A Canadian Lens on Higher Ed Technology

Jack Suess: Welcome to the EDUCAUSE Integrative CIO podcast. I'm Jack Seuss.

Cynthia Golden: And I'm Cynthia Golden. Each episode we welcome a guest from in or around Higher education Technology as we talk about repositioning or reinforcing the role of IT leadership as an integral strategic partner in support of the institutional mission.

Jack Suess: Today we're talking to Gayleen Gray, assistant Vice President and Chief Technology Officer McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, and Donna Kidwell, CIO, university of Toronto in Toronto, Ontario. Welcome Gayleen and Donna.

Gayleen Gray: Hello. You good to be here?

Jack Suess: Well, I'm so happy to have both of you here. I know both of you in different ways. Donna is one where I know very, very well from a variety of activities here in the States and Gayleen We met and I remember giving you a tour on one of the coldest days in March around Washington DC years ago. But I know that this is going to be a fun talk and we're really excited to be having two CIOs from outside the United States. And so this is special! EDUCAUSE is an organization that has probably about 10% of its members are international members and so we thought this would be a great way to end this particular season. So as could we get some brief introductions from each of you Donna, maybe you could go first.

Donna Kidwell: Sure, well it's a pleasure to be here and when you asked about the opportunity to chat with Gayleen of course, plus there's so many interesting things to be talking about right now. But I'm Donna Kidwell and I'm also going to have to get use a little bit to be known as a CIO from Canada because I've been here less than a year and came here almost this time last year having been at Arizona State University for the last chapter where I was their inaugural Chief Digital Trust officer in CISO. And then before that I was the CTO of Ed Plus, which those of if you know, but they're the ones that really run ASU online and all the wonders that are the digital experiences for students at ASU. Prior to that I was at UT system, UT Austin private sector. If you go that far back, it is so wonderful to be here and I'm really excited about the things we're going to discuss today because it would be top of mind for me anyway. But it certainly is now really as I understand and learn more about the Canadian context.

Jack Suess: Gayleen?

Gayleen Gray: Yeah, thank you so much. And Donna says that she's relatively new here but she's already got a lot of fans in Canada are really happy that she's joined our sector. And for myself, I have been, my name is Gayleen Gray and I am associate vice President, chief Technology Officer at McMaster University, which is one of our, what you all refer to as R1 institutions as a research intensive institution here in Canada. I have had almost 26 years in higher education IT now, which is shocking to me as I say that as well. Prior to coming to McMaster I worked at an institution, the University of Guelph, which is in Guelph, Ontario, which is where I still live. So I am a commuter and I started in higher IT in a very entry level position. I have an English literature background but did some things before I came into higher education.

Gayleen Gray: I have to say, quite honestly when I joined I didn't know if I was going to stick around, but then I went to a RESNET conference for anybody who remembers ResNet back in 2001 at Stanford. And I will say quite honestly, I don't know if I was more impressed by Stanford or ResNet, but they were both very impressive and it was part of the reason I think I really stayed within the community and it really turned me onto the idea that not only could I work and develop a career within higher education it at the University of Guelph at the time, but across a very large geographic region with colleagues from around both Canada as well as the US and beyond. So it's been a great career for me and I'm excited about our conversation today. So thanks for the invite.

Cynthia Golden: Well I'm really excited too and I kind of resonate with what you say about career paths because I think a lot of us are in higher education because something resonated with us and early on. And anyway, let's kind of jump into some of the topics that we had for today. And one of them is just about the United States and Canada. So I think that our institutions in the US and Canada are probably more alike than they are different. And there's always been collaborations between our institutions in both countries. And so I guess there's a little bit of an elephant in the room right now. Canada has always been a close ally of the United States and now the relationship between our two countries is marked by a little economic confrontation and some political realignment. And both our countries are really navigating what I think is a complex and an evolving landscape. So while this is an evolving situation, it seems like the tariffs and public sentiment are going to have an impact on higher education. And I was just wondering what are you both seeing now and what are you expecting the impact to be?

