About Erik

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Erik Surwill

Erik Surwill is an IT Director and technology executive with more than twenty-five years of experience designing, modernizing, and governing mission-critical IT environments in regulated healthcare settings.

He began his career in hands-on IT consulting and support, building a strong technical foundation in Cisco networking, security architecture, and voice systems. Over the past decade, Erik has advanced into executive IT leadership, where he oversees enterprise infrastructure, compliance programs, vendor governance, and strategic technology planning for a leading children’s mental health organization in Los Angeles.

In addition to his operational leadership, Erik provides fractional CIO and CISO advisory services to organizations under substantial regulatory, legal, and contractual pressure. His work resolves that pressure through impeccable architecture: environments that meet the relevant framework requirements, impose minimum complexity on the support staff who run them, and facilitate the collection of relevant audit data.

Erik specializes in regulated healthcare environments and has deep expertise in managing the complexities of HIPAA, HITECH, the 21st Century Cures Act, and California privacy regulations. He is particularly experienced in Los Angeles County and public-sector contractual alignment, translating complex exhibit language and compliance obligations into practical technical controls and operational workflows.

His executive portfolio includes:

  • SOC 2/ NIST/HIPAA crosswalk and control implementation

  • Vendor governance and contract negotiation leadership

  • Enterprise risk assessment and compliance program design

  • Cloud modernization and SASE architecture leadership

  • EHR platform strategy and regulatory integration oversight

  • ITIL-aligned service management development

Erik is known for translating technical complexity into strategic clarity for executive leadership and boards. He believes technology must deliver measurable utility and regulatory assurance, and must reduce or eliminate operational friction for the people who use it. The tooling and the processes shaping IT infrastructure have changed continuously across those twenty-five years. What has not changed is the service standard and the willingness to stand behind the work. This remains the cornerstone of his practice.