My career began with a fairly simple ambition. In high school, I wanted to become a videographer for CBS News or, failing that, produce music videos that would confuse several of my friends’ parents. To pursue that path, I sought part-time and seasonal work related to media production while concentrating on building a portfolio of practical experience. Early projects spanned radio, television, concert audio engineering, advertising creative design, and pre-internet interactive media production. My future at that time seemed highly focused on what we’d now call “being a creative.”
Life, as it often does, redirected my trajectory. What began as a media-focused career evolved through higher education, research computing, and scientific data visualization. From there, the work expanded into digital media, web development, educational technology, learning environments, and enterprise systems. Over time the scope widened further to include service delivery, operations management, master planning, cloud services, organizational transformation, and technology leadership.
The thread connecting each phase was the consistent application of communications, design, and systems thinking to increasingly complex organizational problems. Viewed in retrospect, the path from late college to the present can be understood as four distinct periods of professional development: Digital Transformation Strategy & Advising, Digital Learning & User Experience Redesign, Technology Services & Innovation Leadership, and Creative Production.
Overall, my underlying motivation is consistent: apply technology and design to help organizations evolve. The guidance and insight shared by colleagues, mentors, and collaborators throughout these stages provided the foundation for that work. Their influence reinforced a perspective that continues to guide my approach today: look beyond what can be accomplished immediately, and instead design toward what may become possible tomorrow.
2018-present: Digital Transformation Strategy & Advising
Beginning in 2018, my work shifted toward enterprise digital transformation. At Collaborative Solutions and later at CrossVue, my focus centered on helping organizations prepare for large-scale change driven by strategic reinvestment, organizational disruption, most visibly during the COVID-19 period, or both. Much of this work was tied to the transition to Workday, a cloud-based enterprise resource planning system. Early engagements concentrated on advising clients on how to maximize return on investment (ROI) and value on investment (VOI) through technology modernization while addressing the accompanying transformation of culture, governance, operating models, and decision-making.
In 2024, my responsibilities shifted from primarily client-facing transformation advisory work to internal technology leadership. In this role I am modernizing the firm’s internal technology environment that included introducing AI-driven capabilities, integrating information systems, and improving the employee experience across tools and platforms to bring coherence to data, processes and operations to enable the AI-first vision CrossVue redirected itself to achieve. Leading my team and working with internal partners, we’re replacing outdated systems, embedding AI into day-to-day operations, and modernizing our operations by creating a coherent data ecosystem built around Salesforce, Workday, Smartsheet and Workato.
Across both external consulting and internal leadership, the guiding principle has remained consistent: begin with people, then design technology and processes that enable organizations to exceed the expectations of users, customers, and service providers in ways that remain practical and sustainable.
Since August 2018, I delivered Workday-related strategic and transformation consulting services to over 35 organizations spanning higher education, healthcare and life sciences, government, financial services, consumer goods, nonprofit, and technology sectors. Additionally, I currently serve as an advisor to the transformation leadership program at Southwestern Law in Los Angeles.
2010-2018: Digital Learning & User Experience Redesign
During this time, I served as a principal strategist and consulting director at Blackboard Inc., working with institutions across the Americas, APAC, and EMEA. The move to Blackboard represented a deliberate transition from operational leadership into strategy. After spending nearly two decades at a single institution, I wanted broader exposure to the diversity of challenges facing higher education and learning organizations worldwide.
I led projects addressing digital learning ecosystems, learner experience design, online program management (OPM), academic technology strategy, and student success initiatives. Engagements extended well beyond traditional universities, including liberal arts colleges, community colleges, statewide higher-education systems, K–12 districts, and large global organizations. The breadth of experience provided a global vantage point on how organizations approach learning, technology ecosystems, and institutional change. It also reinforced the importance of aligning technology decisions with broader organizational outcomes rather than treating digital tools as ends in themselves.
During my 8-year tenure with Blackboard, I delivered enterprise and strategic consulting services to over 25 organizations ranging from higher education institutions in the US, UK, Italy, and Turkey, US state university systems and boards, K-12 public school districts, federal government and regulatory agencies to healthcare and scientific research organizations including work on the Mars 2020 mission for NASA/JPL.
1998-2010: Technology Services & Innovation Leadership
This period represents my transition from creative producer and manager into technology leader and organizational innovator. At the University of Chicago, I had the opportunity to work under the leadership of CIOs Greg Jackson and Klara Jelinkova, whose mentorship helped shape my approach to leadership and institutional strategy.
Over time, my responsibilities expanded from operational technology support into organizational transformation and large-scale planning. I became increasingly involved in cross-institutional collaborations, service delivery frameworks, and long-term technology planning. In 1998 I was appointed Director of Instructional Technology, responsible for teaching and student technology services. A subsequent promotion to Senior Director for Academic Technologies expanded the portfolio to include research, teaching, and learning support aligned with the Provost’s Office, academic divisions, and the university library. The organization served more than 13,000 students and 2,000 faculty. Later, as Assistant CIO and Executive Director for Campus & Academic Services, I led a team of more than 120 staff supporting over 30,000 faculty, students, and staff worldwide. Responsibilities extended into institutional initiatives such as technology reinvestment planning, major construction and learning-space projects, and global campus expansion.
During the final two years of this period, I also co-directed and was a co-prinicpal investigator of a Mellon-funded cloud and SaaS innovation initiative with the University of California Berkeley. The project brought together contributions from more than 100 universities, foundations, and technology organizations across North America, Europe, and Australia to explore future service delivery models for higher education technology. I learned how to run a global technology planning and prototyping project and the challenges one faces when varying priorities and perspectives need to align to make meaningful progress.
Beyond my CIO mentors, I was fortunate to engage with a network of thought leaders whose perspectives shaped my thinking during this period. A broad range of scholars, technologists, architects, librarians, and strategists helped me along my career journey and influenced my approach to leadership, service design, and institutional change
Over this 12-year period, I was employed by The University of Chicago while also consulting for over 15 organizations spanning research universities, liberal arts colleges, architectural and design firms, and cultural institutions in the US and UK. I also contributed to the development of accredited standards within the IEEE, serving as the vice-chair of the IEEE Learning Technology Standards Committee for four years.
1988-1998: Creative Production
The first decade of my career centered on creative production and emerging digital media. Beginning during my studies at Loyola University New Orleans and continuing throughout the 1990s, I worked across media production, graphic design, scientific data visualization, high-performance computing, multimedia development, and early web design. This was a formative period focused on experimentation and learning. The work involved integrating emerging digital technologies into research and communications projects while exploring how visual design and information architecture could improve the accessibility and understanding of complex information.
I completed hundreds of projects and participated in the launch of one of the first 1,000 websites on the early internet. More important than the technical milestones, however, were the interactions with researchers, designers, and technologists who helped me understand the importance of critical and creative thinking to solve problems and find different ways to tackle challenges.
During this decade, I was employed by KQDJ-AM/FM, The Prairie Post, The Jamestown Sun, Loyola University New Orleans, Pertuit & Partners Communication Design, Propaganda Productions Ltd., and The University of Chicago. I interned at KHJ-TV (1988 Republican National Convention), New Orleans MDA Telethon, New Orleans Fire Department, and KCSI-TV/Cable Services Inc., and delivered consulting services to clients spanning retail, education, architecture, multimedia, hospitality, and healthcare organizations.