Jason Dunham
Dubai,United Arab Emirates
Summary
Executive digital technology leader with proven ability to transform enterprise through cloud adoption, AI, simplification, automation, agile delivery, cyber security and dynamic thought leadership. Currently the Student Loans Company (SLC) Chief Information Officer reporting to the Chief Executive Officer and member of the SLC Executive Board. He is responsible for SLC’S end-to-end technology ecosystem, including cybersecurity and enterprise data – implementing digital solutions that enable the business and deliver value for its customers. Under his leadership, Jason has accelerated SLC’s digital strategy delivering business transformation across. With a career spanning more than twenty years in the Financial Services, Healthcare, and Education sectors, Jason has developed a strong reputation for spearheading digital transformation initiatives for his CEO’s and c-suite executive teams, achieving business growth and delivering capabilities across strategic planning and execution, financial performance management, market positioning and competitive advantage, organizational culture and operational excellence. Recognized as CIO top 100 number in the UK for three consecutive years. CIO advisor to several technology companies and CIO peers.
High-performing Chief Information Officer, offering extensive leadership expertise in [Industry] environments. Developing effective, efficient [Type] services for increased commercial propositions and improved company profitability.
Seasoned Chief Information Officer with outstanding knowledge of [Software] and system design. Certified and trained in leadership. Successful at planning prioritised data systems and detailed data-reporting.
Innovative Chief Information Officer with [Number] years of experience. Committed to keeping up to date on modern IT systems and planning technology strategies to align with company goals. Extensive knowledge of [Software] use.
Overview
21
21
years of professional experience
1997
1997
years of post-secondary education
Work history
Chief Information Officer
Student Loans Company
2023.01 - 2026.02
- Accountability for Technology: Responsible for managing over 800 O&T staff across UK and overseas support centers.
- Transformation and business change leadership: Exemplary track record in delivering multiple large-scale business and technology transformation with a significant contribution to financial outcomes.
- Strategy development and execution: Co-designed, developed and implemented business strategies across several business units. Accountable for design and execution of technology, cyber security, data and digitalization strategies.
- Digital capabilities and innovation: Lead strategy development efforts to leverage digital capabilities and innovation efforts to find options to create and deliver new value.
- Adoption of digital “ways of working”: Promote democratized digital delivery (co-create, co-deliver, co-manage) “by design” with business leaders.
- Successfully delivered a Strategic Cost Reduction program for SLC taking out cost of $65m over 5 years ranging from transforming delivery models, implementing agile ways of working, implementing AI models across the SLC lines of business
- Developed the digital strategy for SLC, establishing a comprehensive framework for leveraging digital tools and platforms to support the organization’s business objectives. This strategy encompassed a range of activities, from digital marketing and e-commerce to customer service and data analytics. This digital strategy improved customer experience, streamlined operations, and supported growth using digital technologies.
- Led a core banking strategy review defining how SLC will evolve its foundational technology and processes to support business goals, regulatory requirements, customer expectations, and innovation. The strategy started with a flexible, digital-native core - building a new banking modern, cloud-based technology, decisions about system architecture (cloud vs. on-premises), modernization (incremental vs. full replacement), integration (APIs, fintech partnerships), and operational priorities (efficiency, resilience, scalability) and rapid scaling
- Led a 3-year Technology Modernization delivering an estimated £70 m in benefits against a £15 investment. This included moving to digital-first services, improving customer engagement, and reducing operational costs (90% of data and 80% of applications migrated to cloud by 2025, new real-time fraud detection on board using AI for loan and repayments and AI virtual assistants in customer support and engagement on the SLC digital platforms improving customer satisfaction.
- Developed a cybersecurity vision and strategy for SLC, aligning to organizational priorities and enables and facilitates the organization’s business objectives, and ensures senior stakeholder buy-in and mandate
- Deployed AI platforms and new ways of working to improve SLC system quality (deployment, reliability and responsiveness, throughput and utilization. This resulted in upticks across all these metrics and it’s worth noting that there were as many as 20% performance gains in automated pipelines, model time to deployment, number of releases per month, cross a range of deployment
Head of Technology
Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank
2015.01 - 2023.01
- Direct strategic initiatives to harness digital capabilities and drive innovation, identifying opportunities to generate and deliver new value.
- Propose leadership to co-develop initiatives and offer leadership of those initiatives or at least offer to lead key subprojects and/or teams within the initiative.
- Promote democratized digital delivery (co-create, co-deliver, co-manage) “by design” with more digitally savvy executives. Offering to lead efforts to establish new team structures (fusion teams), support hiring and development of technology talent, and create and deliver new support approaches from the IT function.
