How it Started... How it's Going, with Sanjay Sood
Meet Sanjay Sood, Chief Technology Officer at CDW! With over 20 years of experience driving innovative change within complex tech environments, Sanjay is responsible for establishing CDW’s future technology vision and strategic direction. From building leading-edge platforms to empowering our coworkers, he’s proud to leverage industry-leading technology to transform the way we work.
“We believe technology is the key enabler to our strategy... if you think about the strategy being the rocket ship, taking CDW to new destinations, technology is the rocket fuel that powers the booster engines.”
– Sanjay Sood, Chief Technology Officer at CDW
How It Started
Growing up in Downers Grove, a suburb in Chicago, Sanjay’s passion for technology started early. He built a small business called The Computer Guru as a teenager, where he fixed and set up computers. Thanks to his love for tech, he was hired at his high school over the summer to set up their computer labs.
In addition to computer troubleshooting, Sanjay spent time cutting lawns and working at his family’s auto repair shop. He repaired cars over the summer before starting his first “real” job at Best Buy selling computers.
Fast forward, Sanjay went to Northwestern University intending to study medicine, but realized he didn’t want to become a doctor within the first few weeks of college. From there, he pivoted to his core passion, earning both a bachelor’s degree and a Ph.D. in computer science from Northwestern where his research focused on contextual information systems and sentiment analysis.
After graduating, Sanjay moved to the West Coast with his wife, where he worked for multiple tech start-ups. He was the start-up CTO for Allvoices, a citizen-based news company, before shifting his focus to the corporate world with AT&T Interactive.
How It’s Going 
In 2014, with two children, Sanjay and his wife returned to the Midwest, where he worked at HERE Technologies for over five years working on digital mapping and autonomous driving. Then, in 2020, he joined CDW, bringing extensive experience in driving change and innovation within complex technology environments.
As an expert in machine learning and artificial intelligence, Sanjay understands the disruptive potential of technology innovation. “I ended up taking the role because I knew the power of technology to transform businesses,” said Sanjay. “Running an enterprise IT at this scale is something I’ve never done before, and I thought it would be really interesting to learn a whole new part of technology ecosystem outside of pure product development.”
Amid the technology transformation, Sanjay is excited to see CDW’s progress in terms of modernizing our capabilities. During his time at CDW, he’s worked to build and deploy new tools to sellers, launch hybrid cloud infrastructure and transition toward a global workforce model.
Looking to the future, Sanjay looks forward to leveraging emerging technology to help transform the way we work internally and serve CDW’s customers and partners. “We believe technology is a key enabler to our strategy,” he said. “So, if you think about our strategy being the rocket ship, taking CDW to new destinations, technology is the rocket fuel that powers the booster engines.”
– CDW Team
Explore technology careers at CDW.
Meet Sanjay Sood, Chief Technology Officer at CDW! With over 20 years of experience driving innovative change within complex tech environments, Sanjay is responsible for establishing CDW’s future technology vision and strategic direction. From building leading-edge platforms to empowering our coworkers, he’s proud to leverage industry-leading technology to transform the way we work.
“We believe technology is the key enabler to our strategy... if you think about the strategy being the rocket ship, taking CDW to new destinations, technology is the rocket fuel that powers the booster engines.”
– Sanjay Sood, Chief Technology Officer at CDW
How It Started
Growing up in Downers Grove, a suburb in Chicago, Sanjay’s passion for technology started early. He built a small business called The Computer Guru as a teenager, where he fixed and set up computers. Thanks to his love for tech, he was hired at his high school over the summer to set up their computer labs.
In addition to computer troubleshooting, Sanjay spent time cutting lawns and working at his family’s auto repair shop. He repaired cars over the summer before starting his first “real” job at Best Buy selling computers.
Fast forward, Sanjay went to Northwestern University intending to study medicine, but realized he didn’t want to become a doctor within the first few weeks of college. From there, he pivoted to his core passion, earning both a bachelor’s degree and a Ph.D. in computer science from Northwestern where his research focused on contextual information systems and sentiment analysis.
After graduating, Sanjay moved to the West Coast with his wife, where he worked for multiple tech start-ups. He was the start-up CTO for Allvoices, a citizen-based news company, before shifting his focus to the corporate world with AT&T Interactive.
How It’s Going
In 2014, with two children, Sanjay and his wife returned to the Midwest, where he worked at HERE Technologies for over five years working on digital mapping and autonomous driving. Then, in 2020, he joined CDW, bringing extensive experience in driving change and innovation within complex technology environments.
As an expert in machine learning and artificial intelligence, Sanjay understands the disruptive potential of technology innovation. “I ended up taking the role because I knew the power of technology to transform businesses,” said Sanjay. “Running an enterprise IT at this scale is something I’ve never done before, and I thought it would be really interesting to learn a whole new part of technology ecosystem outside of pure product development.”
Amid the technology transformation, Sanjay is excited to see CDW’s progress in terms of modernizing our capabilities. During his time at CDW, he’s worked to build and deploy new tools to sellers, launch hybrid cloud infrastructure and transition toward a global workforce model.
Looking to the future, Sanjay looks forward to leveraging emerging technology to help transform the way we work internally and serve CDW’s customers and partners. “We believe technology is a key enabler to our strategy,” he said. “So, if you think about our strategy being the rocket ship, taking CDW to new destinations, technology is the rocket fuel that powers the booster engines.”
– CDW Team
