Meet the transformational CIOs who are currently leading their businesses into the digital future.
Explore their most important initiatives, leadership goals, and how they see their roles evolving in the near future.
This time, in CIO Insights, we feature Carina Harders from Lantmännen Unibake.
I am leading people, not machines
Carina Harders, CIO of Lantmännen Unibake, champions talent development to drive digital transformation and AI adoption across the global bakery group.
When Carina Harders joined Lantmännen Unibake nearly five years ago, she stepped into a fast-moving industry with a clear mission: accelerate a large-scale ERP program. But standing at the heart of a global bakery business, she quickly saw that she needed to lay a stronger foundation:
‘Unibake had not fully standardized or harmonized ways of working across our bakeries. As a result, new complexities emerged, making the implementation of a global ERP program a major undertaking. So, the first couple of years were dedicated to establishing that foundation.’
As if her hands weren’t already full, Carina also embarked on the inevitable journey to the cloud:
‘We could not continue relying on legacy on-premises applications to drive key elements of our business. It was essential to explain why the shift was necessary, what it entailed, and what it would require from us. Once we secured support within the organization, we initiated that journey, marking the second wave of Unibake’s digital transformation. However, we never set out to move everything to the cloud. Instead, we aimed to migrate key applications to leverage scalability and new capabilities. Since we are a production company with a significant technological presence in our bakeries, some on-premises technology will always remain. However, starting the cloud journey was crucial to capitalizing on its benefits for our core applications.’
AI must move beyond being a simple tool
Without the cloud, AI is not an option, and so Carina is now in the middle of the third wave of transformation at Unibake:
‘Our IT landscape remains somewhat fragmented due to the ongoing global ERP transformation. To address this, we have developed a global data platform that is accessible to all business units, regardless of their ERP status. This allows us to start offering new capabilities across the company, ensuring alignment while enabling AI-driven insights. To us, AI presents two major opportunities: one is personal productivity, driven by generative AI tools, enhancing efficiency and customer service. But even more significant is the opportunity in business value creation. To harness this potential, we are launching a strategic initiative titled ‘From Personal Productivity to Profitability.’ Because AI must move beyond being a simple tool and become a driver of top-line growth and bottom-line optimization. Achieving this requires building awareness, competence, and experience within the organization.’
While global consolidation has transformed other sectors, the baking industry remains fragmented and localized, which could give Unibake a market advantage:
‘That structure presents significant growth opportunities for us. As the second-largest bakery group in Europe, with a presence in the US and Australia, we have the scale and resources to leverage AI and digital transformation in ways that smaller, local competitors cannot. Our challenge is to progressively introduce new technologies while ensuring that our workforce understands and adopts them effectively.’
“I am a firm believer in nudging’”
For Carina, the roadmap to that adaptation is highly structured:
‘We start with productivity enhancements, fostering organizational learning, and then gradually integrate AI into core business processes. From my perspective, that is the only sequence of steps that will unlock significant value and strengthen our competitive position in the market. I am a firm believer in nudging as a method for driving change. It helps build capabilities that can take you to the next level and beyond.
That, in essence, is what makes this job so interesting: My team and I have one of the broadest touchpoints across the company. Every function—whether operations, finance, commercial, or HR—relies on IT in some way. Additionally, because we have centralized many processes and applications, even our business units depend on the work we do.
As CIO, I am deeply involved across the entire value chain, constantly engaging with various units and stakeholders. It is crystal clear to me every day that I can only succeed through the people I work with. I am leading people, not machines. When it comes to AI, there is a tendency to focus too much on the technology. However, to succeed with AI, you need people and their capabilities. That is why the first steps involve productivity tools, building awareness, and fostering confidence within the organization step by step.’
It’s so much fun to be a CIO
Finding and communicating that balance between a focus on innovation for one group of employees and “keeping the lights on” and ensuring operational stability for another is very important to Carina:
‘It’s important to emphasize the value of operational stability. Life cycle management, cybersecurity, and infrastructure maintenance are critical functions that keep the business running. I make sure to highlight this in conversations and in my daily leadership so that both aspects of IT – operations and transformation – are recognized and valued. Because we can’t do one without the other. That’s why I think it’s so much fun to be a CIO, because I have an organization with me, with all kinds of people, talents, and skills, that can make things happen in all corners of the company.’
