The CIO of The Year Award

The CIO of the Year Award gives recognition to the best-performing CIO of the year. The measured aspects entail IT performance, IT agility, and project performance/attractiveness. But not only the performance is essential. Like last year, the election will focus on leadership business and boardroom credibility.

Nominees

Alexander Zwart

CITO at Rabobank

Matthijs Zwart

CIO/CISO at Vitens

Laura Klaver

CIO at Thales Nederland

Kurt De Ruwe

CIO at AkzoNobel

The process

Process

The CIO of the Year Award 2025 is based on a well-founded criteria process. The process and criteria have been developed over more than twenty years together with The CIO Platform Nederland (CIO platform of top 100 organisations in NL), CIO Magazine, Digital Knowledge Institute and Research organizations: Boston Consulting Group, Squadra and Tech Terra Search.

Validation

The top nominees are chosen by the jury based on the results of the Digital Maturity Assessment that is be measured and ranked by the Boston Consulting Group. Then will be invited to fill in a questionnaire (online), specially put together for the CIO of the Year by Squadra and Tech Terra Search to get a picture of the Personal Profile, Competences, Leadership skills and style of the nominee. Personal validation checks are conducted by Squadra, Tech Terra Search and Boston Consulting Group. In addition, they are challenged by Professor Erik Beulen with a Research Assignment.

Jury Selection

A final jurymeeting with the nominees takes place in November. During this meeting, the nominees will be questioned about all the results (assessments, interviews and the research assignment). And last but not least Rob Beijleveld will conduct the validation checks with CEO, CFO, and/or COO of each top nominee on all the results . The CIO of the Year will be presented at CIODAY.

CIO of The Year Award Jury