- Enhance IT leadership skills in business, communication, and decision-making. Focus on expanding their executive leadership abilities so the team can run the IT function independently, without needing the CIO to be involved in operational efforts.
- Accountability for Technology: Responsible for managing over 1200 O&T staff across UK and overseas support centers.
- Led a $200m tech investment, split between maintaining core infrastructure and driving innovation. Major initiatives included aggressive cloud migration (80% of apps moved out of legacy data centers), building a multi-cloud environment for resilience, and investing heavily in AI and analytics for client engagement. Fostered a developer-centric culture, enabling startup-like agility within a highly regulated environment.
- Built a digital bank for ADCB in Kingdom Saudi Arabia (KSA) in 18 months which was a multi-faceted process involving regulatory, technological, and business development stages. Curated the ADCB Global Technology Strategy for KSA building a robust core banking system to handle account management, transaction processing, and loan servicing securely and efficiently. Developed intuitive and secure mobile and web applications for customer access and transactions, focusing on user experience (UX). Selected a suitable technology stack including cloud infrastructure, programming languages, databases, and security measures.
- Reset the ADCB Technology Strategy after banking merger with Union National Bank, and Al Hilal Bank delivering savings of circa $500m over 7 years – delivering new digital capabilities across the new Group core banking platform, unified disparate IT systems post-merger, implemented enterprise architecture, rebuilt network infrastructure for stability and redundancy. These changes improved customer and operational efficiency, positioning IT as a strategic function. This resulted in driving performance upticks across a range of measures systems reliability, customer experience, security and compliance, cost efficiency and deployment speed to market, industry benchmarks and comparisons
- Developed a cybersecurity vision and strategy for ADCB, aligning to organizational priorities and enables and facilitates the organization’s business objectives, and ensures senior stakeholder buy-in.
- Reset the ADCB Technology Strategy delivering performance upticks across a range of measures (1) adoption of new development tools and service-oriented architectures; (2) improving IT performance in terms of operational cost and agility; (3) agility in delivering new software releases (software/release velocity) and new digital products; and (4) customer (i.e., business user) satisfaction.
- Collaborated with other ADCB c-suite members to develop the digital strategy for ADCB, establishing a comprehensive framework for leveraging digital tools and platforms to support the organization’s business objectives. This strategy encompassed a range of activities, from digital marketing and e-commerce to customer service and data analytics. This digital strategy improved customer experience, streamlined operations, and supported growth using digital technologies.
Head of Technology and Cyber Security
Lewisham and Green NHS Trust
London
2014.01 - 2015.01
- Accountability for the Trusts Technology and Cyber Strategy: Establishment and execution of the enterprise-wide IT strategy and ensured its integration with the enterprise’s business strategy to achieve success.
- Operational excellence and systems reliability: Deliver technology capabilities (I&T operating model, organization structure and governance process
- Transformation and business change leadership: Exemplary track record in delivering multiple large-scale business and technology transformation with a significant contribution to financial outcomes.
- Digital capabilities and innovation: Lead strategy development efforts to leverage digital capabilities and innovation efforts to find options to create and deliver new value.
- Successfully delivered a Strategic Cost Reduction program for the Trust taking out cost of $10m over 5 years ranging from transforming delivery models, implementing agile ways of working, implementing AI models across the SLC lines of business
- Developed the digital strategy for the Trust, establishing a comprehensive framework for leveraging digital tools and platforms to support the organization’s business objectives. This strategy encompassed a range of activities, from digital marketing and e-commerce to customer service and data analytics. This digital strategy improved customer experience, streamlined operations, and supported growth using digital technologies.
- Developed a cybersecurity vision and strategy for the Trust, aligning to organizational priorities and enables and facilitates the organization’s business objectives, and ensures senior stakeholder buy-in and mandate
- Developed, implemented a reset cybersecurity program to ensure appropriate levels of confidentiality, integrity, availability of information assets owned, controlled or/and processed by the organization as well as the meeting of safety, privacy, reliability and resilience requirements as needed.
- Deployed new technology and new ways of working to improve the Trusts system quality (deployment, reliability and responsiveness, throughput and utilization. This led to increases in all of these metrics; notably, there were up to 5% improvements observed in automated pipelines, model deployment times, monthly release counts, and various aspects of deployment.
- Promoted within Trust democratized digital delivery (co-create, co-deliver, co-manage) “by design” with more digitally savvy executives. Led efforts to establish new team structures (fusion teams), support hiring and development of technology talent, and create and deliver new support approaches from the IT function
- Defined the data, analytics and machine learning strategy, including vision, drivers and outcomes for several public sector clients in the UK, leading to the creation (and assure the ongoing relevance) of the organization’s D&A ML strategy.
