Past Mentors – CIO Leadership Academy
Simeon Ananou
Vice President for Information Technology Services and Chief Information Officer
University at Albany
J. Brice Bible
Vice President and Chief Information Officer
University at Buffalo
John Kolb
Vice President for Information Technology Services and Chief Information Officer
Rensselaer Polytechnic University
Farhat (Meena) Lakhavani
CIO and Vice Provost Information Technology Services
Erie Community College
Melissa Woo
Senior Vice President for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer
Stony Brook University
Dr. Jacquelyn Malcolm
Vice Chancellor of Information Technology & Chief Information Officer
Minnesota State
Simeon Ananou
Dr. Simeon Ananou is Vice President for Information Technology Services and Chief Information Officer at the University at Albany, SUNY. In this capacity he is responsible for general areas of Information Technology Services, including Client Support Services, Enterprise Application Services, Enterprise Infrastructure Services, Information Security and Research IT.
Prior to joining UAlbany, Ananou served as Chief Information Officer and adjunct in Information and Decision Sciences at Salisbury University. He was responsible for the strategic oversight of IT and communication infrastructure, as well as academic and administrative information systems and business intelligence for the campus. He has also served as Associate Provost at Slippery Rock University in Pennsylvania; Chief Information Officer at Piedmont Virginia Community College; and Director of Information Technology Operations at Ashland University in Ohio.
His career started at The Ohio State University, where he served in various capacities ranging from Student Assistant, Telecommunications Systems Specialist, Network Administrator then Systems Engineer at the University Network Integrated Telecommunications Systems (UNITS) in the Office of Information Technology (OIT).
Dr. Ananou has a wide range of research interests, many focused on how people interact with technology. Ananou holds a B.A. from The Ohio State University, an MBA from Baker College in Flint, Mich., and a D.Ed. from Indiana University of Pennsylvania.
Amy Berg
Serving as the Associate Provost for Information Resources at SUNY Cortland, Amy provides visionary leadership for technology and library services in alignment with the college mission. Reporting to the Provost, she is a member of the President’s Council and Provost’s Cabinet. Information Resources consists of Administrative Computing, Campus Technology Services, Memorial Library, Networking and Telecommunications, and Systems Administration and Web Services. Amy is responsible for strategic planning, operations management, and financial and personnel planning and management. She works closely with the faculty and staff within Information Resources, and with faculty and administrators throughout the campus to determine library and technological needs, to develop programs, and provide resources to meet those needs. Amy is an active member of the SUNY Council of CIOs and also serves on several SUNY committees.
In addition to her campus duties, Amy serves as the Chair of the SUNY Council of CIOs, and is a graduate of NACUBO’s Management Institute. While at Ball State University, she received the Meritorious Award for Service.
Amy earned a B.S. in Political Science and a M.S. in Communications and Information Sciences at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. She has worked in higher education technology for 29 years. Prior to joining SUNY Cortland in 2009, she worked at Plymouth State University (NH) and Ball State University.
J. Brice Bible
J. Brice Bible brings a passion for higher education and information technology to the University at Buffalo as UB’s Vice President and Chief Information Officer. As the senior IT officer, he is responsible for the oversight of all components of UB’s information technology with a particular focus on advancing UB’s research and education mission as a progressive university.
The University at Buffalo Information Technology division (UBIT) has a $32M annual budget and is comprised of 250+ skilled and highly motivated employees. The division includes compute/storage systems, network and telephony services, ERP/campus application development and support, classroom technology support services, service desk and end-user computer support, data center services, and a robust collaborative college/school technology support environment.
Some key UBIT accomplishments during recent years includes implementation of a governance and project prioritization model, establishment of a classroom technology upgrade initiative and installation of an enterprise-wide 6,000 access point Wi-Fi environment. Building upon a wealth of dark fiber assets, UBIT has continued to expand education constituents in the greater Western New York (Buffalo) area to develop a broad collaborative IT environment for the region.
Prior to coming to the University at Buffalo, Bible served as the first enterprise-wide Chief Information Officer at Ohio University, where he demonstrated his leadership abilities and formed a service-focused organizational model. He implemented a multi-faceted governance approach and created a comprehensive IT improvement and modernization program. Bible also collaborated to introduce an enterprise-wide IT alignment program, which included central and distributed IT services.
