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jbrennan:~$ cat /domains/02-operations

Operations & Transformation

Mergers, Capital, Service Delivery, and Modernization

The job is to keep the organization running while changing how it works. I have done that across four institutions, through a regulated-agency merger, more than $10 million in capital infrastructure, statewide service delivery, and modernization that reached every employee, student, program, and location.

CHAPTER No. 2
Operations & Transformation
THE OPERATING SCALESELECTED WORKNEXT CHAPTER
THE OPERATING SCALE
2022 – NOW Stronger Communities NYCIO & CISO across two highly regulated human-services agencies · 25 clinical, residential, educational, detention, and community settings · more than 1,100 employees · nearly $115 million in annual operationsPrograms serving approximately 11,000 New York families
2016 – 2022 Hudson Valley Community CollegeCIO & CISO for a $122 million multi-campus institution · 15,000 active students · 1,000 employees · 120,000 additional active accounts cycling through prior-year and prospective student populationsA continuously changing service environment spanning admissions, instruction, workforce development, clinics, and public operations
2010 – 2016 SUNY DelhiCIO, with CISO accountability, for a $50 million college · academic, instructional, administrative, online, and public-facing operationsInstitution-wide modernization alongside the No. 1 ranked online programs in the nation
2007 – 2010 Russell Sage CollegeDirector of IT Services across a $35 million multi-campus college · 3,500 students · 450 employees · more than 1,000 systemsService redesign, infrastructure consolidation, and operating discipline across two campuses

Before the executive roles: infrastructure and support at NYS DOT, an HSBC core-systems migration, and years of hands-on engineering. That stack-level fluency never left.

SELECTED WORK
01An institution moved in two weeks

At the onset of COVID-19, the entire college moved to remote operations in two weeks. A 2,000-seat Citrix virtual desktop environment kept specialized software in students' hands through every campus shutdown. Instruction never stopped, and the work earned formal recognition.

02Service levels that held

The college reached 99.99 percent uptime after a multi-datacenter refit and a new cloud recovery model. At the same time, 260 classrooms and conference rooms moved to one supportable standard. Classroom support requests fell 40 percent.

03Two agencies, one operating environment

I directed the technology merger of two regulated agencies under one parent while clinical and business operations continued. Domains, identity, electronic medical records, and security operations came together without one unplanned service disruption.

04A cost structure redirected to the mission

At SUNY Delhi, I moved several campuses into shared services, cutting the technology cost base 55 percent while expanding capability. Retiring 92 percent of physical servers, standardizing platforms, and moving toward open source shifted hundreds of thousands in recurring expense away from infrastructure overhead and back toward instruction and institutional priorities. At Sage, the same operating principle consolidated 60 servers to five and replaced a legacy phone system.

05Institutional assets became new revenue

At SUNY Delhi, I turned an underused institutional asset into the campus's first commercial revenue agreement. The telecommunications partnership created recurring income while extending regional coverage. I also led the technology and operating work inside more than $10 million in capital infrastructure, including complete new construction for an advanced manufacturing center.