Sr. Director IT · VP IT · CIO-Track
Currently — Sr. Director, Global IT · GoTo Technologies · Fort Lauderdale, FL · EN · DE
20+ years building technology organizations others didn't think were possible — during M&As, security breaches, pandemics, and growth cycles. Across Americas, EMEA, and APAC.
Currently asking the industry
“If ‘AI fights AI’ becomes a contest of compute, who defends the mid-market?”
Read the piece →Featured
Latest · May 2026 · Gartner Executive Summit
"Sat in a Gartner session. Slide: ‘AI fights AI.’ I raised my hand. The room got quiet."
The Series · 4 doors in · Open-source toolkit
"A real love story. A real piece of software. A real way for anyone to do it too."
Invited & Recognized By
Quantified Impact
Full remote infrastructure deployed for 4,000+ employees during COVID-19. 65,000+ monthly call sessions sustained.
AI-driven ticket deflection via Tech-E, GoTo's internal AI assistant. Built and launched through the GoPilots program.
M&A infrastructure separation across 30+ countries, 600+ users. Including LastPass carve-out during active security breach.
IT NPS improvement — from ~40 to 65 — through communication reform, not technology changes.
Technology portfolio owned end-to-end — infrastructure, platforms, digital workplace, 40+ countries.
CSAT improvement from AI service operations. Tech-E reduced Tier 1 load while raising satisfaction simultaneously.
VPN dependency eliminated. Zero Trust rollout to 3,500+ endpoints across 40 countries. Zero productivity disruption.
MTTR reduction across EMEA. LogicMonitor deployment enabled 42% faster root cause analysis.
Annualized cost savings delivered. $1M+ from MPLS retirement alone. $125K+ from single SmartNet renewal renegotiation.
About
Sr. Director, Global IT — Enterprise Engineering · Digital Workplace · Platform Strategy
GoTo Technologies · 2021–Present
Every role Christian Merkel has held came during a transformation — a spin-off, a merger, a separation, a crisis, a growth phase. That's not a pattern of bad timing. It's a pattern of being the person organizations call when the situation is complex and the stakes are high.
Manages the technology portfolio with P&L discipline — teams that run lean, scale fast, and make the cost-center framing irrelevant. Equally comfortable in a boardroom briefing and a vendor escalation call.
Bilingual English/German. Based in Fort Lauderdale, FL, with deep operational fluency across US, European, and APAC executive environments. Prosci® Certified Change Practitioner. Certified External Data Protection Officer (GDPR). Operates under SOX and ISO 27001 without friction.
Selected Work
Not a list of responsibilities. A record of things actually built.
Moved Corp IT from Samanage onto GoToResolve and formalized the team as GoTo's Customer Zero — embedded first users who feed real-world feedback directly into the product roadmap. 233 feature requests and bug reports submitted. 46% of Ticketing submissions and 57% of Asset Management submissions integrated into the product. IT Tools from IT People, for IT people.
Deployed Zscaler-based Zero Trust architecture to 3,500+ endpoints across 40 countries. 100% adoption. VPN dependency fully eliminated. Zero disruption to employee productivity. Executed alongside infrastructure modernization while the business scaled.
Acting de facto CIO during the 2022 LastPass security breach — with no CIO in seat. Coordinated infrastructure containment with Mandiant forensic teams, briefed board-level stakeholders, managed the carve-out separation in parallel. Infrastructure separated in under 60 days across 30+ countries.
Led IT execution across every major transaction: Citrix→GetGo spin-off (10 countries, 120 days), GetGo→LogMeIn merger (1,100+ users unified), Bold360 divestiture (600+ users, 30 countries, 60 days), LastPass carve-out, Miradore integration. Built the Infrastructure Autonomy Playbook — pre-decided separation answers used across every subsequent deal.
Retired 10+ datacenter locations down to 3 global hubs. Decommissioned MPLS in favour of SD-WAN and SIP-based cloud communications. Migrated 2,400+ users from legacy PBX/Cisco to GoToConnect cloud telephony across 12 countries. Reduced telecom OpEx by $1.04M+ annually.
Raised internal IT satisfaction by 25 points — not through technology upgrades but through communication reform. First response time discipline, proactive status updates, resolution quality tracking, and eliminating auto-generated "resolved" messages. Introduced IT Newsletter and TED Talk Series as culture-building transparency tools.
Leadership Lens
IT NPS went from 40 to 65 — not through a new tool, not through a platform migration. Through communication reform. First-response discipline, honest status updates, an IT Newsletter, skip-level conversations with every person in the org. Treating the employee experience of IT as a design problem, not a technical one. When people feel heard and informed, satisfaction follows. The technology was already fine.
