Professional Bio
Dr. Michael Carper (Mike) was the Global Head of Technology Operations for Rio Tinto, based in the Brisbane, Australia until September of 2021. He is an internationally recognized technology leader and quoted authority in areas of business alignment, security, asset management, and IT operational process improvement. He has 30 years of experience in the engineering and support of telecommunications and information technologies in the retail, healthcare, financial services, and telecommunications industries. He is the CEO/Owner of HRD Software, makers of Ham Radio Deluxe.
Mike has lead major global technology transformation projects. In one notable transformation, the company became one of the world's largest retailers that does not own/operate a data center. It is fully cloud-based and out-sourced (on-shore and off-shore). Every element of technology was replaced and moved to the cloud over a 12 month period of time. The SaaS and IaaS partners included - Capgemini, NetSuite (Finance/ERP, POS, Suite Commerce Advanced), JustEnough, UltiPro, MuleSoft, Microsoft Office 365, JDA, Concur, Adaptive Insights, Vertex, Kyriba, SPS Commerce, AMT, CounselLink, FreedomPay, Talent Quest, Inspire to Learn, Optimal IdM, ECS, AWS, Azure, Hadoop, Cloudera, 3PL, GTT, and the list goes on. It was an exciting and expansive project that required mapping out every single business process.
Prior to joining Rio Tinto, Mike was the CIO at Sears Hometown & Outlet Stores, the Chief Information Officer for RadioShack, and Senior Vice President of Infrastructure, Operations, Security, and at JCPenney and Dick's Sporting Goods. While at Dick Sporting Goods, Mike led an effort to relocate the company's primary data center to a brand new facility over 4 weeks without unplanned downtime. His efforts to improve the eCommerce infrastructure, change management, and code management of Coldwater Creek's website resulted in establishing Coldwater Creek's eCommerce site at the top of the Gomez report for performance and availability. Mike was a leader in the post-acquisition migration of GTE Wireless & Contel Cellular to a common billing and point-of-sale system, the migration of Northwestern Memorial Hospital to an ERP system that replaced paper medical records, and the migration of legacy human resource and finance systems to SAP at Coldwater Creek.
His leadership in technology has been featured in CIO Magazine, Computerworld, CIO Decisions Magazine, and in case studies by Dell, Cisco, and Intel. He was a member of the Strategic Advisory Board for the IT Infrastructure Management Association and a featured speaker at numerous industry conferences hosted by Gartner, Evanta, Cards & Payments (Australia), Ohio State University, and many others. As an educator, he has taught graduate courses in wireless communications.
Mike lives in the Brisbane area with his wife (Tammy). He has three outstanding kids (Lindy, 32; Chris, 29; and Annie, 22) and five wonderful grand-daughters. He has attended Purdue University (BS), Ball State University (MS), and Indiana State University (PhD.). He is a former professional rock musician and his hobbies include playing guitar, amateur radio (WA9PIE), and traveling. He is a partner in a software company that makes the world's most popular software title for amateur radio - Ham Radio Deluxe.
Case studies, white papers, and articles are listed below:
Doctoral Dissertation:
by Carper, Michael G., Ph.D., INDIANA STATE UNIVERSITY, 2015, 95 pages; 3739196
