CxO of the Week: Jacob A Thomas, Chief Technology Officer (CTO), Athenta Technologies

CxO of the Week: Jacob A Thomas has 15 years of experience in managing projects, taking them from concept to completion. Jacob has been successfully gathering project requirements, defining business and technical requirements based on the project for Athenta.

What is your top priority while making decisions to improve tech infra in your organization?

The technology adaption should translate to productive outcomes and milestone achieving factor and should be understood and adopted by everyone.

Challenges you face in driving digital transformation?

Primarily, one can sense resistance for change, lack of clear vision for transformation, using irregular and inflexible development processes and technologies, resource availability and leadership thoughts. Businesses are unprepared or underprepared and far from getting prepared to embrace this transformation unless there is well-thought-of planning and execution in place.

A careful consideration of components like a strategic roadmap, data-driven innovation, scalable architecture, integrated systems, defined audiences and unified experiences is an essential digital transformation journey.

Do you feel that freshers in the industry come with only basic knowledge but don’t have the right skills to fulfill job requirements? If yes, your suggestion to students and colleges?

Yes, theoretically speaking, freshers bring in a lot of energetic ideas and skills, but "The Real World" demands and requires practical thoughts with actions to accomplish things leading to success.

The balance has to be maintained in-between understanding and delivering while adhering to the timelines. The mentor defines the path for fresher’s journey and an overall goal setting.

What’s your mantra to become successful in life?

Patience is the key driving factor in achieving success.

Targeting one problem at a time and moving on to the next always delivers the systematic outcome. Besides this, one needs to Fail forward to a successful life.

What would you like to give back to society?

Working for underprivileged children, contributing to a better life by helping in Food and Education.

Your favorite book and what are you reading now?

My favorite book, “I Can Only Imagine by Bart Millard” and currently, I’m reading 'Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari'.

What do you enjoy doing in your spare time?

Reading books, playing the piano and gardening keeps me busy in my spare time.

Achievements (Awards & Recognitions)

Volunteer Developer in Open Source Communities.
Recognized Member for Advanced Security Protection and Developments in XDA.

Experience

15+ Years in Technology & Operations.
Open Source Developer.
Part-time Security and Forensics Expert.
A strategic professional with experience in managing projects from concept to completion. Skilled in demonstrating good communication skills, adapting to situations and critical decision making based on situational awareness, transformational leadership skills to work independently, create and present effective presentations and outcomes.

First Job - Engineer at Police Training School, Pachmarhi, M.P.

Education - Certifications in BSC-IT, MCSE, MCDBA, LPT, CEH.

Take a look at the previous CxO