Chris O'Brien

Chris leverages over 30 years of consulting experience developing and implementing winning strategies for large institutions, including energy providers and local and national governments, facing critical and large-scale transformation, modernization and change management initiatives.  

Combining his visionary strengths with his client focus, Chris specializes in helping clients successfully address the existential challenges they face, such as reimagining the urban environment, decarbonizing their operations or fleets, attracting and retaining talent, implementing transformative technologies and improving customers’ and citizens’ experiences.  

During his career, Chris has worked with the 20 largest US states, the top 15 cities, several national governments and multiple energy providers. He is the executive sponsors of the Guidehouse Workday practice for the implementation of a transformative Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) platform services currently leveraged by multiple cities, states, corporations and utilities. 

Before joining Guidehouse, Chris served as the CIO for the city of Chicago for six years, helping Mayor Richard Daley revitalize the third-largest city in the US. During this time, Chris worked across his Chicago colleagues to implement the country’s first 311 customer call center and deploy a comprehensive ERP system, while also launcing innovative tools to connect citizens with their government and cultivate social trust.