From St. Ray’s to COO of Lottery at IGT — Gendron on LIVE
From St. Ray’s to COO of Lottery at IGT — Gendron on LIVE
“Back in March of 1995, I joined then GTECH in government relations,” said Gendron. “My first title was desk officer.. which was quite an interesting title. I walked in when I was 26 years old — and that was about 25 years ago and at almost 51 as we speak. I’ve held various positions in government relations, in sales operations, video lottery operations.”
“Then in about 2006 I was elevated to Regional Vice President of Eastern Region Operations what at the time was the largest region in [then] GTECH corporation — I had that role until 2014, when I was elevated to Senior Vice President, United States Lottery — and in January of 2018 I was elevated to my current position of Chief Operating Officer,” said Gendron. “So in retrospect, when you look at it, I started as an officer, and it took me 25 years to get back to the officer title.”
In 2015, Gendron was inducted into the Lottery Industry Hall of Fame.
“It’s been a fantastic experience working for a wonderful company, I’ve been so fortunate for so many years, and hopefully we will remain a Rhode Island company for many years to come,” said Gendron.
Lottery Operations — and 20-Year Outlook
Gendron spoke to the role that IGT plays in overseeing lottery operations, including when Powerball jackpots have been over $1 billion, IGT can process in excess of 500,000 transactions a minute.
“The infrastructure behind somebody playing a lottery ticket — the infrastructure we have in the State of Rhode Island is sound, it’s robust, it’s reliable,” said Gendron.
Gendron spoke to IGT’s seeking a 20-year contract extension with the State of Rhode Island.
“I’m very confident the five percent they’re paying us is fair — in fact, I’m virtually certain if they went out to bid for all of those services, they would pay over five percent,” said Gendron, who spoke to his experience negotiating contracts all over the country.
“When you look at our business with Rhode Island, it takes 65 people to operate our business today in the state — so the 1,110 [jobs] that we are agreeing to keep moving forward until 2043, that’s 1,040 jobs that's incremental towards our what our Rhode Island business dictates that we need. That’s the true economic value I think that decision-makers should be taking into consideration when they’re evaluating this,” said Gendron.
The segment is sponsored content from IGT.