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Rachel Linnemann, tecRacer CEO, Featured as Cover Story in CIO Times’ “Most Influential Women Leaders Driving Global Impact 2026”

We are proud to share that Rachel Linnemann, CEO of tecRacer, has been selected as the cover story of CIO Times’ prestigious edition, “The Most Influential Women Leaders Driving Global Impact 2026.”

The feature reflects a career defined by a single, consistent conviction: that technology, when done right, changes the competitive architecture of entire economies. Rachel brings over two decades of technology leadership to her role at tecRacer — spanning 55 countries, multiple industries, and senior positions at some of Europe’s most influential technology organisations. That breadth of experience, including deep exposure to the global hyperscaler landscape, is precisely what informed her decision to go all-in on AWS at tecRacer — not by default, but by deliberate, informed conviction.

Today, her mission is clear: to build Europe’s foremost AWS pure-player platform, combining generative AI, cloud engineering, digital sovereignty, and e-commerce performance into a single, scalable offering for enterprises across Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Portugal, and beyond.

The CIO Times recognition honours not only Rachel’s leadership, but the vision and hard work of the entire tecRacer team — and the belief we share that Europe does not have to play catch-up to stay competitive. The real opportunity lies in building world-class expertise at home.

Read the full interview at theciotimes.com — here are a few highlights:

On tecRacer’s focused AWS partnership:

“A transactional partnership is built on a contract. A strategic ecosystem relationship is built on a shared vision of what the market could become.”

“When you have seen all three platforms from the inside, you stop being agnostic out of habit and start making choices on conviction. AWS’s depth of services, its engineering culture of customer obsession, its partner co-investment model, and its European sovereign cloud commitment gave me the confidence to place a focused wager rather than spread across all three.”

“At tecRacer, our relationship with AWS is built on exactly this principle. We are not certified resellers who happen to carry the AWS badge. We are co-innovators in sovereign cloud architecture, generative AI deployment for regulated industries, and contact centre transformation through Amazon Connect. That depth of collaboration — built on the conscious choice to go deep rather than wide — is what creates differentiation that no price comparison can dissolve.

On generative AI as a strategic decision:

Three shifts stand out. First, the democratisation of computing power through public cloud: companies that would once have spent years and tens of millions building a data centre can now access elastic, enterprise-grade infrastructure on demand. Second, the emergence of data as a genuine competitive asset — not just a by-product of operations, but something to be designed for and monetised. And third, generative AI — which I believe is the most structurally disruptive of the three. It is not merely restructuring the cost curve of knowledge work; it is rewriting the rules of competitive advantage in real time. Organisations that treat genAI as a productivity tool are already behind. The ones that treat it as a strategic architecture decision — determining how their business model generates value — are the ones we are building for at tecRacer.

On leadership in the age of AI:

Leadership becomes more important, not less. As AI handles more of the analytical and operational work, the distinctly human contributions — judgment under uncertainty, ethical navigation, the ability to inspire and unite people around a vision, the courage to make decisions that data cannot fully resolve — become the scarce and differentiating resource.”

“I am deeply committed to being a practitioner, not just a commentator, on this transformation. I hold AWS certifications and actively work with Amazon Bedrock and agentic AI architectures — both in my own workflow and in shaping our client delivery methodology. I cannot credibly lead a company whose mission is cloud and AI transformation if I am not personally engaged with the technology.