Katherine
Stevenson

Senior executive responsible for enterprise technology strategy, infrastructure, and operations across a 13-college statewide system serving 130,000+ students. Manage an annual operating and staff budget of approximately $10 million. Provide strategic leadership to college presidents, IT Directors, and system office executives. Regularly present technology initiatives and capital projects to the Board of Directors and Joint Technology Committee (JTC).

• Developed and enforced enterprise-wide IT governance standards across a decentralized, 13-college system, balancing institutional flexibility with systemwide architectural discipline.
• Established AI governance framework and usage best practices system-wide; led procurement of Boodle.ai as a licensed AI platform supporting pedagogy and AI literacy.
• Streamlined operating budgets through redundancy elimination and vendor rationalization, permanently returning approximately $500,000 to the general fund beginning in FY26 with no reduction in services.
• Presented capital IT initiatives and technology strategy to the Board of Directors and Joint Technology Committee, translating complex technical programs into clear strategic implications for non-technical audiences.
• Engaged with state agencies and other stakeholders on technology matters impacting CCCS compliance, operations, and strategic priorities.

• Built a Microsoft Azure tenant environment enabling 13 colleges and the system office to deploy services in the cloud, establishing a modern, scalable infrastructure foundation.
• Led implementation of security safeguards required for GLBA compliance and enhanced financial aid data files containing federal tax information (FTI), ensuring regulatory compliance across the system.
• Led system-wide migration of telephony infrastructure from on-premises servers to a cloud-based platform, modernizing communications across all campuses.
• Deployed multi-factor authentication (MFA) for all student email accounts across the system, significantly reducing account compromise risk.
• Led the technology implementation for the Rural College Consortium, extending enterprise capabilities to underserved campuses.
• Directed successful disaster recovery response following a critical system failure in December 2023, restoring operations with minimal impact to students and staff.

Senior technology leader responsible for IT security operations, data center operations, identity and access management, messaging, and customer service. Directly managed a $3M operating budget; assisted with oversight of the full $16M IT budget. Managed a team of 20+ direct and indirect reports.

• Served on Workday ERP implementation leadership team, overseeing technology integration across enterprise systems.
• Implemented multi-factor authentication (MFA) and single sign-on (SSO) for key university systems; deployed university-wide identity & access management (IAM) platform.
• Negotiated Microsoft enterprise license agreement expanding campus-wide access to Microsoft products at no additional cost, demonstrating vendor management and fiscal discipline.
• Deployed cloud-based virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) for secure remote access; acted as IT liaison to COVID-19 response committees, rapidly negotiating enterprise contracts enabling remote education.
• Strengthened IT team diversity through deliberate recruitment practices and inclusive hiring committees.

Appointed to serve as interim CIO, overseeing all aspects of the Information Technology Department and serving as ultimate point of coordination for internal and external stakeholders.

• Served on university strategic planning committee, contributing technology leadership to institution-wide goal setting.
• Moved university ERP systems to a cloud-ready technology platform and oversaw major student information system upgrade.
• Directed selection of telephony outsourcing contract, modernizing the telephony environment and expanding capabilities at no increase in operating costs.
• Regularly presented to the Board and Legislative committees on technology initiatives.

Oversaw daily operations of infrastructure functions within the IT Department. Directly managed budgets ranging from $1.3M–$2.3M; assisted with administration of $10M–$14M IT general fund budget.

• Migrated university email from on-premises Exchange to Microsoft Office 365, improving reliability and reducing operational overhead.
• Implemented new disaster recovery program reducing recovery point objective from 24 hours to 1 hour, significantly improving institutional resilience.
• Implemented pilot cloud infrastructure for application hosting, establishing the university's cloud computing strategy.
• Created new network storage service dramatically improving security and recoverability of the university's distributed file sharing environment.

• Instituted virtualization-first strategy for server deployments, consolidating over 150 physical servers and driving $100,000+/yr in operational savings through server consolidation, process improvement, and vendor management.

• Designed IT solutions for clients across Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, and the mid-Atlantic. Led server implementation for the Commonwealth of Kentucky's SAP ERP deployment.

• Designed and sold enterprise storage solutions for Fortune 500 companies across the eastern United States. Served as regional expert on high-end storage and virtualization platforms.

• Designed, implemented, and managed an approximately 9,000-endpoint Cisco VoIP telephony system. Administered 40+ AIX and Linux systems serving 27,000 users. Managed a team of 12 systems administrators.