Donna Kidwell: Where do we start Gayleen

Gayleen Gray: Exactly? Well maybe one of the things I can share with both of you, Donna will be aware of this is we just had a federal election, so we've just reelected a government and a big part of that whole political story and the election process was very much centered around the issue of the tariffs for sure. So the economic piece is a reality. I don't think that that's news to anybody at all. And the elbows up from a Canadian perspective, Canadians are very proud of being Canadian and Canada and our sovereignty and all of those good things in the lens of higher education. What I want to say is we love our colleagues in the United States and beyond. And this has never been a conversation for us about what's gone wrong with those relationships. We've had lots of interactions. I have had even my own career, as I started out telling you, I've had lots of interactions across the border and I anticipate that that will continue.

Gayleen Gray: We are members of EDUCAUSE we're very involved in other organizations that crossover. And so there are some real world impacts. I know Donna will have a really interesting perspective on this being a little bit newer in the environment, but the real world impacts for us are very much about research, the impact that that's having. But that's I think a shared impact that's happening in the US as well as Canada. So I would say that we're aligned on that procurement issues in our country, but there you're dealing with some of those things as well. Obviously there's always politics, international students and how our researchers are impacted. I would say one of the unfortunate realities though is how this is impacting the way in which people are thinking about going across the border. And so for us, that's an unfortunate reality. We're really not traveling into the US or many people are not. And from that will have an impact I think on some of our opportunities to be interacting in person with our colleagues, but it won't change our interest in continuing to have strong relationships and collaborations as well. So yeah. Donna, what's your thought on this? I'm sure you've got a few things to say as well because still going back and forth.

Donna Kidwell: Of course I'm still going back and forth. My kids are still in Austin. My oldest son is in IT at the University of Texas at Austin. So it runs in the family apparently. And then so many of my friends are at ASU. I just took some of my leadership here to ASU to think about what's the same and what's different about our institution. So yeah, I'm still very much in both worlds in a lot of ways and I think in some, well this is a bit like me, but I like to think of the opportunity that everything frames. Last summer, one of the first questions I started asking is, okay, we can now participate in horizon funds, the European Horizon funds. And so what do we need to do strategically to think about enabling our infrastructure, cybersecurity privacy as aligns in Europe? Whereas I would've expected, and I think this is probably true, a lot of the Canadian, if there was a metronome setting, how we thought about compliance, it would be our colleagues to the US and suddenly here's an opportunity for us in Europe and then fast forward a few months and it turns out like, oh well that was timely.

Donna Kidwell: Okay, what could we be doing? So in the same way that we're seeing with procurement or supply chains or anything else, we're starting to see how we'll relate differently to colleagues around the world. And I think that's fascinating. I think it gives us opportunities to really dig into different models and then to ask ourselves whether or not the models serve us or serve what we want to shape the future to look like. So that's one example, but it's pervasive. The conversations that we would've had on campus 10 years ago when U of T was first moving to email for example, around, okay, well what should our relationship be with big tech vendors with silicon vendors? I think those same kinds of questions now have a different light to them. Those questions of sovereignty, they're still there and they're a little less rhetorical now. So I certainly think of them as opportunities for us to really think deeply about the pillars of why technology offers so much enablement on campus and then use those as ways to open up the dialogue with our faculty, with our librarians, with our students.

Jack Suess: No, it's really interesting. And so sort of following up on a question to you, I know you were part of the EDUCAUSE board, you really care deeply about EDUCAUSE. You've been very active through the years and yet we're going to have some subtle changes that are happening because of what you said and travel and things like that. Do you have any thoughts on though how we can be trying to be making sure we don't let these outside, these outside sort of issues sort of stop what has been a very, probably since the start of it, we've had collaboration between Canada and the US and I hate to see that sort of be undermined over time. So any thoughts that you have?

Gayleen Gray: Absolutely, and you're right, I have a longstanding relationship with EDUCAUSE. So in addition to being on the board, I was a participant in many of the institutes. I was faculty member with a number of EDUCAUSE institutes both in person and online. And I think one of the things that we learned through covid was we don't have to necessarily be standing right next to each other, eating from the same buffet. We can do what we're doing now, which is make sure that we're continuing to bolster those relationships and really invest in exchanging ideas, participating. There's individuals in my organization who've been involved with Horizon report activities and have contributed who've taken the institutes online. I will continue to be a proponent of that. I think that's really important for our teams to ensure that they are getting a broader perspective and engaging with their colleagues wherever they may be in higher education it.

