Features

When it comes to IT, Cabarrus County Schools has three major things going for it—or rather, three people: Dr. Katherine “Kelly” Propst, Michael Stocks and Adam Harkey. The trio has a unique management style, which helped build the most robust school district IT network in the state and keeps 36,000 devices up and running. Propst, […]

Cal-Maine Foods Inc. has more than 45 million employees. That is, if you count the roughly 36.1 million egg layers and 9.5 million pullets—young female chickens—and breeders, which make Cal-Maine Foods the largest producer and marketer of shell eggs in the U.S. That’s a lot of birds to keep track of and each comes with […]

The trademark of a successful corporate lawyer? It’s not just legal and business savvy, answers Carlos Landazabal Angeli, who, since November 2012, has served as General Electric’s legal leader for South America’s Andean region, as well as Central America and the Caribbean. Anticipation is just as important, the soft-spoken general counsel tells Vanguard from his […]

For as long as the earth’s tectonic plates have been shifting—read: a very long time—humans and other creatures have been affected by earthquakes. And while the phenomena typically last mere seconds, their destruction can be catastrophic and widespread: recent earthquakes have killed hundreds of thousands of people and leveled landscapes across Nepal, Haiti, Japan, Mexico […]

The College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University have separate presidents, separate boards of trustees and separate budgets. But they share the same IT department. This creates a lot of busy days for Director of IT, Casey Gordon, who says a major part of her job is providing students at each location with a […]

Let’s say a grade school student is given a 30-question practice test and only gets half the questions correct, just 15 of them. In the past, the instructor would have indicated which questions he or she got wrong. The student would get a failing grade and it was off to the next lesson and test. […]

Cesar Cabada is no fashionista—but he is focused on the technical side of beauty. The experienced retail leader joined the multinational Estée Lauder Companies (ELC) two years ago, and notes that, “I didn’t know a thing about makeup, skin care or any of those products. For me, it was whatever product was in the bathroom, […]

Every day, on her short eight-block commute, Brenna Berman sees the impact of her work. Berman joined the City of Chicago in 2011 as deputy budget director, and in 2012 she was made chief information officer. Today, when a bicycle rides by as she walks to work, Berman knows that data accessible through the city […]

There’s no denying that IT jobs can be stressful, and CIOs handle those stressors in different ways. For Steve Garske, witnessing—and contributing—to the life-saving work done by Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles (CHLA) is enough to push ahead. “Whenever I have a rough day, I’ll just walk the halls to gain perspective. Watching all of […]

Wide-eyed children looked on, as did a couple of teachers, as Chris Cummings went about upgrading a computer laboratory as part of his duties as information technology director at Pineywoods Community Academy in Lufkin, Texas, back in 2009. Formerly a Naval electronic warfare technician who had criss-crossed the globe while carrying out sensitive functions, Cummings […]