"Your most valuable intellectual property
is not your patents. It is not your technology.
It is your people" - Joshua Candamo

Chief Information Officer, Ensurem

Tampa, Florida

Joshua Candamo, PHD

Josh Candamo is the Chief Information Officer (CIO) for Ensurem, overseeing the development of the next generation of insurance technology, direct to consumer products, and call center innovation. Josh joined Ensurem in 2019, helping it become one of the fastest-growing privately held companies in the entire Tampa Bay area (Ranked #1 in 2020 and #5 in 2021 by the Tampa Bay Business Journal) and its sale to the private equity group 777 Partners in 2021 after surpassing $40 million in revenue. In 2021, Josh received the prestigious Tampa Bay Business Journal's CIO of the Year Award for his work at Ensurem. Under Josh's leadership, the company overhauled and scaled the entire technology organization from a small startup to an enterprise level operation. Josh led the company to reach major milestones such as creating the underlying technology for the first-of-its-kind $100M credit facility backed by real-time, policy-level financial information for Medicare policies, and leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI) to provide exceptional customer service, retention and best-in-class compliance while driving rapid growth.

Josh's career in software development spans over 20 years, including multiple roles in technology leadership, entrepreneurship, consulting, and both back-end and front-end development. Prior to joining Ensurem in 2019, he was the Director of Development at Accusoft, a 25+ year-old company that creates document and imaging tools for developers. Josh focused on streamlining software development across Accusoft's largest division, starting the journey to leverage AI for automated invoice recognition, and streamlining product releases (including a 75% release time reduction for the most important product); all while increasing employee satisfaction by 177% with the implementation of a compressed week schedule with no loss of productivity. Josh was also the President at K9 Bytes Software (now K9 Sky), a leading provider of technology for the pet care industry. At K9 Bytes, Josh helped the industry modernize intake practices with many technology innovations, such as the first-in-the-industry self-serving kiosk for boarding kennel facilities, and the first mobile device application for routine medication and diet servicing. The K9 Koordinator, K9 Bytes' flagship product, known for its intuitive and easy to use interface, was the top choice for pet care management software in many countries around the world. In 2011, Josh led the company to a successful exit with the acquisition from Epazz, Inc.

Josh holds a PhD degree in Computer Science from the University of South Florida, specializing in different areas of AI such as pattern recognition and image processing. In addition to his PhD dissertation, he published 6 first-authored, peer-reviewed publications from his research and development work in several prestigious International journals and conferences in the area of pattern recognition and Unmanned Aerial Vehicle navigation.