This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I truly enjoyed my time at Oracle. It’s an incredible company with true vision and strategy around technology and enterprise computing. [But] this job is coming at a unique time in Colorado’s history in terms of the need to really understand technology’s role in the state’s economic development and recovery plan. I’m kind of the quintessential learner. I like to take on new challenges, and so it’s one of those times in one’s career where you have to take a step back, look at those opportunities and take advantage of them.
I think there is tons of opportunity. There are areas of IT service that need to be hardened and worked on from a reliability, performance and stability standpoint. That’s typical in a lot of IT jobs. But this is a huge opportunity to leverage what we’re doing around economic development and looking at how technology can be key to that. I look at technology as something that can join people from a digital-divide perspective and bring communities together, so that’s probably what I’m most excited about.
I’m working on my 90-day plan, and I’m getting a lot of counsel on the things, from a transition standpoint, that have been done. There’s a great, very hard-working Office of Information Technology within the state that’s been working on a lot of transformational activities up until this point, and I want to continue and build on that momentum.
No. This is my first time meeting and working with him, which I think is a real testament to his leadership and making sure he’s reaching out to a broad base of people to ensure that he gets the right people on his cabinet.