Hobson Leavy is pleased to announce Andrea Black has been appointed as the agritech and herd improvement cooperative’s new Chief Information Officer.
Andrea will join LIC from Genesis Energy, where she is currently GM Digital Solutions, leading a team of 60. She is also a key member of the technology leadership team for the wider Genesis group.
Prior to this she worked at Gen-I, part of Spark NZ, with companies including Westpac and Fonterra. Andrea also has a background in agri, having worked at PGG Wrightson’s for 8 years.
Chief executive Wayne McNee says the hire of Andrea comes at a pivotal time for the co-operative and will help LIC to accelerate its digital transformation.
“The next phase of our digital journey is to take full advantage of big data and serve up real-time insights for our customers to drive on-farm profitability, sustainability and productivity.
“Andrea will bring strong technology leadership background as well as a depth of technical excellence that will drive this work and add significant value to LIC, our staff and our customers.”
LIC has one of the country’s largest in-house technology teams at 110 people. The team works to enable better digital systems for New Zealand farmers to help them make informed decisions and drive the next wave of productivity gains.
Andrea, who lives in the Waikato and was brought up on a dry stock farm in Taranaki, says she was attracted to LIC as modern co-operative which has taken a progressive approach to technology.
“LIC stood out as a company that has embraced new technologies and platforms with laser sharp focus on becoming more agile and extracting value for its farmer shareholders.
“I look forward to getting back to my roots in agriculture and working with LIC’s digital team on this next exciting chapter in its transformation.”
Andrea will join the LIC team on 6 January 2020. Peter Boyle will continue to act as CIO until this time.
You can learn more here.