Following his undergraduate work at Tennessee Technological University in mechanical engineering, Bible earned an M.S. in Business Administration from The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UT). Bible’s experience includes co-inventing ten U.S. patents, and he is a widely published author on higher education, lasers, and information technology. Along with numerous leadership appointments, Bible directed research and information technology at the UT Center for Space Transportation and Applied Research, which included project management of an experiment designed for testing laser materials processes in a zero gravity environment.
Denise Burbey
Denise Burbey, Executive Director of Technology for Jamestown Community College, has served as the college’s CIO since 2008. She provides strategic direction for the college’s technical and information security areas across four locations including the leadership of Management Information Systems, Information Technology Services, and Media Services. As a member of JCC’s Leadership Council, Denise forges partnerships across various departments to accomplish goals in support of the college’s mission and strategic direction.
Denise also served for seven years as JCC first Director of Distance Learning establishing the college’s online and interactive television programs including faculty training and development, system configuration and installation, and student support. She began her tenure with JCC in 1997 in the Center for Continuing Education where she provided training and project management for corporate clients. She began her higher education career at a four-year private college in Wisconsin as assistant director for an accelerated-degree completion program.
Denise has been an active member of Chautauqua County’s Leadership Network since 1999 currently serving as a board member and chairing the strategic planning and financial stability committees. She earned her M.S. in Adult Education from Buffalo State College, a Teaching in the Virtual Classroom Graduate Certificate from Fielding Graduate University, and her B.A. from Silver Lake College. She recently completed the Certified Lean Professional program through the University at Buffalo, and is a certified peer reviewer for Quality Matters.
Michael Cato
Michael Cato leads IT strategy and operations as CIO of Vassar College, a highly selective, residential, coeducational liberal arts college consistently ranked among the top liberal arts colleges in the country. Since joining Vassar in 2013, Michael has led the Computing and Information Services (CIS) division to adopt new approaches to better serve the college community. These efforts include developing Project Management methodologies, initiating IT Service Management principles, and implementing an intentional organizational culture program. Notably, in 2014 Michael led CIS to successfully receive two Campus Cyberinfrastructure: Infrastructure, Innovation Engineering (CC*IIE) grants from the National Science Foundation. Finding the right opportunities to integrate technologies into a highly successful curriculum remains one of the great challenges of leading IT at Vassar. Michael previously served as Interim Vice Chancellor for Information Technology and CIO at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He served in this role as the institution began its first institution-wide IT Strategic Plan and restructured the IT Governance process. Before becoming Interim CIO, Michael served as Director of Client Services and led efforts to reorganize and refocus the client facing aspects of ITS to better serve the campus community. Among other accomplishments in Client Services, Michael conceived and led the Future of Student Computing initiative resulting in a hardware support partnership for student-owned hardware, a new Service Desk presence in the Student Union, and a hosted Virtual Desktop Infrastructure pilot for students. Michael joined the UNC Charlotte community in 2006 as the Executive Director of Health Informatics in the College of Health and Human Services where he was responsible for expanding and refining IT services to address the unique needs of the College. He served as a Co-investigator on a NIH funded project to examine the feasibility of delivering HIV prevention education via text messages to African American adolescents in Charlotte. Successful and innovative endeavors there earned him the nomination for UNC Charlotte Employee of the Year in 2009. Prior to joining UNC Charlotte, Michael held several IT positions at UNC Chapel Hill where he was awarded UNC Chapel Hill’s IT Award in 2003. Michael is an Educause Management Institute faculty member, a member of the Society for Information Management, a member of the Information Technology Senior Management Forum, an Educause Leading Change/Frye Fellow, an alum of Leadership North Carolina, and serves on the Board of the American Institute of Biological Sciences. Degrees held include a BS in Zoology from Andrews University and an MBA from Wake Forest University.
Mary Hand
Mary Hand is currently the Chief Information Officer at SUNY Adirondack Community College in Queensbury, New York. In this role, Mary oversees all strategic and operational aspects of Information Technology Services for the college. She is a member of the President’s Staff and President’ Council and also serves on several committees, including Administrative Affairs and Professional Recognition. Mary is a member of the SUNY Security Operations Center (SOC) Board and the SICAS Executive Board. Prior to moving to higher education over two years ago, Mary spent six years as the Vice President of Information Services at Albany Medical Center, a regional academic medical center in Albany, New York where she provided oversight and leadership for clinical and financial application systems and projects. She was also employed for eighteen years at Glens Falls Hospital, a community hospital in Glens Falls, New York, where she served as the Director of Information Services. Additionally, Mary spent the early part of her career in Industrial Automation for General Electric and spent six years as an adjunct business professor for Paul Smiths College based in Saranac Lake, New York. Mary has served in progressive IT leadership roles throughout her career has a broad background in leadership, strategic planning, project management, application development in various industries, including manufacturing, marketing, healthcare and higher education.
