Horizons Fall 2013

24 HORIZONS Denis Edwards (B.S., Computer Information Systems, ’01) looks out the windows of his office on the 62nd floor of Chicago’s Aon Center and admires his view of skyscrapers, Gold Coast neighborhoods, and the sparkling blue waters of Lake Michigan. He reaches below his desk and pulls out a travel-pack guitar from a black case. “I try to play every day and can take it when I travel. It fits quite nicely in the overhead bin,” Edwards said. “I’ll play it here in the office, usually when everyone else has gone home. I can sit and think and strum the guitar. It’s relaxing.” Those are a few minutes of grace notes for a man who finds himself in the corporate pressure cooker a long way from Nova Southeastern University and his home in Florida. In January 2013, Edwards was named executive vice president and global chief information officer at Edelman, the world’s largest public relations firm with 4,800 employees and affiliates in more than 30 cities. Edwards oversees Edelman’s information technology systems and infrastructure, including internal and client- facing solutions. “My job is to provide leadership to the people who keep our systems running and the people who can help grow our business,” said Edwards, 53, who grew up near Lakeland, Florida. “It’s my role to have a vision for how Edelman lever- ages technology to do the things that make us efficient and profitable—such as leveraging social media to shape opinion to drive brand awareness for our clients.” Edwards’ career path includes stops as a senior executive with ManpowerGroup, a workforce solutions provider; Cadbury-Schweppes, the world’s biggest confectionery company; PricewaterhouseCoopers; and Marriott Interna- tional. His career arc, however, has been anything but conventional. Edwards began his undergraduate studies at NSU when he was 35 and already a vice president for Alliance Entertainment, a Coral Springs, Florida, firm that pioneered music Internet Web sites. He wanted to earn a master’s degree in computer science, but when he started applying to colleges, he discovered the bachelor’s degree he had earned years earlier was from an institution that was nationally accredited versus regionally accredited. He had to start all over. Edwards and his wife, Christine, a graphic artist, were already living in Coral Springs, “so NSU was a great fit. A lot of the NSU students would sort of use me as a mentor. I would spend time with them.” Back to School Edwards would approach his professors the first day of class and explain his background and purpose for being back in school. “If it was a course where I felt like I already had the knowledge,” he said, “I would ask the professors to take a little different approach with me, give me something that would challenge me more than the normal curriculum. Having me as a student was also good from their perspective, because they could say, ‘Hey, Denis, is this right? Is this what you’re seeing in the real world?’ ” From 30-Something Student to Skyscraping Success BY DAVE WIECZOREK Denis Edwards (center) and his team oversee Edelman’s information technology systems.