Hershey Names Gene Kholodenko CIO
Kholodenko brings more than 26 years of experience in IT and digital and business transformation leadership.
Gene Kholodenko has been named the CIO of the Hershey Company, according to a company announcement on LinkedIn. He will be tasked with spearheading Hershey’s ongoing tech modernization and digital transformation.
Kholodenko brings more than 26 years of experience in IT and digital and business transformation leadership, leveraging technology to drive business value across sales, marketing, R&D, supply chain, manufacturing, and shared services.
An IT Background With P&G
He spent more than two decades at Procter & Gamble, working in several IT, CTO, and CIO roles across the company’s home care, fragrances, chemical, and global businesses. As a transformational executive in digital, IT, and business services, Kholodenko’s expertise spans strategy design, development, execution, and operations.
During his tenure at P&G as a global IT governance leader for corporate functions, Kholodenko helped lead the transformation of IT services. He streamlined P&G’s IT policies from over 200 to just 16, automating 80% of the compliance tracking, according to his LinkedIn.
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This shift resulted in $3.2 million in annual savings and a major reduction in enterprise risk. Kholodenko’s efforts also contributed to a 280% reduction in enterprise incidents over a three-year period, earning him the itSMF USA Award for Service Management in Action.
He joins Hershey from McKesson, a pharmaceutical distribution company, where he oversaw the end-to-end delivery of all IT services for pharma distribution, totaling $200 billion in revenue.