Mary graduated from Siena College in Loudonville, New York with a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science and also earned her Masters of Business Administration degree from the College of Saint Rose in Albany, New York.
Karlis Kaugers
Dr. Karlis Kaugers has served as CIO since 2011, leading the IT Services area of SUNY Oneonta. He supports the mission and goals of both SUNY Oneonta and SUNY through the development, deployment and integration of information technology to advance the mission of the college. Responsibilities include oversight of operations, strategic planning, personnel and financial management and planning. He is responsible for reporting, metrics and key performance indicators for IT as well as the execution of regular assessments of user feedback and communication of the future of IT services on campus.
Karlis is the author or co-author of more than 25 peer-reviewed articles in Computer Science, has been awarded more than $1 million in grants as either a principal investigator or co-PI, and served as a reviewer and co-editor for a number of publications in Computer Science. He was recently featured in the EDUCAUSE CIO minute at: https://www.educause.edu/ero/article/cio-minute-greater-professional-empathy.
He is currently the vice-chair of the SUNY CCIO and has participated in both the EDUCAUSE Institute Leadership Program and Learning Technology Leadership Program as well as a number of Faculty Leadership seminars. He was awarded the 2010 outstanding service award from the College of Engineering at Western Michigan University, and has earned a series of other service and teaching awards during his time as a faculty member.
Karlis earned his B.A. in Computer Science from Kalamazoo College and his M.S. and Ph.D. from New Mexico State University. He has worked in higher education in the IT support realm at a variety of research institutions. Prior to joining SUNY Oneonta, he served for 13 years as a faculty member in Computer Science and five years as the Director of IT and Facilities for the College of Engineering at Western Michigan University.
John Kolb
The Vice President for Information Services and Technology and Chief Information Officer provides leadership for strategic planning in the acquisition, use, and growth of Rensselaer’s campuswide information resources, services, and technology to support education, research, and administrative activities.
John Kolb ’79 received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering from Rensselaer. A licensed professional engineer, Kolb’s Rensselaer career spans over 30 years. He previously served as dean, Computing and Information Services; assistant dean, Engineering; head, Core Engineering; and director, Engineering Computing Services. Kolb has taught courses in Engineering Science, Management, and IT. He is a member of the NYSERNET.org and chair, and NYSERNET.net Boards; co-chair, University of the State of NY Technology Policy and Practices Council; member of the boards of Internet2, the Rensselaer Newman Foundation, WMHT, the American Society for Engineering Education, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, former chair, CIO Council of the Capital Region Business-Higher Education Roundtable, and former board member, Children’s Museum of Science and Technology, and past recipient of the Boeing Outstanding Engineering Educator Award. Kolb was instrumental in attracting and implementing the $100M Computational Center for Nanotechnology Innovations (CCNI) and the NYS High Performance Computing Consortium (HPC2).
Farhat (Meena) Lakhavani
Farhat (Meena) Lakhavani is serving as CIO and Vice Provost of Information Technology Services at the State University of New York (SUNY) – Erie Community College since 2017. Before that, also at SUNY-Erie, she served as CIO and Associate Vice President of College Information Technology Services.
Prior to joining SUNY Erie in 2016, she worked in various positions during her 28 years at Carnegie Mellon University – from Manager of Research Computing to the Director of Academic Technology Services Strategy. Another position she has held at Carnegie Mellon University, as well as the University of Pittsburgh, is as faculty in the undergraduate, graduate, and executive programs. Her pre-academia work was as a Senior Scientist with Westinghouse Electric Corporation.
Meena holds a B.A. in Humanities, M.S. in Computer Science and has completed doctoral courses in Computer Science at the University of Pittsburgh. She has published extensively and presented her work at many national and international conferences. Meena is active in various national organizations and has served on advisory committees, both local and national.