- Instituted an operating model for data, analytics and ML within Atos that is consistent with the capabilities and competencies required to execute the strategy. The operating model includes the ecosystem, architecture and delivery model.
Chief Technology Officer | Head of Global Banking Solutions | IT Director
Atos
2005.01 - 2014.01
- Senior Executive: Held technical leadership roles across the lines of business in Atos UK, Europe and USA. This included senior management roles in the Public Sector London 2012 Olympics, Home Office, Borders Agency, MOJ and in the Private Sector (Barclays, Woolwich and Lloyds Bank).
- Corporate Strategic Planning: Developed the mission, vision, and strategy of Managed Services in Atos UK to maximize business growth and operating margin focusing on cyber security, architecture, data analytics, cloud and service management.
- Strategic Service and portfolio planning: Worked with the UK Atos Board on the Atos service portfolio, governance and sales teams identifying improvements across the sales, run and operate phases of IT contract management.
- Act as a IT strategic advisor to CIO’s in both the private and public sector on a range of items (compliance, technology modernization strategy, data and analytics, cloud, automation, performance measurement and ways of working).
- Led the Atos Technology and cybersecurity function London 2012 Olympics to ensure consistent and high-quality information security management in support of the business goals
- Built the Atos Technology and Cyber Strategy for a large UK Government agency determining the technology, the cybersecurity approach and operating model in consultation with stakeholders and aligned with the risk management approach and compliance monitoring of non-digital risk areas.
- Defined and executed the vision and roadmap for several European, UK and Ireland Banks in their core banking implementation, integrating digital transformation initiatives to modernize their banks platforms and processes.
- Led the core modernization programs for core banking infrastructure, leveraging digital tools such as Core Banking Platform (Temenos, Finacle, Flexcube, FIS, Oracle Banking, Mambu), Cloud Services, Analytics, Automation Tools, API and Open Banking and Customer Experience Platforms, Fraud and Detection and Cyber security products.
- Using the Hyper automation & Robotic Process Automation (RPA tools automated customer journeys, from onboarding to KYC, improving efficiency and reducing costs for several banks
- During the 4 years in role exceeded both Atos and client’s key business outcomes across operational efficiency, customer experience, scalability and flexibility, security and compliance and risk management.
- Built a Technology Strategy for London 2012 Olympics identifying the vision for Atos on cyber security, infrastructure, applications, operating models and organization structure. This became the blueprint for other global Atos Olympics engagement after London 2012.
- Successfully delivered a Strategic Cost Reduction program for several UK Healthcare Trusts taking out cost of $15m over 5 years ranging from transforming delivery models, implementing agile ways of working, implementing new technology across applications and infrastructure, retiring old systems.
- Developed digital strategies for several UK Healthcare Trusts establishing a comprehensive framework for leveraging digital tools and platforms to support the organization’s business objectives. This strategy encompassed a range of activities, from digital marketing and e-commerce to customer service and data analytics. This digital strategy improved customer experience, streamlined operations, and supported growth using digital technologies.
Education
Management and IT Masters -
University of Surrey
History bachelor's degree - undefined
University of London
Skills
- Technological innovation drive
- System integration proficiency
Websites
Affiliations
- Gartner and Evanta – Keynote speaker at Executive Summits on Public Sector Digital Transformation
- Gigamon – member of its Global Customer Advisory Board
- Salesforce – member of its UK Public Sector Customer Advisory Board
- InRule – member of its Global Customer Advisory Board
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
- Building Cyber Security and Architecture | Gartner – Priority Navigator for CIO | UK | 2025
- Building AI Strategy | Gartner – Priority Navigator for CIO | UK | 2025
- Explore Digital Opportunities | Gartner – Priority Navigator for CIO | UK | 2025
- Evolving IT model to embrace digital and AI | Gartner – Priority Navigator for CIO | UK | 2025
- Personal and Executive Leadership | Ernst and Young | London | 2024
- SaFE Agile Foundations | Civil Service College | UK | 2023
- Building digital and AI opportunities | Civil Service College | UK | 2023
- Scrum for Managers | Civil Service College | UK | 2023
OTHER ROLES
- IT Transformation Director | Barclays Bank PLC | 2003-2005
- Programme Manager | Cap Gemini | 1999-2003
- IT Project Manager | Bankers Trust | Deutsche Bank | 1997-1999
Timeline
Chief Information Officer
Student Loans Company
2023.01 - 2026.02
Head of Technology
Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank
2015.01 - 2023.01
Head of Technology and Cyber Security
Lewisham and Green NHS Trust
2014.01 - 2015.01
Chief Technology Officer | Head of Global Banking Solutions | IT Director
Atos
2005.01 - 2014.01
History bachelor's degree - undefined
University of London
Management and IT Masters -
University of Surrey