Larry Quinlan: “I am happiest building things.”

The global technology business of Deloitte Consulting will become the independent company Braxton (New York, NY) in 2003, and Larry Quinlan is prepared to be one of its leaders. “I am happiest building things,” he says.

Braxton will be one of the world’s largest consulting firms, with more than 15,000 professionals in thirty-four countries. Its services will range from corporate strategy to outsourced CRM, and its clients will include more than a third of the global Fortune 500.

CIO and a partner
Quinlan became CIO and a partner at Deloitte in 1999, after ten years with the company. He has managerial responsibility for the systems and technology services organization, including knowledge management technology platforms, business systems, technology strategy, technology support, software development and project tools. About 400 people worldwide are part of his organization.

“A significant part of my job is to ensure that we’re doing the right thing so as not to squander our position in any way,” he says. “I spend a lot of time thinking about what the right thing to do is and how we can do it well, and then communicating and selling those ideas to the firm at large.”

Combining business and IT
Quinlan received a BS in industrial management from the University of West Indies (Trinidad, WI) in 1983. He worked for his father’s insurance business in St. Kitts for a year, then decided to go for an MBA. The woman he later married was already studying at Baruch College of the City University of New York; he joined her there and received his MBA in management in 1986.

He wasn’t specifically inclined toward IT until he started the Baruch program. Then the potential of IT to improve business processes captured his imagination, and he stayed on an extra six months, taking additional course work and adding a minor in CS.

After graduation he was offered a nice job in sales. “I realized I couldn’t do that,” he says. “Technology was in my blood, and I needed an organization that allowed me to work with it.”

IT responsibility
He found the job he wanted at IDC (Bloomfield, NJ), taking responsibility for an office data center. He managed databases for fundraising campaigns involving direct mail and telemarketing, and put in a LAN. “The advantage was, it allowed us to manage multiple clients,” he says.

In two years he was director of MIS for the entire organization, with responsibilities in several other U.S. locations and Canada – and ready to move on.

He answered an ad for a job with what was then “big six” accounting firm Touche Ross, and started there as a systems analyst. “I traded a title and position of responsibility in a smaller firm for the opportunity to grow in a larger firm,” he says.

A risk worth taking. His first assignment was to determine whether a distributed LAN-based system or a minicomputer approach would be more effective for the firm. He was able to confidently recommend the client/server model. He also selected and implemented the company’s first LAN-based e-mail system for the U.S. In fact, “I had operational responsibilities for one of our largest infrastructures,” he says.

Moving around
Two years later the firm merged with Deloitte Haskins and Sells to become Deloitte and Touche. “I was asked to run some expanded elements of the technology infrastructure when we merged,” he notes.

The promotion meant a move to a new technology center in Nashville, TN. His wife was still in New York, so he commuted there on weekends. After she graduated she took a job in Houston, TX, and he commuted there. It wasn’t until 1995 that they got together in Atlanta, GA, where they still live and are raising their two daughters.

That was the year Deloitte and Touche started the global Deloitte Consulting. “It was the challenge of building something where there was nothing,” he says. “It was a new global entity that was just getting off the ground, and I thought that would be the best challenge of all.” He was given responsibility for the IT infrastructure of the new spinoff, and he could do it from Atlanta.

Managing
Quinlan’s management style sharpened as his career advanced. “No matter what the textbooks say, you can’t treat people all alike,” he says. “As a leader, you have to reflect their needs.”

At Deloitte Consulting he started with five people as director of practitioner support services. The position evolved to focus on IT, and his title became director of technology. Then along came the CIO title in 1998, adding the business systems of human resources and financial management. He was also made a partner, a position usually reserved for consultants. And now he’s helping to take a newly independent company global.

Nurturing ground
Quinlan is active in his company’s African American network. “It serves as a nurturing ground,” he says. “The most important goal is to fill the pipeline.”

He’s a member of BDPA, where he’s been a featured speaker at national and local meetings. He’s also involved with the Information Technology Senior Management Forum, a network of black IT leaders who are top executives of large organizations.

On his frequent trips to New York from Atlanta, he touches base with the YMCA’s Black Achievers Program. “It’s about nurturing, developing the next level of people,” he says.

Although he may be in New York or Europe or Asia during the week, weekends are always reserved for his family. The two girls, now seven and nine, take their parents bowling and skating. Last winter the whole family learned to ski at Vail, CO.

As an executive who is also a minority, “There are times when you walk into a meeting with people you don’t know and you have to seize the moment early,” Quinlan says with a smile. His career so far has involved a lot of very successful seizing of moments. Now this capable IT leader is ready and eager to face the challenges of helping Deloitte/Braxton on the path to success.

D/C

– Kate Colborn & Christine Willard