Spotlight on Mario DeCristofano

We caught up with Mario to learn more about his journey at Petalite so far, following his start 6 months ago …

Mario is Head of IT, helping Petalite commercialise and implement Enterprise IT across people, process and technology.  He is also part of the senior management team.  

Mario’s Background:

Mario has worked in technology for 25 years, working his way from system administrator to group IT manager and now Agile technology consultant with his own blog and podcast, leading teams delivering large scale projects. He’s worked in both public and private sector, for brands such as Rolls Royce, British Airways, National Highways, Yum! Global, Rothschild and Co, the BBC, Microsoft and others.

What is your biggest career achievement so far?

Understanding how people (and organisations) tick continuously reminds me that people are the most important part of any technology solution. Bringing together over 100 people in a public sector organisation to then develop, coach and lead their delivery approach on a UK national service is something I’m particularly proud of to this day.

What does a typical day for you look like?

I’m fortunate to have flexibility in my day, so I’m often working as much from a coffee shop as I am the office. I split my time between major projects and supporting my small team, ensuring they have the things they need to provide on-site day-to-day support. Major projects include strategic work like Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementations, Cloud solutions and very excitingly Petalite’s new internal Agile toolsets. Outside of that, I’m usually eating, fasting or in the gym with an occasional mountain climb to keep me busy.

How is Petalite different to where you’ve worked before?

Any scale-up is always super exciting as it’s a blank canvas. Previous clients and organisations I’ve worked in often have the operational and legacy weight of existing processes and tooling. At Petalite though, we are starting fresh. Couple that with great people and launching revolutionary EV charging technology and it’s a winner!

What’s been the biggest challenge for you since you started?

Observing rather than just doing first and foremost, as I’m not the most patient! Despite being a scale-up there’s huge pressure on the engineering team to deliver to our commercial roadmap, so tempering the pace to deliver IT and technical change is something I’ve had to get used to. Providing my expertise at the right time for the shared goal of delivery, it’s a great feeling when the whole team pulls together to play their part in the giant jigsaw.

What has surprised you about Petalite?

The strength of Petalite’s offering. It's super easy to judge a book by a cover, so it’s easy to dismiss Petalite as a scale-up with none of the fancier bells and whistles you can see at more mature organisations. With all the mis-information around EV viability, it’d be easy to pass on Petalite. This however isn’t reflective of what I’ve learnt of what Petalite is doing in the industry. Backed not only by investors who believe in the journey but scientifically validated, patented and award winning – it’s exciting to see the working solution come from the lofty claims.

What brought you to Petalite?

I’m super passionate about sustainability especially around digital delivery. I’ve built carbon offset calculation tools for understanding the impact that physical human beings have on IT projects, and worked to promote how you can leverage Cloud provider’s carbon toolsets to plan workloads and run them at the most efficient time. Taking this into my personal life, it’s made me think about how I consume ‘stuff’. This partnered with my passion for automotive, working for Petalite allows me to scratch my itch for knowledge and learning especially around electric vehicles. I’m teetering on the precipice of going full EV, solar battery harvesting, the works. So can’t wait to see what the future has in store.