Michael T. Abbene
VP & CIO
Arch Coal, Inc

Michael Abbene is Vice President and Chief Information Officer at Arch Coal, Inc., a position he assumed on 1 July 2005. In this position he has responsibility for all information technology initiatives throughout Arch and its subsidiaries.

Michael joined Arch Coal in March 2000 as Director Application Services. During the five years prior to his election as CIO, he created an application support staff with diverse talents in development, project management, database administration, and system administration. This staff managed several major upgrades of Oracle and Ellipse, a key mining operations package, and developed and installed a new Revenue Management System that manages the data flow from product shipment through receipt of payment.

Prior to joining Arch, Michael worked in consulting, first as a Senior Consulting Partner for Qore Business Solutions and then as a Consulting Project Manager for Stockell Consulting, both St. Louis-based firms. As a consultant he led major domestic and international projects for companies like Adobe, Monsanto, SBC (now AT&T), and Energizer.

From 1990 through 1995, Michael was head of worldwide Information Services for Advanced Elastomer Systems LP, a $300MM joint venture of Exxon and Monsanto (now wholly owned by ExxonMobil). Prior to that, he spent 15 years at Monsanto Company in St. Louis where he held a number of positions, including Manager, MIS for Corporate Finance and Manager of IS for Monsanto’s Corporate Facilities Management division.

Mr. Abbene started his career at a GTE (now Verizon) manufacturing facility in the Chicago area following his graduation from Northwestern University with a BS in Industrial Engineering. He has an MBA with a concentration in Finance and Accounting from Southern Illinois University.

A native New Yorker (although now a confirmed Midwesterner), he is an accomplished nature photographer and is actively involved with the Saint Louis Zoo as a volunteer educator and just completed seven years as a board member of the Zoo Friends Association.