{"id":47698,"date":"2025-08-05T18:08:13","date_gmt":"2025-08-05T17:08:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/2025\/08\/05\/talking-tech-with-ravi-malick-cio-of-box\/"},"modified":"2025-09-01T14:26:18","modified_gmt":"2025-09-01T13:26:18","slug":"talking-tech-with-ravi-malick-cio-of-box","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/2025\/08\/05\/talking-tech-with-ravi-malick-cio-of-box\/","title":{"rendered":"Talking tech with Ravi Malick, CIO of Box"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On the lighter side of things, we ask Ravi Malick, <\/strong>unstructured data expert and CIO of Box, <\/strong>what makes him tick. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What first made you think of a career in technology?<\/strong> <\/h4>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve always been a technologist. Even when I was a kid I taught myself Basic and developed a passion for taking things apart and putting them back together again. At college I majored in Political Science, but I\u2019ve always been a technologist and my enthusiasm for technology developed further when I entered the professional world.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

I started my career in investment banking and soon found I was teaching myself Visual Basic and how to automate models and reporting. I remember connecting with the IT folks back then to ask if they could let me connect to the data so that I could use it to systematically generate my reports. I essentially wrote macros to do just that which freed up time to focus on other things. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

After that, I moved into Consulting and became more exposed to enterprise technology. During my time at PwC I had a crash course on how to build enterprise applications and  really enjoyed it. I found I liked to code and build applications. Early on, I was one  of the first consultants who learnt a new language at that time called Java! I got into the e-commerce space and  the early path  of website personalisation, working on implementations back when the net was still relatively new. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That led me to leaving the consulting world and moving into software startups where I spent several years, during which I wore a bunch of different hats, and was able to gain experience across different parts of the business, including sales, marketing, product development and global services. I officially joined IT in 2011 and honestly didn\u2019t think I was going to be a CIO, but it just happened to work out that way. It\u2019s a great role because you still get to be deeply involved in tech, but also engage across all different parts of the business. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What would you describe as your most memorable achievement?<\/strong> <\/h4>\n\n\n\n

One of my most memorable achievements was from back when I worked in the energy and power industry. The company I was with went through a bankruptcy and upon emergence, we simultaneously moved to the cloud while making strategic acquisitions which more than tripled the size of the company. I oversaw our massive technological shift from being largely on-prem in our own data centres to having the majority of the environment in the cloud as well as integrating three multibillion dollar acquisitions, so there was a lot happening! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What style of management philosophy do you employ in your current position?<\/strong> <\/h4>\n\n\n\n

My style is very much trust and enablement with a level of accountability. My goal is to always set the right objectives, creating a structure from which you can measure and hold people accountable. I\u2019m not a taskmaster – my job is to clear the path for people to be successful by ensuring activities are aligned with the overall company vision. Then it\u2019s about letting people figure out how they can best fulfill it depending on where they sit in the business. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maintaining a growth mindset is also a key tenet of my management philosophy. Change is constant so you must be comfortable with making adjustments \u2013 never fall in love with a plan or roadmap because it\u2019s more than likely it will need to be changed. That said, you do need to put in structure around key decisions and strategic investments, but also be flexible and adjust to influential variables while continuing to grow.  I think it\u2019s also important to ensure chaos and being reactive isn\u2019t an excuse for agility. A big part of my job is to ensure the energy and money we invest in technology is productive. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What do you think is the current hot talking point within the data centre space?<\/strong> <\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Right now, consolidation is reshaping the data centre landscape. We\u2019re seeing the hyperscalers and large Fortune 100 companies all leveraging the cloud in some shape or form. The big question is: how does this wave of consolidation impact everyone else? And how do we sustainably power the next generation of data centres with power needs exponentially increasing? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What innovations are emerging from the energy sector to meet these needs? Given that the meteoric rise of AI has led to historical demand for power, how are key players in the power industry responding and re-marketing to the data centre and AI community? It\u2019s interesting to see this intersection of power and AI and data centres play out more. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What do you currently identify as the major areas of investment in your industry?<\/strong> <\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Without a doubt it\u2019s AI. In a recent Box State of AI in the Enterprise<\/em> report, we found that 70% of organisations believe AI is disrupting their competitive landscape, with early adopters already supercharging productivity.  And beyond that, there\u2019s agentic AI with organisations already integrating intelligent agents directly into content workflows to transform how teams access knowledge, collaborate, and make decisions. AI Agents will unlock completely new technology use cases that weren\u2019t possible before, driving a major increase in enterprise AI TAM compared to traditional software. Strong data governance and security principles remain of paramount importance for organisations evaluating which AI platforms to invest in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What are the region-specific challenges you encounter in your role?<\/strong> <\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Many – I have to consider in-region processing and regulation based on different features and regions. I have to be concerned about where our data is and where it\u2019s being used, not just from our own product perspective, but any vendor we use also has to be able to fit with our global model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s also be mindful that we\u2019re living in an era of regulatory flux. From the EU AI Act to NIS2, global regulation is evolving. Having a healthy tension between regulation and innovation in the changing AI landscape remains key. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How do you deal with stress and unwind outside the office?<\/strong> <\/h4>\n\n\n\n

I stay active. Whether it\u2019s playing baseball, tennis, basketball, hiking, I love being outdoors. Skiing and surfing are also great ways to detox from the digital world.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What changes to your job role have you seen in the last year and how do you see these developing in the coming months?<\/strong> <\/h4>\n\n\n\n

I believe that with AI, the CIO role has definitely evolved towards a more strategic nature. CIOs really have a seat at the table with AI as we have the ability to lean in on the topic and to own it. Companies depend on technology to operate every single day. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The idea that the CIO is focused on technology and how it runs and drives the business and the outcomes it\u2019s producing for the business is becoming more and more prevalent. It\u2019s similar to the evolution of finance – the market boom brought the industry to the forefront and today the CFO is typically the number two role in a company. We\u2019re seeing a similar evolution when it comes to technology and I\u2019m confident we\u2019re going to continue to see the role of the CIO increase in importance. Particularly now with the agentic workforce, the CIO arguably becomes the Chief Workforce Officer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the lighter side of things, we ask Ravi Malick, unstructured data expert and CIO of Box, what makes him tick.  What first made you think of a career in technology?  I\u2019ve always been a technologist. Even when I was a kid I taught myself Basic and developed a passion for taking things apart and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4017,"featured_media":48013,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,20,26],"tags":[7913,9019,9020,9021,9022,121,9023,6674,7717,2981,4815,9024,9025,6149,5367],"class_list":["post-47698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-data-centres","category-get-to-know","category-industry-expert","tag-agentic-ai","tag-ai-in-the-enterprise","tag-box-cio","tag-career-path","tag-cio-role","tag-cybersecurity","tag-data-centre-consolidation","tag-data-governance","tag-eu-ai-act","tag-innovation","tag-it-leadership","tag-ravi-malik","tag-technology-career","tag-technology-trends","tag-unstructured-data"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4017"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47698"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47698\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49126,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47698\/revisions\/49126"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}