (BI), Data-lake and Datawarehouse platform to extract and exploit data from all business units, and to enable the adoption of new technologies like artificial intelligence. • Defined and steered an artificial intelligence strategy with its roadmap and initiatives portfolio, focusing on two axes: operational wins (revenue and cost savings) and employee wins (productivity and risk management) • Led Aleatica to achieve full cybersecurity compliance by strengthening its global cybersecurity and information security capabilities through a proprietary framework aligned with NIST (USA), the NIS2 Directive (EU), GDPR (EU data protection), ENS (Spain), and ISO/IEC 27001. Rolled out a 24x7 Incident & Response global scheme to address cybersecurity incidents.

Chief Technology and Information Officer, Technology Advisor to the BoardGrupo Reina Madre
2021 - Present

Recruited to define and lead the Digital Transformation Program intended to modernize the technology landscape, thus delivering a dazzling omnichannel customer experience, and transforming Grupo Reina Madre into a Health-Tech company. • Led the design and execution of the Digital & IT strategy: select & implement an ERP, Agile Enterprise transformation, Tech Modernization. • Currently, acting as the technology advisor to the board.

CIO, CTO, Head of ITNotableElektra Stores (Grupo Salinas)
2017 - 2020

Recruited to transform the tech platforms with the goal of delivering an exceptional omnichannel experience to customers, raising the pace of sales growth, and positioning Elektra as the leading omnichannel player in the Latin America retail sector. Elektra is the largest specialty retailer in Latin America. Responsible for the entire IT scope in Latin America: users, stores, supply chain and logistic, physical and digital customer contact channels, corporate areas, and the Mobile Virtual Network Operator business. — Led the IT activities for e-Commerce as the CTO. — Functional and technology Product Owner of the Point-of-Sale System. • Led the Business and Information Technology Digital Transformation Program. Cornerstone initiative: activated an Omnichannel Supply Chain that sets and enables delivery-to-customer models such as Click & Collect, Ship from Store, and Delivery to Home. • Designed and revamped the e-Commerce platforms (website / app / kiosks / Marketplace / DSV), thus propelling the growth of sales in digital channels. In 2018, elektra.com.mx was awarded as the best e-Commerce retail site in Mexico. • Defined and led the implementation of new Omnichannel Business Processes and the construction of its Technology Platforms like a new Omnichannel Point-of-Sale system integrated with the e-Commerce platforms, Data warehouse & Analytics. • Reduced the number of versions for the Point of Sale system used by the stores thus diminished the time needed for functional changes and its operational cost. • Coordinated and negotiated the deployment of functional improvements for the operation of the Point-of-Sale system in the stores in such a way that customers had a better shopping experience. • Directed the cultural shift of the IT team in order to: 1) strengthen their engagement, 2) acquire tech skills needed and, 3) administer the IT headcount growth. Reduced silos, de-layered the organization. The “Great Place to Work” award was obtained by 2018 & 2019.

Head of IT Strategic ServicesNotableWalmart
2013 - 2017

Recruited to lead, in a global role, the areas providing strategic IT services to all the countries in which Walmart operated, aiming to level up IT capabilities & services among these countries, save money, develop digital capabilities to hamper threats from competitors and turn around technology obsolescence. GTS Mexico Office was an extension of the USA IT Corporate Area Areas led: Strategic Planning, Enterprise Architecture, Project Management Office (PMO), Vendor Management Office (VMO), IT capabilities enhancement using IT best practices (ITIL), Maintenance & Support (DevOps) for systems and Apps • Collected and analyzed IT costs from all countries where Walmart operated (excluding the USA), this to leverage investments and IT capabilities among these countries and reduce their IT costs • Led the yearly process of defining/updating each country's IT Strategic Plan (excluding the USA), ensuring alignment with local & corporate Business & IT strategic goals, thus defining IT project portfolios, budgets, and governance KPIs. Deployed a Global PMO managing a Project Portfolio delivering value using Agile Methodologies • Launched global programs to save money: Applications Portfolio Rationalization sunsetting global / local legacy systems, the Tech Modernization for non-US countries leveraging global 3rd party IT services (e.g. – Telecom Carriers consolidation) • Drove initiatives to deploy new digital capabilities: global architectures for Big Data & Mobile Apps, matured the Enterprise Architecture & IT Best Practices (ITIL) capabilities among the Latin America countries and the GTS Mexico Office • Steered the annual update of the GTS Mx Office Strategic Plan and its execution: development of IT capabilities and skills, roll-out of Agile Methodologies, Product Management and Development Cells for systems assigned like the new global Point-of-Sale system

Education

Diploma of Technology InnovationStanford University Graduate School of Business
2020 - 2020
Diploma of Artificial IntelligenceKellogg School of Management
2020 - 2020
Diploma of Strategic PlanningAnahuac University
2014 - 2014
Masters of MBAIPADE Business School
2000 - 2002
Degree of Bachelor of Engineering - BE, Cybernetic and Computer SystemsLa Salle University
1991 - 1996

Skills

Core skills0
Languages3

Languages

English
Spanish
Portuguese