Gayleen Gray: And so I think being really intentional about that from an EDUCAUSE perspective, really leaning into those resources that we have access to online and in the sessions that we can have online. I know that the conference itself may not have as many opportunities for that, but there have always been some element of online capability that we've tried to explore. So I think for us that's really, those of us who've been deep in it, really understand the value of it. I think I won't be the only one. I'm pretty sure all of my peers here in Canada who've had a EDUCAUSE experience would echo what I'm seeing, which is it's hugely valuable. I just got my membership renewal and every time I get that, I push it out and remind everybody, we all have this opportunity, let's not lose the value of it for sure.

Jack Suess: Well, and I think with some of the economic issues that are hitting us higher education, I agree with you, virtual will be one that probably more and more people may be taking a look at this year for doing that. So that's really a great point. Donna, I'm going to switch just slightly in asking you a follow up question, which is you're coming from, I don't know how many years in a row ASU has now been the most innovative university in the US 10. There was a period where it was back and forth between UMBC and ASU, but you have certainly taken this on and really run with it at ASU, but now you're at probably one of the largest and what often may have been thought of as a more traditional sort of research university. How is that going? And I know part of what they probably wanted you was to bring this entrepreneurial innovative sort of push, but it's still an interesting thing jumping into a culture that is in a sense very, very different from where you were.

Donna Kidwell: Well arguably Arizona State University has a pretty unique culture even amongst their peers in the us and I'm two degrees from the University of Texas, Austin, my son's still there, so clearly I bleed, burn, orange, got to call your loyalties where you got 'em and lived in Austin for 30 years. And I feel like ASU is a pretty singular organization, but it does in some ways overexpress the genes of innovation and entrepreneurship and they are really good at it. And I think one of the things that first struck me is we are more alike than we are different. ASU is, and I might have these numbers wrong, I haven't been there in a year, but let's call it 80,000 students on the ground across three campuses in the Phoenix area and then campuses in la, the facilities in McCain at Washington dc. So it's got this multi-campus footprint, a hundred thousand students online. Well here at University of Toronto, it's a hundred thousand students across three campuses. The distribution of our campuses is pretty much like they're in Maricopa, better mass transit than Phoenix.

Donna Kidwell: But if you're talking about a hundred thousand students on the ground, you're still operating at scale. University of Toronto is still figuring out scale. And so one of the reasons that I was really interested in coming here was that difference scale is still a thing and then it's got to express itself and you're going to think about how you address the problems based on how you then interpret your mission. I would say though it's also Toronto's a pretty entrepreneurial city. Mars Institute, the Vector Institute Hinton and the Nobel Prize for his work in ai. It is an entrepreneurial culture, just a different expression of entrepreneurship for sure. And a lot of that expectation is happening in the community around us. So I would say part of what I think the biggest culture difference is is that sense of urgency. At ASU. And they are in the desert, like they have the resources of the desert. T hey've got a real clear sense of urgency, a sense of boldness, a sense of strategy, culture eats strategy for breakfast that Drucker kind of thinking and they are resilient and they learn fast.

Donna Kidwell: So they get out there, it's a contact sport, figure out the new model address as you learn. And here like the 90 day AI task force at ASU, we spent a year here really thoughtfully thinking through work groups across the campus, hundreds of consultations. When we come out of that, we will have a very rigorous and pretty deep rooted expression that's going to fit what we need to do to innovate at UFT. So for me it's not so much friction, but more of a challenge of where does that sense of urgency come from? How do we pull that kind of momentum into our teams? How do we think about the work of digital transformation when you don't have the very fast metronome that ASU has?

Cynthia Golden: So you've both talked about some of the commonalities, the things that we have in common. And I was thinking about EDUCAUSE and how every year they publish their top 10 issues that we work on and they come out in the fall. And this year, just looking at the top three, the top one was about data empowered institutions and using data and analytics and ai. The second one was about simplifying administration and streamlining processes. And then the third one was about the student journey and using technology to improve and personalize student services as IT leaders at Canadian universities. How do these resonate with you and do they really reflect your top challenges and what do you think the big issues are going to be for you or are for you right now this year?

