Mark Schwartz

AWS Enterprise Strategist

"Maintain a game-changing vision but move towards it in small increments."

-- Mark Schwartz

Mark Schwartz, AWS Enterprise Strategist

Getting to know

Mark Schwartz, AWS Enterprise Strategist

Mark's AWS beginnings

Mark Schwartz joined AWS as an Enterprise Strategist and Evangelist in July 2017. In this role, Mark works with enterprise technology executives to share experiences and strategies for how the cloud can help them increase speed and agility while devoting more of their resources to their customers.

Mark's expertise

Mark has extensive experience as an IT leader in the government, private sector, and the nonprofit world, and with organizations ranging from startup to large. Prior to joining AWS, he was CIO of US Citizenship and Immigration Services (in the Department of Homeland Security), where he led a large digital transformation effort, moving the agency to the cloud, introducing and refining DevOps and Agile techniques, and adopting user-centric design approaches. From his work at USCIS, he developed a reputation for leading transformation in organizations that are resistant to change, obsessed with security, subject to considerable regulation and oversight, and deeply bureaucratic. Before USCIS, Mark was CIO of Intrax Cultural Exchange, a leader in global youth exchange programs, and CEO of a software company.

Mark's publications

Mark is the author of The Art of Business ValueA Seat at the Table: IT Leadership in the Age of Agility, War, Peace and IT, The Delicate Art of Bureaucracy, and Adaptive Ethics for Digital Transformation. Mark speaks at conferences internationally on such subjects as DevOps, Leading Change, Driving Innovation in IT, and Managing Agility in Bureaucratic Organizations. He has been recognized as a Computerworld Premier IT Leader and received awards for Leadership in Technology Innovation, the Federal 100 IT Leaders, and a CIO Magazine 100 award. Mark has both a BS and MA degree from Yale University, and an MBA from Wharton.

Mark's career

  • CIO, US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS)
  • CIO, Intrax Cultural Exchange
  • CEO, Auctiva Corporation
  • Board Member, DigitalTown
  • MBA, Wharton
  • BS, Computer Science, Yale
  • MA, Philosophy, Yale
  • CIO Magazine CIO 100 award
  • Computerworld Premier 100 award
  • Computerworld Elite 100 award
  • Federal Computer Week Fed 100 award
  • Leadership in Technology Innovation award
  • Overcoming the Business-IT divide
  • Understanding and delivering business value
  • Dealing with bureaucracy
  • Business risk and information security
  • Using DevOps and the cloud to transform organizations
  • Public sector, private sector, and nonprofits

Blogs

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  • Blog

    The Agile Enterprise

    Assume with me that the digital world is a world of fast change. Organizations need to excel at responding quickly to those changes—that’s what we call agility or nimbleness. When it comes to technology, we have well-understood ways of increasing agility and making technology delivery processes lean. Organizations worldwide and in all industries are moving to the cloud, adopting agile and DevOps approaches, using flexible software architectures based on microservices, and retiring technical debt that has slowed them down.

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  • Blog

    AI and Collaboration: A Human Angle

    I wonder if we’re overlooking an important implication of AI and generative AI for the future of the enterprise. If, as seems to be the case, many employees will use generative AI applications to assist them and interactively support their work, then a new style of work is emerging. Success for an employee will mean making the most of the AI tools with which they collaborate. We will want to hire employees who are especially good at working interactively with AI (remember how the ability to use word processors and spreadsheet applications were qualifications for a job in the old days?). We will design employee roles to maximize the benefit of collaboration with AI tools. Remote work and the gig economy have already dramatically changed the nature of work; generative AI is another potential disruption on the horizon.

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  • Blog

    Transformation and AI

    We’ve all been busily transforming for the last few years. Now there’s this big AI thing. How does it relate to the rest of our transformation? Should we be changing or rethinking our transformation plans?

    The easy answer is no, but there are some subtleties. We transform to increase our agility in the face of change, and we accept that the future will see major changes and disruptions. The sudden attention demanded by AI is just a vindication of that belief. You can even test yourself: can your company respond quickly and effectively to the sudden, disruptive intrusion AI represents? If so, you may be further along in your transformation than you thought. As we’ve always said, responding appropriately requires setting up nimble governance processes, an ability to experiment, a culture of innovation, and automation of the good practices, security, and resilience you require.

