A Passion for Promoting STEM

As the Chief Information Officer at CDPHP, Neil Brandmaier is integrating IT with the business and developing scale, agility and new capabilities leveraging cloud computing. He is re-architecting CDPHP’s systems by shifting from B2B to B2C with micro-segmentation, enabling new risk sharing pricing models, supporting new healthcare delivery capabilities and improving the company's ability to manage medical expenses and population health.

Brandmaier has been a member of the NCE Board of Visitors since its inception in 1992. He has raised funds for multiple STEM programs and is a founding board member of the Society for Information Management (SIM) chapter in Albany, New York.  On April 19, 2018, he will receive the NCE Spirit Award at the college’s Salute to Engineering Excellence at Nanina’s In the Park in Belleville, N.J.

“I’m excited,” he said. “I am an engineer by training; my wife spent most of her life in Newark and works at PSE&G and my daughter attends Rutgers Newark, so I have had a long affinity with the city. This is a higher recognition of a passion I’ve had in promoting STEM.”

At XL Group, Brandmaier led an organization across 26 countries providing IT infrastructure, ERP systems, business continuity, and vendor management/procurement.  He developed and implemented a global transformation strategy that reduced expenses by 30%, extended service levels globally to 7x24, and enhanced productivity through IT innovation.  He led a business processing center in India where he stabilized operations and improved services.

Prior to XL, Brandmaier worked at an IT shared services organization owned by the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and the American Stock Exchange (Amex). He managed the $80 million relationship with the Amex and led the post-merger integration of the NYSE and Archipelago IT organizations. He played a key role in recovering trading at the NYSE and the Amex during 9/11. He holds an M.S. in management of technology from NYU Polytechnic University of Engineering and a B.S. in mechanical engineering from Rutgers University.  

What advice would he give to NCE students who want to pursue a similar career path?

“An engineering  degree is a wonderful foundation,” he said. “If you look at my career, there were many different work experiences. It was the way I approached them based upon my engineering training. Engineering is a great foundation for any career.”