Donna Kidwell: Donna, I can take that. All three are completely relevant and they're not separate from one another because of that AI task force, we're embarking on having UFT be an AI ready institution. And I think all of us have realized that if your data is not in order, then your large language models are going to give you nonsense. So I think that data readiness and the work that's happened here over the last couple of years around data management and data governance will serve us really well. But that's also giving us a chance to rethink. We're embarking on what will be our journey for every institution's journey as what do you do when your student information system reaches a point where you need to rethink it? And so here we are and we get to do that in a time where the technology itself is changing. Where some of the affordances that would've made it really hard five or six years ago to do a lot of heavy lifting on identity or institutional data lakes, all of that we're afforded a really different environment to try to do that now. So I think they're all completely relevant. The three certainly resonated with me. How about you?

Gayleen Gray: Yeah, and it's interesting to hear you talk about the student system. So I just wanted to declare right now, I hope to goodness sake, I am not dealing with an ERP anytime in the next three years of any sort. So anyway, good on you. And I know this story of Rosie and all of that good stuff. So I agree with Donna. I think all of these are very relevant. Every institution is struggling with some of the complexities of our environment from the past and trying to figure out how do we smooth out some of those opportunities going forward. So for us, data and data-driven decision making is a huge area. And too are struggling with a data hygiene. How do we make sure that we're managing and classifying data appropriately? And I would say that's a continuum. We're not at the beginning, but we're certainly not at the end.

Gayleen Gray: One of the things though, in the combination of that with a smoothing student journey, we've got a very big initiative in place rolling out what we're referring to as a campus relationship management or CRM using Dynamics 365. And it started with an implementation focused on current students because we really feel like that experience for our students is critically important. It's now rolling across hr, we're dealing with our international student recruitment integrations in our recruitment process, et cetera. And of course the core of any of our system, but certainly A CRM is data and how do we make good use of that? What's the opportunity that that's going to provide us? And I think that it's a real change in thinking for some of our administrative and faculty administrators specifically, how do they interact with it? It's a new way of doing things. It's a new mindset and it means change. And we know everybody is what about change? So I think all of these things are really, really important. We have an overarching strategy that sits in our president's strategy around operational excellence. And so the simplification can we do some things differently and that is really touching across the full spectrum of services and activities that we support on campus. So I think that's one to watch. But I love Donna's point, they're all very integrated and you can't really win at one if you can't figure out the others as well.

Jack Suess: Gayle, I'm curious to and or Donna, the question about student success and in the US student success has been a very high issue, partially because I think our universities are often a little more expensive. There may be other issues that are happening, but I would also guess that increasingly are getting a set of students that are coming in. We all know the pandemic has had impact, whether it was in Canada or the US that may have caused some students to have gaps in their learning. How are you sort of thinking about that? And what prompted me to ask the question is as we've been looking at our student success journey, one of the things we've noticed is as we've looked at how we're communicating with students, we're flooding these poor students that are at risk with so many communications, they can't figure out which are the ones they really have to be serious about reading and taking an issue with. And so we're actually trying to be looking at how do we cut down our communications and be more strategic and only make sure we're communicating when we absolutely, it's important for you to be responding or getting help or something that we think could benefit you. And I'm just sort of curious, is any of that feeding into your dynamics plan for your campus relationship management, which I think is a beautiful name by the way.

Gayleen Gray: Yeah, thank you. I do too. So if I can take this first Donna, but I think it's a really valid point. Our students are bewildered and overwhelmed with all the information, especially when they first join our institutions. So definitely we're seeing this idea of personalization, the opportunity to manage communications across the board through the CRM. It's really critically important. The other piece is consistency because our students are interdisciplinary, but they have a home faculty. And so one of the realities is if I'm in this or this part of the campus taking this as an elective, but I'm over here in my core area, why are things so different and how do I manage that? And I think that consistency across campus, how we deal with our students as a whole person is a really underpinning and foundational component to student success because they're not getting different information, they're not trying to use different systems. Everybody's got a level of the tapestry's there, but it's a really consistent tapestry that's woven well together. And I think that's really challenging in our environments because faculty see themselves as sort of the vertical that matters most. I don’t know who's going to hear that and not the way I say it, but that is a reality. So for us, it's a huge, huge area of focus around this. And that's why the serum implementation that we've undertaken, that's why it started with the current student because that was really what people were seeing on campus.