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  • Blog

    Measuring Success: A Paradox and a Plan

    You’ve taken your company in a new direction; the impact is a 10% growth in year-on-year revenue. Your new marketing program has increased leads by 5%. Your telecom costs have decreased by 5% because of your successful negotiations. Measuring results is an important part of our business lives. But measurements are meaningless without context, and adequate context can be hard to come by.

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  • Blog

    What Will Generative AI Mean for Your Business?

    It won’t surprise you to hear that there’s been lots of excitement and speculation about generative AI in our meetings with AWS customer executives lately. The question on their minds is: “What does this mean for my business?” That’s a good way to frame the question; it’s not about what generative AI can do, but what it can do for your business. And the seeds of the answer are there in that framing as well. How generative AI will affect your business depends on how you and your competitors will use it to innovate new business models and derive new competitive advantages. It’s not about what the technology itself does—exciting as that is—but about how you will combine it with other technologies, your people’s skills, your values and competencies, and your distinctive vision.

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  • Blog

    Seven-step roadmap for CEOs and CFOs who are embarking on sustainability reporting journeys

    By Mark Schwartz, Hari Venkata, and John Roberts

    The Security and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) new rule on Sustainability reporting requires listed companies to disclose detailed information on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, climate-related risks that are reasonably likely to have a material impact on their business, and transition plans to achieve net-zero targets. If passed with an effective date in December 2022, these new climate reporting requirements would be phased in from fiscal year 2023 to fiscal year 2027.

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See more of Mark's blogs or read his personal blog »

Books

Adaptive Ethics for Digital Transformation

This book describes what changes with digital transformation and how executives can frame their ethical choices and use them as a way to succeed in the digital economy.

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Book by Mark Schwartz Adaptive Ethics for Digital Transformation

The Delicate Art of Bureaucracy

This perspective reveals a new (empowering) model for the often soul-shattering, frustrating, Kafkaesque nightmare we call bureaucracy.

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Book by Mark Schwartz The Delicate Art of Bureaucracy

War and Peace and IT

Find out why and how executives and business leaders must create a shared strategy with their IT organizations to drive innovation, enhance their competitive positioning, increase revenue, and delight customers.

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Book by Mark Schwartz War and Peace and IT

A Seat at the Table: IT Leadership in the Age of Agility

Examine the role of IT leadership as it is now and as it should be―an integral part of the value creation engine.

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Book by Mark Schwartz A Seat at the Table: IT Leadership in the Age of Agility

Content

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  • ebook

    An Executive View of Lean and Agile IT for CFOs

    by Mark Schwartz, Enterprise Strategist, AWS

    As the CFO's role continues to expand, new approaches to technology are becoming critical to delivering business value. Mark Schwartz, Enterprise Strategist at AWS, explains why Agile, Lean, and DevOps practices could very well be the best thing that has happened to CFOs since the invention of the spreadsheet, helping them to increase returns, oversee investments, implement controls, gain transparency, and more.

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  • ebook

    Humility

    by Mark Schwartz, Enterprise Strategist, AWS

    In the digital world, we are willing to be surprised and to learn. In the old days, we relied on a plan, prepared in advance, to guide our activities. But in a world dominated by uncertainty, in a world in which none of us knows all there is to know about our customers or about what will change in our competitive or regulatory environment, how can someone presume to develop a plan that will deliver business value? AWS Enterprise Strategist Mark Schwartz shares his thoughts on why humility is the essence of digital transformation.

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  • ebook

    Driving Change From the Top Down

    by Mark Schwartz, Enterprise Strategist, AWS

    When it comes to digital transformation, every enterprise is different. There is often a change agent with a vision, a knowledge of good practices, a sense of urgency, and the energy to battle impediments. The change agent may be anywhere in the organizational structure: high, low, or—in a typical scenario—somewhere in middle management. AWS Enterprise Strategist Mark Schwartz discusses why change that is driven from the top of the organization is a particular type of change requiring a particular approach.

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