GoPilots took that same logic further. Moved Corp IT fully onto GoToResolve — GoTo's own AI-powered product — and made the team Customer Zero. Running it at full scale, feeding real friction back into product development. 233 submissions. 46% of ticketing and 57% of asset management contributions integrated into the product. IT as the first and most demanding user of the AI tools it recommends to everyone else.
September 2022. No CIO in seat. The LastPass security breach hit. Coordinated the enterprise response across IT, Business Systems, and HRIS — alongside Mandiant forensic teams, legal counsel, and communications advisors. Partnered with the CISO through C-suite briefings. Completed the full infrastructure, identity, and telecom carve-out in under 60 days. The separation playbooks had been written years earlier. That's the only reason the pace was possible.
"I am only as good as my teams — and the symbiosis between us."Start a conversation
Recognition & Visibility
Returning member of the Evanta (Gartner) Florida CIO & CISO Inner Circle — three consecutive years inside the invite-only peer network for senior technology and security executives across the region.
Raised the asymmetry question to the room: if “AI fights AI” becomes a contest of compute budgets, who defends the mid-market? The vendors, analysts, and CISOs in the room had no clean answer — including me. That’s the actual gap.
Read the piece →
Recognized for formalizing IT's role as the embedded first customer for GoToResolve — turning internal product use into a structured feedback channel that shaped the product roadmap. 233 submissions, 46–57% integrated.
Selected alongside private equity leadership (Francisco Partners) and GoTo product executives for a public conversation on how IT leaders move from reactive management to architecting business outcomes.
Featured speaker on how technology leaders quantify, communicate, and prove the strategic value IT delivers — and why the "cost center" framing is a communication failure, not a financial one.
German-language executive webinar on positioning IT as a strategic business partner — how IT leaders earn influence, communicate value, and stay visible in organizations where IT is still seen as overhead.
Watch webinar →Focus Areas
Three concentrations where leadership, technology, and business change meet — with the certifications and operating depth to back each one.
Operating Principles
Not borrowed frameworks. Lessons paid for — in M&A integrations, security breaches, and the long quiet seasons between.
Every M&A separation ran faster because the Infrastructure Autonomy Playbook existed before any deal closed. Good IT leaders pre-decide the answers so execution time is execution — not planning.
The more clearly IT connects architecture, service quality, and operating choices to business outcomes, the more meaningful its seat at the table becomes. You can't contain what you haven't mapped. And you can't lead what you haven't explained.
IT tools built by IT people, for IT people. GoPilots is GoTo's Customer Zero initiative — where the IT org runs its own products at enterprise scale and feeds that experience into product development. 233 feature requests submitted. 46% integrated into the product. That's influence through credibility, not lobbying.
Strong execution is a byproduct of clear ownership, honest communication, and teams that feel trusted enough to improve the system around them. It is not a byproduct of surveillance, heroics, or over-reporting.
Disagreement is data. The teams that move fastest are the ones where people say the hard thing early and then commit without resentment. That starts with the leader modeling it first, every time.
Tech-E didn't deflect 28% of tickets because the AI was good. It worked because we defined success metrics before deployment, automated the boring stuff first, and built feedback loops that made the model better over time.
Career Arc
Acting CIO during the LastPass breach. Learned: playbooks written years before make impossible timelines possible.
Bold360 divestiture, 600+ users across 30 countries in 60 days. The technology was always the easy part.
First M&A separation. Six more would follow — and each ran faster because of what I wrote down here.
20+ environments, five years. Every operating model carries a fingerprint. You learn to read them fast.
Published Work & Media
"Today is ticketed. Tomorrow is productized."
Featured alongside Mike Barry (Managing Operating Partner, Francisco Partners), Joseph George (GM, ITSG), and moderated by Christopher Savio. The conversation: how IT leaders shift from operating systems to architecting outcomes — and why the leaders who win will measure success in business impact, not activity.
Invited participant in IDC's TechTalk Summit executive dinner series — peer-level conversations on enterprise technology strategy, AI implementation, and the shifting IT leadership landscape.
View post →Featured panelist on how technology leaders quantify, communicate, and prove the strategic value IT brings to the wider business — moving the conversation from cost to investment.
View on LinkedIn →How technology leaders communicate value, position IT strategically, and connect operational work to business outcomes. German-language executive webinar.
Watch webinar →Digital workspace scale-up, SaaS consolidation, support modernization, and trust-based leadership — through the lens of how an internal IT organization evolves under real pressure.
Read article →Partnering IT with product and development teams so internal needs help shape tools that are better for employees and customers alike. The GoPilots framework in practice.
View post →Invited speaker for Strategy Insights' Senior IT & IT Security Roundtable (hosted privately), addressing C-level and Director-level peers on realising digital transformation and innovation through collaboration.
View post →Recent Writing
Live up top. The rest I'm still wrestling with — no content team, no ghostwriter, just the work.
Upcoming
In the pipeline.
Advisory, executive search, and speaking — reach out directly. Replies within 24 hours.