Jack Suess: Okay.

Jack Suess: Let's shift. We have to talk about ai. You began to bring it up, Donna, and so I'm curious how you're thinking about ai, and I'm going to preface by saying a story and I've got to sort of go and follow up more on it, but we launched a AI pilot to students that we call my UNBC answers. And basically within our portal, you can ask a question, we have quite a bit of data about you, you've already authenticated and it can basically answer your question. And we launched it to all students in late March and we've done about 8,000 answers in the last month. And when I looked at, I've been looking at the logs of the answers and I am just astounded at how good they are. And what I mean by that is I think they're so much better than what would happen or what was happening when the students sent in a service request to the office.

Jack Suess: Because what they were getting was someone who, this was their other job to be answering service requests. They're often overworked, they're behind on projects they're trying to rush to answer. They're not giving complete answers, they're not linking to exactly the resources that you should be reading for that particular question. And I need to go around and begin talking to all of our service departments about the opportunity that this avails to them. And I'm just sort of curious, how are you starting to begin taking early steps with AI and where are you finding some tractions at your institutions? Donna, you want to go first and then Gayleen?

Donna Kidwell: Sure, sure. Well, we're just a couple months away because we're socializing our AI task force report from the last year. And one of those work streams was on technology, data and digital trust. And so I served on that work stream, kind of came as that work stream had just started up. And one of our recommendations was essentially to create an AI kitchen. And I workshopped the kitchen metaphor for a while to see if I liked it, but here at U of T, we've got celebrity chefs faculty, they're very well known in this space. They're already doing it. So the question isn't can they do it? Clearly we've got communities of practice that have just blossomed, of course. And so the real question was, well then how do we think about the infrastructure by which we want to invite those that are less comfortable with it or are sparked by the idea and now think, now realize there's an art of this possible and we want to bring them into a safe space where we know that the data's the equivalent of a peanut allergy or gluten allergy.

Donna Kidwell: We can handle those kinds of situations that we can think really intentionally about what appliances are in the kitchen and give us a framing for how we might think about AWS bedrock or Microsoft and their tools, but really thinking about how we outfit and kit that. And then thinking about this aspiration I mentioned earlier around how we think about our data and making sure that everything in the pantry is exactly what you'd want to be able to bring into whatever recipe you've got for how you want to go. And on the same time kind of think through, okay, where do we need things that are really loose? They're just pilots that we're just experimenting versus No, we actually have something that we think will go all the way to a commercial use, and so we need it to be able to support a commercial kitchen. So we are really framing it that way. And now we're starting to take teams that have already been doing this work and start talking to them about, okay, do we bring that work into a framework by which we can actually manage all of the, I don't think this is a case of AI's horses that left the barn, and maybe this is an Arizona thing. Do we have wild horses here? I think the horses were wild from the beginning. So more thinking about how do we create the right environment to invite everybody in with us?

Gayleen Gray: I'm sure there are wild horses. Got to be. It's a very good analogy as well. So you could go with a whole different wild horses on the prairie kind of theme around instead of a kitchen, I really like what donuts talked about. I'm not even going to try and dig in on the kitchen analogy or metaphor, so I'm just going to leave that wrong. In our environment, McMaster, we are very close geographically to the University of Toronto and there's some really big similarities between the two institutions, very decentralized environments. And McMaster is tightly collaborative, collegial, and very much about that decentralized approach. So we try to give people some leverage to be innovative and do the things they want to do. So there's been some activity around ai. We've had AI chatbots peppered around the institution for a couple of years. We've explored different ways of implementing that.

Gayleen Gray: I think what happens is as these ideations come to fruition, then it's really about, okay, well how do we bring that together so that we're not doing everything different back to what we were talking about earlier in terms of consistency and some standards and the way in which the experience is not going to be different depending upon which department, faculty or administrative unit you're dealing with. So for us, we have an AI advisory committee, we have a special advisor to that committee, and we have, I think what are very similar to what Donna talked about, these expert panels that we've put together around research, teaching and learning, and then operational excellence because we know that we've got to hit off on all of those things, but there's a lot of ways in which they integrate and overlap with each other. So we're giving space for ideation and development and exploration, and then we're trying to pull what are the things that we think can really be a wild horse that comes in and gets harnessed and can be ridden around the campus.

