Frederic Wohlwend: From CIO to CEO – What happens after winning the Confare Swiss CIOAWARD?
Confare celebrates 15 years Confare Swiss CIOAWARD! In this blog series we take a dive down memory lane and look at some remarkable winners over the years. How did the role change? What did the award do to their carreers and the perception of IT in general? Let’s find out!
Today’s guest: Frederic Wohlwend. He is managing partner at Forestay Capital SA. Back in the days he recieved the award for his work at Merck. You want to be part of this collective celebration of business-IT? Join our community at the Confare CIOSUMMIT Zurich 2026. Sign up HERE.
What did the award-winning moment mean to him?
It meant a lot personally, but also professionally. We are talking about 2013, which feels like a very long time ago. The world has changed tremendously since then. At the time, I was running IT for the Merck Group worldwide. We were in the middle of a complex integration, modernization and globalization journey. It was also the beginning of what we later called digital transformation and the start of a significant evolution of the CIO role.
I was already very pleased to be nominated, and of course even more pleased to win. For me, however, the award was also recognition for the entire team behind me. I was leading a team of around 1,000 people across 60 countries. Achievements like these are always the result of collective effort. When I received the award in 2013, I immediately thought about the team that made it possible.
What kind of feedback and reactions did he receive afterwards?
The feedback was extremely positive. Externally, it resonated strongly. Many people reached out to exchange ideas, experiences and perspectives. I was invited to speak at a number of conferences and was often asked for advice. As a CIO in a large enterprise, you tend to focus heavily on internal priorities. Sometimes you lose a bit of the outside perspective. The award helped open new doors and broaden those connections.
Internally, it also had a significant impact. Back then, and I would argue still today, the CIO role is often underestimated and undervalued. That can be frustrating. The award brought visibility not only to me, but also to my team. It reinforced our position at the table and strengthened our relationship with the business. What’s interesting is that many of those ideas are still highly relevant today. Some of the fundamentals have not changed.
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How has his career evolved since then?
I guess my career has taken an interesting path.
I had the opportunity to grow through different IT leadership roles, first becoming CIO of a company with around 3,000 employees and later CIO of a global group with more than 40,000 employees. At some point, every CIO asks: What comes next? Interestingly, Merck recently appointed a new CEO. He actually served as CIO before I joined the company. That shows that CIOs can absolutely move into CEO positions in large enterprises. For me, the next step was the investment ecosystem.
Today, I am CEO of an investment firm that invests globally in AI startups and supports young founders. The transition has been fascinating. I moved from running IT operations and discussing business transformation inside large corporations to working directly with founders of fast-growing software companies. My role today is to help them align their vision, strategy, execution capabilities and governance. Most startups are strong in some of these areas but weaker in others. I would say that today I operate much more on the business side than on the purely technical side.
How his experience as a CIO supports this role?
It is absolutely fundamental.
What differentiates me is that I spent decades implementing technology at scale in large enterprises. That experience can be transferred directly to founders who want to grow their businesses. When you look at the AI startup landscape, new companies emerge every day. We always talk about the success stories and the unicorns, but statistics show that around 95% of startups never successfully scale.
The reason is rarely technology. More often, founders lack experience in building and scaling organizations. Sometimes the vision is unclear. Sometimes the strategy is good but execution is weak. Sometimes execution is strong but strategy is lacking. What large corporations teach you is how to align vision, strategy, execution and governance. That is exactly the experience I bring to these fast-growing companies.
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The Confare Swiss CIOAWARD is now celebrating its 15th anniversary. Let’s talk about the CIO role itself. How has it evolved during that time?
The CIO role has changed dramatically. Not because CIOs wanted it to change, but because the business environment changed fundamentally. Back in 2013, we were already discussing the need for CIOs to adapt to business change. Ten years ago, CIOs were largely internal service providers focused on uptime and cost control. With the rise of cloud computing, CIOs evolved into service managers, orchestrating external platforms and services.
Today, CIOs have become true business partners. They need to help organizations manage the explosion of AI adoption across departments. AI is spreading rapidly, often without sufficient governance or coordination. More than ever, CIOs are the people connecting different parts of the organization. The role now sits at the intersection of strategy, risk management and organizational change. Another major shift is speed.
Technology cycles are becoming shorter and shorter. In my current role as an investor, I see companies that have only a few years to establish themselves as leaders. If they fail, they disappear and are replaced by the next wave of innovation. The same applies to large enterprises. CIOs must create organizations that can continuously adapt to this pace of change.
Has his work in the investment market changed his view on digitalization and technology?
One thing has not changed at all: technology only creates value when it solves a real problem. That was true then and it is still true today. What has changed is the speed and scale of disruption.
AI is transforming organizations at every level: application management, cybersecurity, workflows and increasingly decision-making processes through agentic AI. Technology has become a defining factor in how companies compete and survive.
Does he have specific conversations with CIOs when evaluating investment opportunities?
At Forster Capital, we invest exclusively in enterprise AI companies. These are software companies selling AI solutions to large organizations. That means we interact with CIOs all the time. One of the biggest challenges for CIOs today is the sheer number of available solutions. Innovation increasingly comes from startups, but startups are often not yet profitable.
That creates a risk. Organizations may adopt technology from companies whose long-term viability is not yet proven. When evaluating investments, I rely heavily on discussions with CIOs around the world. I use these conversations to assess whether a technology is likely to achieve broad market adoption. I am not investing in experimental concepts. I invest in companies that already generate revenue. The key question is whether the industry will embrace the technology at scale. A large part of my work is connecting CIOs from startups with CIOs from large enterprises and helping both sides determine whether there is a strong fit.
What defines an IT organization that is truly award-worthy today?
Today, it goes far beyond technological excellence. Award-worthy IT combines leadership, business impact and innovation. The leaders who deserve recognition are those who successfully connect technology and business strategy, drive organizational change, leverage AI effectively and build secure environments. In my view, award-worthy IT is ultimately about transformation and measurable impact.
He has been part of this CIO community for more than a decade. What would he write into the Confare anniversary guestbook?
I could probably write an entire book. If I had to summarize it in one message, I would say that Confare has done much more than recognize technological excellence. Over the last fifteen years, you have highlighted leadership, transformation and the evolving role of the CIO.
Most importantly, you have built a strong community of professionals who share common challenges and opportunities. Today, that community is more relevant than ever.
I am not worried about AI. I see tremendous opportunities ahead. I would simply congratulate you on what you have created and on the value this community provides.
Why is it worth applying for this award?
Because recognition matters. The CIO role is a difficult one. When something goes wrong, people notice immediately. When things go well, the credit often goes elsewhere. Recognition therefore has real value.
Beyond that, the application process itself is incredibly valuable. For me, it was a great exercise to reflect on what I had achieved, why I had done it, what challenges I had faced and where I had succeeded. It forces you to pause, step back and look at your work from a broader perspective. Winning is wonderful, of course.
But even more important than winning is participating. The process itself is a learning experience and an opportunity to share ideas, experiences and perspectives with peers.