DESPITE BEING DEEPLY INGRAINED IN THE TECH WORLD FOR 20 YEARS NOW, MIKE FAIOLA IS A PEOPLE PERSON, THROUGH AND THROUGH.
His penchant for putting people first is what made Innovative Solutions — a place where technology is a human endeavor — a natural fit for Mike when he left his 15-year career at Marsh & McLennan to join the Innovative leadership team in 2016.
As Marsh & McLennan’s Market Technology Manager, Mike managed technology for more than a dozen companies in the organization’s portfolio, including entities within New York, Michigan, Vermont, and Canada.
Travel, management, and strategy were big parts of his job he enjoyed, but the defining moment for Mike came when he was selected to attend a 2014 London-based internal customer service training. The training ignited a passion for cultivating internal relationships as positive and productive as external ones — a skill Mike has honed and brought with him everywhere he goes, and a skill that is now put into practice daily in his work at Innovative.
Today, Mike leads a team of brilliant minds and hearts of gold with a roster of 60+ clients as Vice President Information Technology. Still in the thick of it, he interfaces regularly with clients, spending significant time on site helping businesses understand their use of technology to make their operations run more efficiently. He finds it ultimately gratifying when he hears from clients that they can sleep better, knowing they can provide a better level of service to the clients they serve thanks to technology.
Internally, it’s Mike’s goal to facilitate an engaging workplace where each and every one of his team members is focused on serving each other first.
Mike’s knowledge early on that he wanted to work in tech but stay on the people side of things lead him to earn a degree in Business Management at Keuka College. From there, he spent a year at Paychex and one at a local ISP before joining Marsh & McLennan.
A native of Seneca Falls who now calls Canandaigua home for him, his wife, and his son and daughter, Mike doesn’t enjoy sitting still. An active participant in the community, Mike is the vice chair of the Canandaigua Town Republican Committee, and sits on the Ontario County Republican Executive Committee. He also coaches and plays lacrosse, and defines his “me” time as his time spent running, biking, and swimming in training for the triathlon he’s now completed twice.
Mike’s life motto is simple: Work hard, play hard. It’s an ethos he takes from his late Grandpa Ken, who lived every moment of his life and continues to inspire Mike to do the same. Yet despite his need for constant motion, Mike’s happiest when he’s sitting on the back of his boat with his feet in Canandaigua Lake and a Genny Light in hand, staring at Kershaw Park as Jimmy Buffett or Dave Matthews play.
For Mike, companies that truly care both professionally and personally about their employees, their clients, and their colleagues seemed like a pipe dream. Since stepping into his leadership role at Innovative, he’s seen it as an exciting and humbling experience, describing his opportunity to help shape the organization and empower the people within it as life changing.