#227: UCSB, Virginia Tech & Cisco ThousandEyes on Leading IT Before the Problems Find You
Featuring
Josh Bright is Associate Vice Chancellor for IT and CIO at UC Santa Barbara - a returning guest from Episode 200, now 18 months into a campus-wide IT strategy that his provost cited as a model for cross-silo collaboration.
Dwane Sterling is VP for Enterprise Solutions and Enabling Technologies at Virginia Tech - five months in from six years as CIO at Skidmore College, where he helped replace 90% of the institution’s infrastructure and applications.
JJ Mahon leads the higher education team for Cisco ThousandEyes across the U.S. - a former Army helicopter pilot, high school math teacher, and French horn player who now focuses on proactive digital experience monitoring at scale.
Timestamps
(0:00) Josh Bright, UCSB - from service function to IT strategy success 12 months later
(3:30) Dwane Sterling, Virginia Tech - the listening tour and what shocked him in the first 90 days
(6:00) Communication as a scalpel, not a rock - Dwane on why IT leaders need to wield it differently
(7:30) JJ Mahon, Cisco ThousandEyes - shifting IT from cost center to campus catalyst
(9:00) Seeing the smoke before the fire - JJ on the case for proactive monitoring over reactive ticketing
(11:00) Josh Bright - UCSB's AI community of practice and building on AWS Bedrock
(14:00) Dwane Sterling - Virginia Tech's vision for safe application development and AI security
(18:00) Josh Bright - putting his leadership team through the Moore Leadership Program and what changed a year later
(24:00) JJ Mahon - common operating language as the breakthrough for breaking down IT silos
(26:30) Closing advice - "Leaders rise to the level of their collaboration"
Listen now: YouTube x Apple x Spotify
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