Sean Grennan

Advisory Board

Biography

Mr. Grennan is a CIO Advisor in the Digital Advisory practice of Wipfli LLP, a top 20 consulting firm serving more than 84,000 clients across the globe. He brings more than 20 years of information technology experience within multiple industries, including Non-Profit, Health Care, Manufacturing, and Higher Education sectors. His responsibilities include providing leadership services, maturity assessments, program management, and technology strategy, as well as overall advice and operational roadmaps for Chief Officers of the organizations with which he partners.

Mr. Grennan was recently nominated for the 2022 CIO of the Year Award by the Society of Information Management (SIM) Chicago chapter and The Executives’ Club of Chicago. Selection for this award considers leadership in driving business value, technological innovation, business partnerships and creating best-in-class workplaces for IT professionals.

Mr. Grennan’s previous role was serving as Chief Information Officer of Management Partners, Inc. (MPI), the parent company of two national Executive Search firms (Furst Group and Salveson Stetson Group) and a Leadership Development and talent management firm (NuBrick Partners). During his time there, he reworked the organization’s IT landscape, and during the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, helped shift the company into a 100% work-from-home business model. He established an IT governance model, authoring and publishing both the IT Security and Risk Mitigation Policy and the Backup and Disaster Recovery Plan for each company, as well as created an IT Roadmap for long-term organizational outlook. Aging infrastructure was replaced and moved to the cloud, increasing efficiencies across the board. Increased IT security protocols were implemented to ensure safe storage of company data, and data safety awareness training was deployed for all employees throughout the company.

In previous roles, Mr. Grennan has served as a hospital system’s IT Project Manager, a Senior Technical Consultant (again with Wipfli), and a variety of technical roles within higher education. In 2010, he was part of the team that established the University of Illinois at Chicago’s (UIC) College of Pharmacy distance education campus in Rockford, IL. In 2014, he was the initial consultant hired to launch Wipfli’s IT Outsourcing division in the Illinois region, which in four short years increased its annual revenue sevenfold (7x).

Mr. Grennan earned his Master’s degree in Management Information Systems (MIS) in 2013 and his Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science in 2001, both from the University of Illinois. He also earned certifications in IT Project Management and Business Process Management.

In his spare time, Mr. Grennan enjoys coaching his children’s sports teams and volunteering in the community. He serves as Treasurer of the Board of Directors for the Rock River Valley Pantry in Rockford, IL, and served as the former Vice President of the Board for the Byron Area Chamber of Commerce in Byron, IL.