Sean Moriarty
Sean Moriarty is Oswego State’s chief technology officer. In this role he provides leadership for the continued development of a client-centered, robust and secure campus technology environment to advance the college’s strategic goals. The primary responsibility of this position is the planning, development and use of technology in support of Oswego State’s vision of excellence and our goal of being a learner-centered environment. Information on Oswego’s Campus Technology Services is available at http://www.oswego.edu/cts.
Sean Moriarty came to SUNY Oswego from the University of Windsor, Canada in April 2013. His professional association with Windsor’s IT Services began in 1986 serving as a computing consultant. He joined the Information Technology management team in 1999 and served as manager Client Support, assistant director, Client Support and acting executive director. Moriarty holds a bachelor of science in Math and Computer Science, a bachelor of commerce, and an M.B.A from the University of Windsor.
Dave Powalyk
Dave Powalyk has over 38 years of experience in higher education and most recently served the State University of New York System as the Chief Information Officer (retired). Prior to his appointment as SUNY’s Chief Information Officer in July 2014, Dave held various leadership roles throughout his career. These have included: Chief Transformation Officer, Interim CIO at the System Office, Chief Technology Officer, Director of Strategic Planning, the Director of Computing and Applications Development, as well as Project Manager for various system-wide business initiatives. Prior to SUNY, Dave worked for the NYS Education Department after earning his SUNY degree.
Additionally, Dave has been the primary contract negotiator for all system-wide technology contracts for more than 25 years. His efforts have resulted in agreements that have been sustainable for decades and enabled the University to provide access to state of the art technology at all 64 SUNY campus locations. It has been estimated that over the last three years a total system-wide savings of $32M has been achieved as a result of these efforts, with cost avoidance estimates totaling in excess of $100M. He has developed and deployed Strategic Partnership with a number of SUNY vendors that are critical to the long-term success of SUNY students and the administrative business services and mission.
He provides strategic direction to senior management on technology, services and support to meet both current and future needs of students, faculty and staff throughout the SUNY system.
He possesses:
- A strong background in IT management combining experience in budgeting, project management and contracting,
- The ability to develop, manage and deploy IT plans that achieve strategic goals, and
- The experience in building, leading, collaborating and motivating teams inclusive of senior management, vendors and the functional and technical organizations.
Dave has presented on “Negotiations Strategies for Higher Education” at Educause as well as numerous sessions at various national events. He continues to serve on global Executive Customer Advisory Boards. Most recently Dave received the 2016 Lifetime Achievement award from his colleagues ‘For exceptional dedication and selfless service to the State University of New York, including contributions beyond his immediate responsibilities as a technology professional”.
Christopher M. Sedore
Christopher M. Sedore is President of the New York State Education and Research Network (NYSERNet), a non-profit technology company that connects New York’s colleges, universities, and other research and education organizations to each other and the broader digital world.
Before joining NYSERNet, Chris spent 25 years at Syracuse University, serving as Vice President and Chief Information Officer, Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Operations, Senior Vice President of Enrollment Management and other roles. He currently teaches at the University’s School of Information Studies.
In addition to leading NYSERNet and teaching for the iSchool, Chris is an avid technologist and maker, who enjoys fusing technology and the physical world in everything from 3-D printing to woodworking and welding.
Melissa Woo
Dr. Melissa Woo is the Senior Vice President for Information Technology (IT) and Chief Information Officer at Stony Brook University, responsible for the IT services supporting the University’s teaching, research, and service mission. Melissa oversees the Division of Information Technology (DoIT), which provides a broad range of services to Stony Brook University’s students, faculty, and staff.
Prior to joining Stony Brook University, Melissa was the Vice Provost for Information Services and Chief Information Officer at the University of Oregon. Melissa has also worked for the central IT organizations at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign leading and supporting a number of areas, including research cyberinfrastructure, enterprise IT services, and IT operations and infrastructure.
In 2012, Melissa was the recipient of the EDUCAUSE Rising Star Award, an annual award that recognizes an emerging leader in higher education IT whose record reflects ongoing and exceptional growth in contribution to the profession. Throughout her career, Melissa has been actively engaged with higher education IT professional organizations, and is particularly passionate in her support of aspiring leaders from diverse backgrounds. Melissa serves on a number of higher education IT committees and working groups, authors articles, and is a frequent conference presenter.
She completed her PhD in Biophysics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and her Bachelor’s degree in Biophysics at the University of California, Berkeley.