John Orleans
Information Security Leader
Chicago,IL
Summary
Accomplished Information Security Leader with progressive industry background and decisive, collaborative leadership style. Offers strategic planning abilities, background in change management and forward-thinking mindset. Ready for challenges focused on meeting future demands and navigating complex regulatory environments.
Overview
29
29
years of professional experience
Work History
Vice President of Security Architecture and Engine
Epiq Global
10.2025 - Current
- Responsible for Identity and Security Engineering teams, solutions, and programs for over 8500 employees in a multi-national organization spanning several regulatory domains (technology, privacy, healthcare, financial, government, etc.)
- Led initiatives to move projects to programs across the Security and Technology space
- Collaborated with C-level leadership to develop strategic initiatives and long term goals.
- Established a culture of continuous improvement, fostering innovation and driving sustainable growth across the organization.
- Built roadmaps to consolidate and expand security tooling across the enterprise in order to facilitate strategic planning by the technology and business organizations
- Implemented an integrated security information center that allowed business and development teams to view configuration issues and security threats to web applications in real-time
- Implemented automated access provisioning system that shortened typical access requests from 2 weeks to 15 minutes
- Spearheaded final push within the organization to remove standing privileged access using a variety of just-in-time privileged access management tools, moving coverage from 80% to 100% in one quarter, ahead of projections
Principle, Secure Cloud Platform Architecture
Avanade
05.2021 - 10.2025
- Solutioned, advised, consulted, and/or led $73.3M of pipeline in FY2025, $33.5M converted to projects
- Joined a stalled cloud migration project at a global healthcare provider to architect and implement their cloud security programs. Restarted projects and helped rollback months of product release delays. Worked with their security teams to build policies and templates for future efforts
- Driving factor in $25m investment and contract for a large retail operator's digital transformation project
- Created and drove an application security program for a Fortune 50 company's custom application team, moving them from an ad hoc, manual approach to an automated, pipeline-integrated solution
- Created secure cloud architecture, policies, and oversight for complex models in GCC-High, manufacturing, critical healthcare, and finance across multiple regulatory domains
- Managed Security Services Lead - MW
- Secure Cloud & Networks Solution Lead - MW
Assistant Vice President, Information Security
Mesirow Financial
09.2017 - 05.2021
- Managed Data Loss Prevention (DLP) project from vendor selection to full deployment. The final solution was highly-customized, helped achieve regulatory responsibilities, and kept false-positives to less than 5%
- Acted as technical lead for global privacy issues (GDPR, NYCRR, CCPA, DPA), working alongside business units to define, discover, and catalog their compliance and needs. Assessed IT and process-based solutions to help them meet those needs
- Spearheaded firm's Digital Transformation project. Designed and implemented Identity and Access Management (IAM), integrated Single Sign-On (SSO), Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA / 2FA), and automated provisioning / de-provisioning for users in SaaS applications.
Education
Bachelor of Arts - Mathematics
Barat College
Lake Forest, IL 05.2001 -
Skills
Team leadership
Strategic planning
Coaching and mentoring
Decision-making
Policy and procedure development
Complex Problem-solving
Budget oversight
Public speaking
Regulation and frameworks management
Certification
Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP)
Timeline
Vice President of Security Architecture and Engine
Epiq Global
10.2025 - Current
Principle, Secure Cloud Platform Architecture
Avanade
05.2021 - 10.2025
Assistant Vice President, Information Security
Mesirow Financial
09.2017 - 05.2021
Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP)
04-2017
Bachelor of Arts - Mathematics
Barat College
05.2001 -