Gayleen Gray: I guess I'm not doing very well, but anyway, so lots of good work is going on there. I think the students themselves are, this is a no brainer for them, and as Donna pointed out, we've got lots of researchers who are really in that space. What we're trying to do is look at that with a, let's not get in the way of these good ideas, but also let's not create a lot of new problems. We got lots of problems from years ago of people who did a thing and now it's something we can't undo. And so we are trying to put some guardrails, if I can call them that, and some structure in place to help people get to done on the things that they're trying to do so that everybody can benefit from them where it makes sense. Anyway, I don't know if any of that.

Jack Suess: No, that makes sense. Perfect sense.

Cynthia Golden: Yeah. So one of the things before we started recording, we said we wanted to make sure we had some time to talk about was cybersecurity and everybody smiles. But when you think about the increasing cybersecurity threats and that many of them originate from outside of Canada, how are you both or your institutions navigating these cross border risks, especially when you have US-based vendors and cloud services? I don’t know, Gayleen, do you want to pick that one up?

Donna Kidwell: I don't know. You mean I might cue you up a little bit? Oh, maybe I think it's, but I'm going to hand this right over to you because I think one of the reasons that I was really interested in coming here, coming from a US institution was I had spent years as a CSO with my state of Arizona CSO, with folks from the Department of Homeland Security with folks from CS a trying to figure out how are we stronger together, how can we work together? And there are a few good examples in the states of regional SOCs, university of Texas, Austin does some pretty great stuff across the UT system. They're great merit. There are obvious examples, but in general, and if you're not in one of those regions where you've been able to band together, you don't have good threat intelligence. I mean, you've got what you can get.

Donna Kidwell: Well, I don't know now, but six months ago you'd have what you could get through the Department of Homeland Security. It really struck me as a tremendous opportunity because universities are so willing to just have the conversations with each other and say, okay, this is exactly where I'm at in my cyber maturity and here's where I really need help. And I was so impressed by what was happening here with Canary and the can. So over to you, Gayleen, because I am curious that willingness of Canadians to come together to really think through these problems, it's very impressive. I think it's going to serve us really well.

Gayleen Gray: Well, Donna's now deeply embedded in that whole ecosystem and being at U of T, our largest institution in Canada, really important. So, we have Canadian University Council of CIOs, affectionately referred to as “CUCCIO” because of the way it's spelled. And CIOs across the universities in Canada are members of this organization. So we have 70 best friends from coast to coast to coast who are involved in delivering the kind of services that we deliver at our own institutions. But this has been going on for almost 15 years now, and it's grown up over that time to really build a sense of comradery, collegiality, and what we do really, really well is share, and everything is Chatham House rules or TLP colors depending upon the issue. And so what's been born out of that is a really strong community around cybersecurity. And so we have special interest groups and there has been an IT security special interest group for a very long time, but a number of years ago we looked over the border and said, Omnis, so that's really interesting.

Gayleen Gray: I wonder if we could do an omni-slack kind of thing. And it probably didn't hurt that Sean Reynolds is a Canadian and certainly one of my mentors. And so we learned a lot from them. And so six institutions took the lead. But across Canada, there's a real sense that cybersecurity is one of the things we can do really well together. And yes, we institutionally still have US-based vendors that we work with on our cyber. Of course we're using Microsoft and all sorts of other vendors to deliver on systems in our environment. But this shared approach to cybersecurity, learning from each other and really trying to figure out how we help raise everybody up to a particular level of security and sharing information is the biggest part of that. So we share IOCs, we share lots of threat information, we share best practice. We are working on these cross Canada, but also provincial, cybersecurity, operational opportunities, SOCs.

Gayleen Gray: Yeah, so I would say in one of the areas where we share and support each other really in such deep ways, and there's nothing like commiserating around cybersecurity issues to bring people together and have a sense of, oh, I understand. You understand me. So it's been a big part of my career over the last number of years to be involved in those conversations. And at those tables, and Donna, of course, we were so excited when she came up as a CISO, but now as a CIO as well. So she really does bring a great lens of how things can be done in different ways and will also we know be a deep contributor in all of our collective success. So yay, Donna is what I would say.

