Ken Piddington, Vice President & CIO at U.S. Silica, enters his second year on the Quest Board of Directors. When it comes to Digital Transformation, Strategy, and Innovation, Ken is a leader in the industry – an Award-Winning CIO recognized for his leadership and management effectiveness through IT innovation and an established Keynote Speaker. Recently elected by his board peers as an Officer At-Large, Ken serves on the Board’s Executive Committee and will lead the new Executive Programming Taskforce at Quest, where he will guide the development of specific executive programming initiatives and engagement plans for continued outreach.

U.S. Silica is a global industrial minerals and logistics leader specializing in mining, processing, and logistics. U.S. Silica uses JD Edwards Oracle products as their primary system-of-record component of cloud strategy (OCI) and database backend for other business-critical systems. Ken is responsible for providing executive leadership, strategic technology planning, and driving transformational change across all business segments, managing an IT team spread across the country. He has had the privilege of serving in multiple industries as a CIO or management consultant, including Oil & Gas, Energy, Logistics, Retail, Tourism and Restaurant & Food Services.

Ken brings extensive leadership experience across a diverse set of industries, an understanding of customers’ needs and his abilities in strategic planning. When asked what goals and objectives he would seek for Quest as a director, he said, “I believe Quest needs to be focused on new ways of delivering events, content and services in the new normal from the pandemic, including increased usage of activities by the membership and greater guidance on vendor participation.”

Ken sees the value of Quest as “making a positive impact on our company by adding value to the Oracle products we use every day to run and manage our business. The content, events, peer connections and networking has been fantastic and very valuable in helping us with our strategy and roadmap.” He added, “Leveraging the Quest community helped my team in the decision making and ultimate execution of moving from an on-premise JDE instance to our current state in OCI. Quest helped us make the best decision for our company and execute successfully on that decision saving us significant time and money.”

Ken attended Northeastern and Graceland Universities receiving degrees in Business Management & Leadership and Management Information Systems. He resides in Texas with his wife and two children.