#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"

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