About

Technology strategy starts with people and systems, not tools.

I'm Brian Greenberg: CIO at RHR International and a member of its Operating Committee, adjunct professor at DePaul University, and a Forbes Technology Council member.

I work with senior leaders and boards on the technology decisions that are hard to undo: security, data, risk, and the systems a business quietly depends on. The job, as I see it, is to make those decisions clear and defensible before events force the issue.

I've spent more than thirty years in the thick of it. Boardrooms and scrappy startups, server rooms in Chicago, expat assignments in Japan and Belgium, graduate study in Egypt and Indonesia. I've led digital transformations, built security programs from nothing, and stepped in as interim CIO or CTO for organizations in the middle of their worst year.

My master's degree is in Whole Systems Design and System Dynamics (Antioch University Seattle), which sounds abstract until you've watched a security program fail for organizational reasons rather than technical ones. Systems theory is how I actually think about cybersecurity, change, and technology decisions. Mostly it keeps me honest: the simple answer that accounts for people usually beats the clever one that doesn't.

Outside of work, you'll find me in an indie coffee house with a book, hiking the river trails, fussing over too many houseplants, or doing improv on a stage somewhere in Chicago. I tell stories. Occasionally I philosophize.