Business Chief April 2019

EXECUTIVE PROFILE
Francois Estellon
As Chief Technology Officer for SGK, the brand solutions division of
Matthews International Corporation. Francois Estellon is responsible for
defining the vision of the role that technology plays in the development of
our products and services, for enhancing the delivery of our current and
future products and services with software solutions, and for leveraging the
data in our business to create more value for our clients.
Estellon sits on the Advisory Board for the special interest group on digital
transformation at Penn State called CODE (Consortium for the Digital
Enterprise), a research and advisory group focusing on Digital Trends within
Enterprise Computing. He is also a Board Member for the Pittsburgh
Technology Council. Estellon was twice named a Pittsburgh CIO of the Year
award finalist and a Top 100 Technology Leader by Computer World in 2016.
Prior to joining SGK, Francois Estellon worked for PwC Germany as
a Senior Consultant for a large company’s global ERP implementation.
Eventually, he started his own consulting firm which quickly grew into
a multi-million dollar operation across Germany, France, Canada and the
U.S. The company was sold in 2006 and Francois took a leadership role
in the newly formed global consulting footprint.
In 2008, Estellon joined Caterpillar Global Mining, a division of Caterpillar,
Inc. as Director for Global Application, and soon became Global CIO for the
$5 billion company. Moving forward in 2013, Estellon joined Gardner
Denver, a $2.5 billion private equity-owned engineering conglomerate.
As CIO for the company, he was responsible for the global IT footprint.
Gardner Denver successfully completed an IPO in early 2017.
Estellon studied industrial engineering at the Grenoble Institute of
Technology in France and received a master’s in supply chain and
manufacturing management from Linkoping University in Sweden.
Francois Estellon is a sought-after thought leader and speaker
by the technology industry and regularly publishes on
the topic of leadership in technology at: www.cio.com
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