Visionary

Merchant is an Executive Technologist, thought leader, Visionary & Chief Architect combining strategic planning with pragmatic approaches to meet enterprise short term and long-term goals with Over 25 years of leadership experience in IT spanning, Health Care, Life Sciences, Pharmacy, Finance, Insurance and Retail industries. While heading Enterprise Architecture for Kaiser Permanente IT, he helped transform EA to proactively drive business outcomes using technology and show concrete value as opposed to being a reactive governance organization. His successfully drove vertical and horizontal technology strategies, digital transformation, technology standardization, rationalization and modernization, platform and cloud architecture, data, AI, innovation, architecture governance, and cross domain technology solutions. He sat on Kaiser Permanente’s core Digital Leadership Team and chaired both the Innovation Budget Sub-committee and Architecture Advisory Board. Prior to joining Kaiser Permanente, Merchant served in IT and strategy leadership roles spanning architecture to product delivery and is adept at leading large-scale efforts from inception to production. He has worked as vice president of Enterprise Architect for FM Global, an international commercial property insurer, vice president and chief architect for Fidelity Investments, and has served as chief architect for CVS Health Retail Pharmacy. He also has worked in leadership roles for MIT startups and large consulting firms such as Deloitte & Touche.  He believes in using technology to solve business problems and at times to lead the business using innovative technology. He encourages pragmatic, agile delivery which yields solid business outcomes in alignment with strategic goals. He is adept at driving architecture transformation to be ‘outcome focused’, ‘action oriented’ and ‘value driven.’ He champions AI driven consumer experiences, modernized, resilient technology and a digital first outlook. Merchant is passionate about human rights and pluralism and has served in leadership roles for several non-profit organizations. He enjoys writing leadership and technology articles, as well as essays, poems, and slogans. He has won the first prize for writing a slogan for a major airline. He received a double bachelor’s degree in computer science and engineering from Bombay University followed by a Post Graduate diploma in Software Engineering. He then went on to pursue an MBA from Southern New Hampshire University. Most recently he graduated from Chief Technology Officer Executive Program at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania in Dec 2023.