Parag Agrawal Joins Fanatics As CIO
Parag Agrawal has joined Fanatics Holdings as chief information officer, a new role for the sports apparel and memorabilia retailer, manufacturer, and licensee.
Previously CIO of Chobani, Agrawal will report to Fanatics EVP and CFO Glenn Schiffman and lead the company’s internal digital systems transformation, including accounting, financial planning and analysis and human resources.
He’s tasked with developing a dedicated IT infrastructure for the company’s corporate entity, as well as enhancing global IT capabilities across the Fanatics’ enterprise in partnership with the business.
Agrawal, a CGT CIO of the Year Award winner and a member of the CGT/RIS Executive Council, spent nine years at Chobani, joining as VP of IT for supply chain and finance in 2014. While at Chobani, he led the company’s front- and back-end business transformation, including migrating all supply chain, sales, and finance functions onto a single platform and shifting all corporate systems to the cloud.
He’s also held roles at Materne North America and Avon, and Schiffman pointed to Agrawal’s experience as being ideally suited to both enhance its current systems and adopt new ones.
“Building the leading global digital sports platform and delivering more value to our fans and partners requires ongoing investments to our systems to ensure we continue to make timely, data-driven decisions and that our employees have access to the latest technology and tools to make their jobs easier,” Schiffman said in a statement.
Indeed, in an interview with CGT in 2021, Agrawal noted that one cannot become a CIO by tech knowledge alone: “You need to know the business as good as the business knows the business. That’s the key to success.”
