Biography

I currently run a boutique IT effectiveness consulting company called K. Morrow Associates. My company assists enterprise organizations with diagnosing their e-Commerce or IT capability gaps and create new IT strategies to close those gaps, modernize their IT capabilities and improve financial performance.

Before starting my consulting company I was a Senior Vice President and the Chief Information Officer for Blockbuster, Inc. based in Dallas, Texas. While in this role I bore two major areas of responsibility: One was leading a major turnaround in the financial performance of the Blockbuster.com DVD-by-mail business segment; the other was leading the company’s enterprise technology capabilities, which included building out the SOA architecture and API development required to power Blockbuster’s in-home and mobile content strategies.

Prior to Blockbuster, I was a Senior Vice President and the Chief Information Officer for 7-Eleven, Inc. for six years. During my tenure at 7-Eleven I led the modernization of the 7-Eleven Retail Information System (RIS), including the addition of their in-store retail mobility platform. This system includes handheld scanner and hardened tablet PCs.  RIS helps continuously improve 7-Eleven’s in-store process execution, is relied upon to tailor the store-by-store product assortment and drive same store sales growth across the company’s 6,000 stores in the United States and Canada.

In 2004 I was appointed by Governor of Texas Rick Perry to serve on the Texas Department of Information Resources board of directors. I have been re-appointed to this post in 2005 and again in 2011.  In this capacity I provide ongoing advice and governance assistance on key initiatives the agency undertakes; this currently includes remediation of a multi-year state data center consolidation program.  The DIR strategy includes five key pillars which I passionately believe in: Reduce Government Costs, Drive Effective Technology Contracting, Leverage Shared Technology Operations, Promote Innovative Use of Technology that Adds Value and Protect Technology and Information Assets.

Prior to my years as CIO with Blockbuster and 7-Eleven I was the Senior Vice President of e-Commerce at Associates First Capital Corporation (now Citigroup).  During my tenure with AFCC and Citi my teams established the company’s first internet mortgage lending e-Commerce operation, www.theassociates.com, the first broker-based home equity web-based lending operation, www.yesbroker.com, and the first mortgage broker processing website, www.yesbanker.com. 

I began my career at ADP and held a number of senior-level management positions over my 15 year tenure, including the areas of operations management, customer support, consulting, software implementation, network management and general management.  ADP is one of the nation’s largest human resources and payroll services companies, although my time there was spent in the Dealer Services Division which serves the transportation industry.

I earned my Bachelor of Arts and Sciences degree in Business Management and my Master of Business Administration with an emphasis in e-Commerce from Dallas Baptist University.

Recognition of my team’s efforts include Executive Technology Top 10 Retail CIOs in 2002, CIO magazine’s Top 100 2003, 2004 and 2005, SIM International IT Executive of the Year in 2003, Infoworld Top 100 IT Visionaries of 2003 and Computerworld Premier 100 IT Leaders in 2004. In 2008 I was inducted into CIO Magazine’s CIO Hall of Fame.