Michael Nilles
Chief Digital & Information Officer
Henkel Group
CIO Award Judge 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016
CIO Award Winner 2015
Speaker/Panelist 2017, 2016, 2015
Michael Nilles is the Chief Digital & Information Officer (CDIO) for Henkel. At Henkel he is responsible for all Digital, IT, Corporate Venture Capital activities and the Open Innovation Platform HenkelX Ventures. Mr. Nilles brings more than 20 years of experience spearheading digital innovation and large-scale digital business transformations for multi-billion industrial businesses. As an early adopter of the Industrial Internet, he gained extensive knowledge in deploying smart, connected and data-driven capabilities at scale and developing new digital business models.
Before joining Henkel he was member of the Group Executive Board and Chief Digital Officer (CDO) for Schindler as well as the CEO of Schindler Digital Business AG.
Prior to Schindler, Mr. Nilles held various executive management positions at Mannesmann and Bosch Rexroth. As CIO of Bosch Rexroth, he digitized the entire value chain driving operational excellence. Mr. Nilles began his career as software engineer and consultant at SAP. During international assignments, he worked and lived for several years in China and in the US.
He also serves on the Supervisory Boards of Deutsche Lufthansa AG and Lufthansa Technik AG, sits on the Advisory Board of Silicon Valley based FogHorn Systems and is a member of IOTA Foundation.
Mr. Nilles’ work in driving digital business transformations was recognized in 2015 with the MIT Sloan Leadership Award and the European Digital Business Innovation Award. He was also named “CIO of the Year in Germany 2015”. He holds a master’s degree in business administration and computer science from the University of Cologne, Germany and is an alumnus of Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, USA.
“On behalf of Schindler, I am incredibly honored to be the 2015 winner of the MIT
Sloan CIO Leadership Award. This is an outstanding recognition of our entire team
which is taking digitization to the next level with great dedication and vigorous
innovation for both, our customers and our employees. It substantiates our strategic
efforts to further drive digitization in order to stay at the forefront of our industry.”