Darren
Shaffer

Darren draws upon decades of senior technology leadership experience to drive operational excellence and deliver innovation. He quickly discerns critical challenges and identifies scalable, high-performing solutions. He has broad industry experience including financial services, enterprise software, energy, field service, transportation logistics, supply chain, retail, and digital media. His design and delivery of enterprise and custom software, mobile applications, and cloud environments allows companies to differentiate with bespoke solutions and free themselves from increasing SaaS costs.  Darren optimally designs technology teams, skillfully recruits and leads information security, business intelligence, DevOps, and software engineering professionals. His passion for end-users, architecture, process automation, and analytics combine to fuel product development. He delivers cool, structured leadership in challenging, high-stakes environments including turnarounds and rescue missions for troubled systems. A recognized technology evangelist, Darren inspires executive teams to embrace business transformation and emerging technologies.

As a CTO, Darren has designed and led complex technology divisions that include the CIO, CISO, and COO as direct reports. He balances vision, strategy, and execution to spur an ever-increasing rate of change across the enterprise. His approach to problem solving is rooted in an engineering and software development mindset. Darren has been recruited to salvage failing implementations, redesign applications, refresh the IT team, review vendor contracts, perform due diligence on software technology, and rejuvenate corporate culture. New, often bespoke, solutions created under his leadership are integral to digital transformation initiatives. His priority on process, methodology, and metrics results in stronger operations and improved financial performance. Darren has experience designing systems for decision support, forecasting, and risk management.

Darren attended the United States Military Academy, West Point and graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. He earned a Master of Science in Computer Engineering from the Air Force Institute of Technology, Wright Patterson AFB. Rising to the rank of Army Captain (Signal Officer), his service in the first Gulf War involved establishing secure wireless communications networks on the battlefield as he led units of up to 250 soldiers. Darren earned his jump wings at Army Airborne School and was awarded the Army Commendation Medal. Away from the desk, Darren enjoys hiking, mountain biking, hunting, and fly fishing.