Northwestern Mutual Appoints Jeff Sippel to Chief Information Officer

Northwestern Mutual today announced the appointment of Jeff Sippel to executive vice president and chief information officer. In his role, Sippel will head the technology organization responsible for advancing the company’s technology architecture, infrastructure and cloud services, reliability, service support, and information risk/cybersecurity. He also serves on the company’s senior executive leadership team.

“Jeff’s extensive technology background coupled with his successful leadership in accelerating our client experience strategy over the last few years make him the ideal fit for this role,” said John Schlifske, chairman, president and CEO, Northwestern Mutual. “His industry experiences and focus on building technology that is innovative, secure and reliable will continue to have a meaningful impact on our clients, advisors and company in the years ahead.”

Sippel previously served as vice president, client experience, leading digital strategy and financial planning strategies, since joining the company in 2019.

Prior to joining Northwestern Mutual, Sippel held the role of chief technology officer and chief strategy officer at Acorns, a financial technology and financial services company that specializes in micro-investing and robo-investing, leading the company’s technology engineering, infrastructure, data science and security. He also served as chief technology officer at Edo Interactive, where he was responsible for the product management, engineering and analytics capabilities that developed transactional data analysis capabilities for many of the biggest financial institutions in the world, such as Visa, Citibank, and Capital One.

Sippel holds his MBA from Northwestern University and a B.S. in industrial engineering from the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

This new appointment follows the departure of Neal Sample who recently stepped down from his role as executive vice president and chief information officer to pursue new opportunities.

“I want to thank Neal for his partnership and leadership in driving our business forward and positioning us for the future,” Schlifske said. “Neal was instrumental in advancing our technology infrastructure, reliability, data and information security, while attracting top talent.”