In this EDUCAUSE episode, Josh Bright from UC Santa Barbara, Dwane Sterling from Virginia Tech, and JJ Mahon from Cisco ThousandEyes break down what it means to lead IT before the problems find you - from building a collaborative leadership team to monitoring the student experience before the first ticket ever lands.

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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