Recruitment efforts for Burris’ replacement have not been announced, and an interim CDO has not been publicly named. The precise timing of Burris’ exit is unclear.
In her announcement, Burris reflected on her time in Raleigh. She called it “an honor to serve as the Chief Data Officer for the State of North Carolina, leading the Data Division for the N.C. Department of Information Technology during an administrative transition, while also forming collaborative and lasting relationships with CDO colleagues across our great state and counterparts in other states.”
Burris has held several leadership roles during her tenure at NCDIT. Before becoming CDO in January 2024, she served as executive director of the N.C. Health Information Exchange Authority for more than six years. There, she architected and launched the state-managed health information exchange, NC HealthConnex. She also directed the development of foundational strategy and policy and helped secure cross-agency and legislative support to sustain and expand the initiative.
Still earlier, Burris served as the strategic communications director for the same health authority, developing the statewide communications strategy that helped advance adoption and stakeholder engagement for NC HealthConnex.
As CDO, Burris led a division of data and technology professionals supporting many business units and boards, managed a large public-private partnership and guided a multistate AI working group in implementations across agencies, according to LinkedIn. She also directed the development of a plan for statewide data management and utilization, creating the Enterprise Data Office.
While she did not specify a final departure date, Burris described her exit as a step toward new opportunities, and wrote, “As I turn the page to an exciting new chapter, I carry with me immense gratitude for the collaboration, innovation, and friendships forged along the way. I’m now setting my sights on new opportunities where I can leverage my 20+ years of experience to drive innovative large-scale initiatives through strategic planning, data-driven decisions, and executive communications.”
When Burris first assumed the CDO role, North Carolina was in the midst of updating how it managed and shared data across agencies. In a July interview, she described the goal as building a “data ecosystem where policy meets platform and AI can play a role in evolving traditional data life cycles.”
Since she became CDO, North Carolina established foundational governance structures, including a coordinating council of CDOs and CIOs from multiple agencies, which Burris said would help “drive cross-agency setting of frameworks and policies with flexibility for agencies to enact things that meet them where they are.” The state also began standing up a data center of excellence to help operationalize and implement those frameworks.
Burris supported North Carolina’s ongoing migration of state systems to cloud-native infrastructure, with the Government Data Analytics Center overseeing the transition of major data warehouses to the cloud to enhance analytics and interagency collaboration.
Yet she consistently emphasized that her mission was not solely about technology — it was about people. “We’re working to build a comprehensive data and AI training education program so that our current and future workforce is not just literate, but fluent,” she said in July.