Jack Suess: Yeah, no, it's so critical that we share and that we find ways to be able to be working together just because we know those that are attacking us are sharing, and if we aren't sharing to be helping our collective defense, then we're really at a loss in trying to do, so we're going to, coming towards the end, I'm going to give you a two part question. So the first one is just what do you do for fun or how do you relax? I mean, these are high stress jobs that we all have as CIOs. And the second one is we like to end with having you describe what the term integrative CIO means to you and how you try to live it. And so I'm going to go with you Kaylene first, and then we'll go to Donna.

Gayleen Gray: Okay. Well, maybe I'm going to be more interested in what Donna's answer is to the integrative CII think that will be fine. So what do I do for fun? I am really, really fortunate that I have a yellow lab named Charlie, and Charlie forces me to get outside with my partner Peter, and we spend a lot of time hiking and doing outdoor activities. We also have a cottage up north in Canada in the region called Tomy. And so summer is coming. The ice is not completely out on our lake yet, I'm to say, but it's going to be out. And so we do spend a lot of time and spending time outdoors doing outdoor things. And as I'm sure you'll all agree when we do this on the regular, getting outside and just breathing air and listening to nothing is a huge win. Integrative CIO.

Gayleen Gray: Yeah, I mean, I think, I don't know if I'm going to answer this the way you guys would answer it, so this will be fun to me, it really is about being connected, both as I've already talked about across my peer group, but within my organization. I'm connected. I have a leadership role within it, but I have a leadership role within the institution, and it's critically important to understand the institutional imperatives. What's our mission? What are the challenges that my colleagues are dealing with or my senior leadership are dealing with? And how do I help to bring my competencies and my capabilities and my team's abilities to support all of that. So I am a big peer colleague, want to be part of solutioning for my institution, and I'm really grateful that I have the opportunity to do that in my position.

Donna Kidwell: Oh, what fun. I love to go to in the summer to my father's cabin in northern New Mexico. And that part of the world has some weaving traditions, traditional woven tapestries and rugs that are really unique to that. And one of my favorite things in the world is a Rio Grande tradition. It's a walking loom. So imagine a loom that's the size of a small car and you stand on pedals that actually move the shed. So it's talk about integration. It's like the whole, it takes all of you to do it. And on any given day, I'll walk 20,000 steps just making a weaving. So that's my favorite thing to do for fun. Although it requires that I go to Northern New Mexico, which is not the worst thing integrative. Throughout my career, I've really tried to figure out what I'm interested in and intrigued by and then figure out if you hear it clicking. That's because the seasons are changing. And I'm in an old building in Simco Hall, and I guess the radiator's having fun.

Donna Kidwell: My good friend Boose warned me this would happen. And of course it picks now. But anyway, so there was a moment in my career where I thought, I really want to work with academics. I really want to work with scientists. I should go get a doctorate. So I did studying how scientists and principal investigators do their work and how they make and create partnerships, that's what I wanted to study. Then kind of weaving that into the rest of things that I was interested in with digital learning or whatever. That led me to be a CTO at Ed Plus, which led me to be a digital trust officer in CSO at ASU, and then led me here trying to integrate these places where my own passion for a thing could then match the impact. So that's kind of how I drive my own career. I take that to my teams as well.

Donna Kidwell: I'm as interested as how we can integrate into the fabric of a project, librarians and students and my friends in the registrar, although we have 23 registrars here, which will blow the minds of anybody in the United States who have one anyway. But I think that ability for, I think in some ways the chief in our title, the C in our title isn't, we're not chiefs, but we can convene in really interesting ways. And when that integration of folks across the campus come, then the solutions are so much more vibrant and interesting and robust. Yeah, so that'd be my answer.

Gayleen Gray: I love that answer.

Cynthia Golden: I think that the theme of convening and connecting is something we've heard in almost all of our integrative CIO discussions we've had with other people. Diane, Jack, that's really come

Jack Suess: Through. I do. Yeah. I think we haven't heard convener, but we've heard connector, and I think bringing the two together is just perfect and it's wonderful way to end. So thank you both. It's been just a fabulously fun time getting a chance to talk with you two about this.

Cynthia Golden: I agree. It's been great to get to know you

Donna Kidwell: Well. Thanks so much. Thanks for having us.

Gayleen Gray: Yeah, thank you. It's been an honor.