Openness to change keeps us CIO’s ahead as leaders
As the transformation roadmap at Unibake and in other businesses unfolds, it also demands a different kind of leadership from the CIO’s:
‘My role now spans the entire value chain, influencing how we interact with suppliers and customers. You need a solid understanding of a broad spectrum of areas and the ability to collaborate with specialists in different aspects of IT. It increasingly involves bringing the right people together and ensuring they have the necessary competencies. Because our field evolves so rapidly, we must be at the forefront of leadership, adapting to new ways of working and engaging with talent from different generations and mindsets. Tech leaders especially understand that each generation brings unique skills and expectations. Our industry was an early adopter of agile methodologies, which transformed how businesses operate. That kind of adaptability is crucial when welcoming new generations and their distinct perspectives and talents. This openness to change keeps us CIOs ahead as leaders.’
It’s about making yourself relevant
Beyond adapting her leadership to new generations and mindsets, Carina sees CIOs playing an increasingly significant and visible role in executive discussions:
‘CIOs play a crucial role in facilitating conversations within leadership teams. Many executive teams still lack deep digital expertise, so CIOs can help bridge that gap. Whether or not you have a formal seat at the executive table is less important than actively driving those conversations. It depends on the organization. But to me, what matters is making IT relevant and demonstrating its value. If I can influence decisions and ensure we’re moving in the right direction, then I am fulfilling my role effectively. It’s about making yourself relevant. I must dedicate time to strategic discussions while also managing IT operations. A CIO’s role is unique in that sense: we’re responsible for keeping the lights on while also driving transformation. You cannot focus on just one aspect; it must be a balance.’
“It starts with you“
To Carina, achieving that balance as a CIO also involves constant personal development:
‘I have worked with a coach in positive psychology, from whom I have learned a lot about how the brain works, what drives behavior, and how to influence change. But most importantly, I have learned how I impact people around me and how to work on my own behavior. It starts with you. That insight has inspired my leadership tremendously. I believe every person has a spectrum of potential. Not everyone can be a prima ballerina or a world champion in golf. But if I am the best golfer I can be, I am making the most of my potential. The same applies to leadership: some people have more or different potential than others. That is why focusing on talent and developing people’s strengths is so important. People who feel seen for their talents simply perform better. You cannot create high performance if you do not recognize and respect people’s abilities.’
Continuously learning and developing her own talent has been a focus for Carina throughout her career, including educating herself with a board education, building networks, and keeping up to speed by leaning on both professional and personal connections:
‘The CIO Transformation Board is a great place to get inspiration and sometimes confirmation and reassurance in the fact that it is not an easy task we as CIOs have in our day and age. We face similar challenges and are good at supporting each other.
I also have a strong personal network and have been fortunate, to have had two central people in my life to guide me in my younger years. Unfortunately, they are not with us anymore, but it supports me to this day, to have confidence in what I do. It has also helped that I am genuinely an optimist, and that I know the success of any given project can come down to language, perception, and how you go about it.
That’s why I am also an optimist when it comes to one of my ambitions for the upcoming years: to get IT even more on the strategic agenda in Unibake. We need to further the understanding of what technology can do for our business while building an even stronger team to take it forward, including our new teams in Poland and Estonia. We have already come a long way, so I am confident we will get there. Step by step.’
The CIO Transformation Board
In the Danish ICT Industry Association (IT-Branchen), we have the CIO Transformation Board, which brings together the most visionary CIOs from Denmark’s large and medium-sized companies. These are CIOs from businesses where digitalization is a strategic part of the business — but where there is also a desire to do more than just digitalize.
We aim not only to highlight Denmark’s most talented CIOs and share experiences and best practices across industries, but also to set the agenda in the media and with politicians regarding Denmark’s and the business sector’s digital future.
The CIO Transformation Board is created for those who also want to help find the new balance between people and technology. For those who have a stance and want to help influence our green transition, address the skills shortage, and strengthen growth in Denmark.
