IT Vanguard winner Kevin Uren: A man with an edge.
There are two types of IT leaders: One who follows the grain, maybe a bit straight and narrow in their philosophy, and often follows the popular even if it costs more. The other, however, is one who uses their inner edge, approaching innovation as an opportunity and goes beyond the popular to consider the best solution for a specific use-case.
Allow me to introduce our next IT Vanguard winner, Kevin Uren. A man with an edge.
Kevin leads the IT efforts at College of Southern Nevada (CSN). As the largest higher education institution in the state, CSN hosts over 35,000 for credit students and 15,000 uncredited students across three main community college campus hubs. Over the past two and a half years, Kevin has focused on doing the hard work necessary to build an IT infrastructure that would provide the most value with the least impact on the budget. He intent: for the money saved to go back to other important projects at the college. We call that #winning!
How did he achieve this? Kevin practices the truest form of IT agnosticism. He has always been willing to move away from the traditional “name brand” solutions and test the best solution for his use-case. The end goal was to make life better for his customers, the students. You could say that Kevin was meant to be in the higher education environment as colleges and universities thrive by testing out wild ideas and researching new solutions. Through Kevin’s edgey approach, CSN was able to save upwards of 90% on maintenance contracts. Because Kevin was willing to challenge the status-quo of the Higher Education Technology market, not only his students benefited but the community wins as tax dollars are invested more wisely.
We can all take a page from Kevin’s approach and look out for those we serve in our jobs and daily life. We encourage you to take a glance at Kevin’s recognized achievements along with the other IT Vanguard winners at https://itvanguardawards.com/
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