Melanie Kirkwood Ruiz joins Cushman & Wakefield as CIO, Americas

Cushman & Wakefield announced that Melanie Kirkwood Ruiz has joined the firm as CIO, Americas.

Kirkwood Ruiz will be based in Chicago and report to Adam Stanley, Cushman & Wakefield Global CIO and Chief Digital Officer. She will work closely with Tod Lickerman, Chief Executive, Americas, and Todd Schwartz, Americas COO as an embedded business partner.

Kirkwood Ruiz will lead the firm’s technology strategy in the Americas, overseeing a change agenda focused on innovation, integration and optimization to support the company’s strategy regionally and globally. She will work to improve operations, enhance customer service, drive new business and ensure the Global Technology Solutions’ Share Services are used throughout the company.

Previously, Kirkwood Ruiz served a vice president of business technology at Scientific Games and held various roles in client-facing and corporate technology leadership roles. In addition to driving the move to make IT more agile and innovation focused to enhance client services, she merged multiple billion-dollar companies into one global technology platform, and oversaw the development of enterprise applications in over 800 sites and 100 countries. Prior, she held various operations and global IT management roles at United Airlines, and at Abbott Laboratories.

She holds an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management and both a Master’s and a BS in Engineering from Cornell University.