Bernardo Rodriguez, Chief Digital and Technology Officer at J.D. Power, was recognized today as the “U.S. Chief Digital Officer of the Year 2021” by the CDO Club, the world’s largest community of C-suite digital, data, and technology leaders.

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Mr. Rodriguez received the award after his panel presentation on “Practical Digital and Data Transformation: Lessons Across Industries” at the 2nd annual Alation Global CDO Summit on Wednesday, March 2, 2022 from David Mathison, CEO of the CDO Club and CDO Summit, and Brandon Paski, Senior Digital Event Producer for Alation.

Bernardo was originally hired by J.D. Power as Chief Digital Officer in 2017 to lead the Consumer, Brand Licensing, and CX Solutions divisions, and the Marketing, Technology, Data Science and Innovation groups.

In 2019, Bernardo added the “Technology” title, and his additional responsibilities include advancing J.D. Power’s digital and AI transformation and leading the company’s Technology, Artificial Intelligence, Research, Innovation and CX Solutions divisions.

In addition to J.D. Power, Bernardo is a Member of the Board of Directors of Nextier Oilfield Solutions (NEX), a public company that supports the US Oil Industry with leading Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) performance.

“The CDO Club brings together many senior executives that have contributed to the digital transformations of large companies across the world, so I am honored to receive this award. These transformations require a multidisciplinary approach that combines technology, data analytics, and product development; partnerships with business units, finance, and HR; that ultimately drive changes in culture and employee behavior. My gratitude goes to all the teams with whom I have shared these journeys over the years,” said Bernardo Rodriguez.

“Bernardo has spent 25+ years successfully driving digital strategy and enterprise transformation at start-ups, F500s, and global consultants alike. He has a relentless customer focus, is a talent magnet who excels at building high performance teams, and is disciplined around delivery and execution. He is a serial entrepreneur who founded, grew to profitability, and sold two Internet startups. He has also been a valuable contributor to his C-suite peers and our community. Therefore, I am delighted to recognize Bernardo as the U.S. Chief Digital Officer of the Year for 2021,” said David Mathison, CEO of the CDO Club.

Prior to J.D. Power, he was Managing Director of Strategy at Huge from 2016-2017, a full-service agency with offices in 12 cities and 1,500 employees, partnering with Fortune 100 companies on Experience Strategy, Enterprise Transformation, and Innovation.

From 2015-2016 Bernardo was Managing Director of Digital Strategy at Accenture, where he led the North American Digital Strategy practice for Telecommunications, Media and Technology. This was his second term at Accenture, having been Senior Manager at Accenture’s Internet and New Media group in Palo Alto, CA from 1995-2000.

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As Chief Digital Officer at Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions from 2010-2015, he led Digital Transformation rooted in customer centricity and experience design, with Technology, Digital Media, Kaplan Publishing, Learning Science, Data Science and Innovation reporting to him.

Prior to Kaplan, Bernardo built and successfully sold two startups. From 2006-2010, he was Founder and CEO at Mixsic, a company that built multimedia communities for record labels, TV networks, and newspapers. Mixsic also built Feedtrace, a filtering engine for real-time content launched in Q1 2010. Feedtrace was acquired by RollUp Media in 2011. From 2000-2006, he was Co-founder and COO at ProcuraDigital, which was acquired by Grupo Santander in 2003.

From 1992-1995, Bernardo was a Scientist at the Forecast Systems Laboratory at the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and Co-founder of the Supercomputer Center at NOAA’s Forecast Systems Laboratory, where he conducted research on geophysical modeling, the scalability of massively parallel multiprocessors, and development of scalable libraries for the execution of physical simulation models.

Bernardo holds an MS and PhD in Computer Engineering from the University of Colorado Boulder.

Previous U.S. Chief Digital Officer of the Year award winners include Atif Rafiq, President, Commercial & Growth for MGM Resorts International (2019), Fred Santarpia, Chief Digital Officer at Condé Nast (2018); Thomas Hjelm, Chief Digital Officer at NPR (2017); Linda Boff, Chief Marketing Officer at GE (2016); Adam Brotman, Chief Digital Officer at Starbucks Coffee Company (2015); Rachael S. Haot, Chief Digital Officer of New York City and New York State (2014); and Teddy Goff, Digital Director at Obama for America (2013).

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