Douglas T. Parrish has been named senior vice president, technology and chief information officer for the Walt Disney Internet Group. In his new position, Parrish is responsible for overseeing the technology platform, infrastructure and applications for The Walt Disney Co.'s Internet properties. This includes networking infrastructure, Web hosting and serving, applications and tool development, and advanced and new technologies development. Parrish joins The Walt Disney Internet Group from Polaroid Corp., where he served as chief information officer for the company's consumer imaging business and director of Polaroid's worldwide information technology and eBusiness strategy. While there, Parrish developed a three-year strategic plan to transform Polaroid information technology assets and capabilities into an eBusiness platform. He also repositioned Polaroid.com as a medium for dealer and end-consumer sales, marketing, commerce and customer service, creating a new technology architecture, improved content publishing capabilities and implementing e-commerce transaction processing. Prior to joining Polaroid in 1998, Parrish served as vice president, information services and chief information officer for three years at Nestle's Perrier Group of America, and also held a variety of information technology positions from 1981-1994 with the Campbell Soup Co. Parrish studied computer science and materials engineering at the University of Utah, and is co-author of the APPLICATION DEVELOPERS HANDBOOK FOR THE AS/400. Walt Disney Internet Group is one of five business units of The Walt Disney Co. and manages many of the most popular Web sites and services, including kids and families site Disney.com, sports site ESPN.com, broadcast network site ABC.com and news site ABCNEWS.com. Walt Disney Internet Group also produces Enhanced TV telecasts in conjunction with select ABC Television and ESPN programming and includes the catalog operations of The Walt Disney Co. and 19 Disney-branded international properties.
