Senior Vice President & Chief Information Officer, Upbound
Search every verified Michael Santimaw interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Michael Santimaw, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer at Upbound, has spoken about leadership and technology strategy in past appearances. In a 2022 podcast, he discussed the concept of self-permission, describing a pattern he observed while coaching where individuals sought external validation to pursue goals. He encouraged listeners to consider what permission they might need to give themselves in areas such as relationships, personal identity, or new endeavors. In a 2020 interview, Santimaw, then SVP and CIO at Rent-A-Center, described his approach to the CIO role as being a "chief integration officer" focused on building relationships across the organization. He stated that the company had simplified its IT architectures by moving to cloud and platform-as-a-service models)Skip, and that its data strategy centered on protecting customer data while providing personalized experiences. Santimaw also noted that the company was experimenting with AI tools for backend automation and self-healing infrastructure, and that its stores functioned with associates acting as customer relationship managers. He emphasized empowering teams and putting security at the core of technologies.
“When I coached people, I don't really coach people anymore but when I did, there was a pretty familiar pattern to the first 30 days.”
“All I'm doing here is giving you the permission that you're asking for, to say, 'It's okay, you should think about that. You should go for it.'”
“So I'm wondering as a question to start today off for you, what permission do you need to give yourself?”
“It might be permission to be a certain type of person in a relationship, amplify it or bring it to an end or change it or renegotiate it in some ways.”
“It might be permission to re-see yourself in a new light, as a new person, to reimagine who you are and what might be possible for you.”
“What permission are you seeking to give yourself? Take a moment, and hit the 'subscribe' button.”
“Being a chief information officer is really about being a chief integration officer. It's about building relationships across the organization and becoming one with the business to ensure we're all marching down the same plan as one cohesive unit.”
“At Rent-A-Center, our stores are not just sales points; our associates are customer relationship managers who deeply understand the customers' lives and challenges, helping them with flexible payment plans and support.”
“We are seeing customers move from just renting goods to wanting ownership and upgrading to the latest technology, similar to how people upgrade their smartphones regularly.”
“We put security at the core of all our technologies and partner with industry-leading security companies to build and scale security operations that are expensive to develop in-house.”
“Our IT team is about 300 strong, including strategic partners and internal employees, covering every discipline from security to DevOps, enabling us to respond effectively to any business need.”
“We have flipped the traditional technology delivery model by empowering business teams to alter experiences through configurable platforms, putting the power in their hands to innovate quickly.”
“Our data strategy focuses on protecting customer data and using it to provide personalized experiences throughout the customer journey, making Rent-A-Center a more data-driven company.”
“We have simplified our IT architectures by moving to cloud and platform-as-a-service models, enabling us to respond quickly with flexible, self-healing environments and experiment with new technologies.”
“We are early in our AI operations journey, experimenting with tools that automate backend operations and enable self-healing infrastructure, which helps us deliver better service without constant manual intervention.”
Are you waiting for permission to do 'the thing?' Well, here it is! Go, do the thing! For more personal development, coaching, and ...
Mike Santimaw, SVP and CIO at Rent-A-Center, joins Maryfran Johnson for this CIO Leadership Live interview. Watch as they ...
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