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Chris Isaacson

Executive Vice President, Chief Information Officer, CBOE Holdings

Chris Isaacson is chief information officer at CBOE Holdings, joining the firm in 2017 as part of the Bats Global Markets acquisition. Based in Kansas City, Isaacson is responsible for ensuring CBOE is an innovative, world-class leader in technology, overseeing all technology and electronic trading operations, including technology strategy, software engineering and quality, IT infrastructure and the trade desk.

A founding Bats employee in 2005, Isaacson played a major role in developing the firm into an innovative, world-class technology and markets powerhouse, leading expansion into multiple asset classes and geographies. In 2015 alone, Bats moved or launched eight of its 10 markets while simultaneously introducing new trading, listing and product innovations in the U.S. and Europe. This was followed by the successful Bats initial public offering on the Bats BZX Exchange in April 2016.

Isaacson began his career as a software engineer at publicly traded Cerner Corp., a healthcare information systems supplier. He was later instrumental in the architecture and implementation of the original Bats trading platform while starting and overseeing operations, including the trade desk, working closely with customers trading on Bats.  Previously, he was a software developer at Tradebot Systems, a broker-dealer, from 2003 to 2005.

A frequent speaker on panels at key industry events, he has consistently been ranked as one of the top technology professionals in financial services by Institutional Investor, which placed him at number 2 in its "Trading Tech 40" in 2017. 

Isaacson holds a bachelor's degree in information systems with a minor in math from Nebraska Wesleyan University, Lincoln, Neb., and was a two-time Academic All-American as a decathlete. He earned an MBA at the Raikes School of Computer Science and Management from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, where he currently serves on the Advisory Board. Isaacson also is on the board of the Kansas City Tech Council, a member of the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Computing and Engineering Executive Council, and is involved in leadership at his church.

Isaacson holds Series 4, 7, 24, 27, 55, 63, and 65 licenses.