As CIO of Nicholas and Company, Inc., A regional Broadline Foodservice distributor located in Salt Lake City, Utah, Joe provides senior & strategic leadership for all Technology and system initiatives.  He recently celebrated his 17th consecutive year with the privately held, family owned distributor.  Joe provides leadership and direction to 8 direct reports as well as supporting his counterparts on the Executive team.  In the late 90's, Joe was promoted to VP of IT as he transformed Nicholas & Company's use of technology from a "data-processing" mold to more progressive, interactive, and integrated solutions.  Joe has been entrenched in IT for 25 years, and has been CIO for the last 6 years.  He has also held responsibility for non-traditional CIO leadership duties for departments such as Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, Contract Compliance, and Customer Solutions.  Joe has a passion for consistency throughout the organization and is well versed in aspects of IT such as application development, operations, communications, support, security, voice/data networking, data warehousing, business intelligence, etc.

Prior to his career with Nicholas & Company, he worked in several capacities as a Contract Programmer, Software Engineer and Systems Analyst.  His background in "banking and finance" gave him a unique position to work as a software developer for 5 years on a nationally marketed Banking Enterprise Application solution.  This also included implementation, conversions, travel, and sleeping on floors or couches when necessary.  Work in this sector exposed him to the highly regulated banking industry, including FDIC, State, and external audits.  During his 10-years in banking, this also produced Joe's worst job ever - a bank teller.

Mr. Wood actively participates in and seeks out Networking opportunities both in and out of the Foodservice industry.  He is a member of several industry associations like IFDA & DMA, he regularly attends local IT roundtables sponsored by vendors and the University of Utah.