CTO announcements: New associate director, organization realignment

UIT is pleased to announce that Abraham Kololli has been named an associate director in the Chief Technology Officer organization. His start date was March 28, 2019. 

Kololli is the new leader for the network team, which has been renamed Network Services, and reports directly to Chief Technology Officer Jim Livingston. Director Mike Ekstrom’s team has been renamed Communications Infrastructure. These changes in the CTO organization enable Network Services to more closely align with the server and storage teams, which also report directly to Livingston. The change also reflects the increasing importance of cloud services in the U’s IT infrastructure portfolio as well as the industry trend toward increasingly converged infrastructure technologies.

"We are so fortunate to have Abraham join our organization," Livingston said. "He brings with him a tremendous depth of technical and leadership experience. His collaborative and inviting personality aligns well with the culture we try to foster within UIT and will be a good fit with the IT community across campus."

UIT Leadership would like to thank Ekstrom for stepping forward as interim associate director as a candidate search was undertaken.

In his new role, Kololli will direct network engineering and operations; establish common network architecture and configuration; and manage relationships with IT vendors and suppliers, internal and external business partners, senior IT leadership, IT governance representatives, and other stakeholders. Working closely with UIT’s Finance team, Kololli will develop and manage capital and operating budgets, and coordinate with the Information Security Office to ensure that network architecture, technologies, processes, and controls conform with security best practices.

Kololli brings more than 20 years of experience in network design and operations, IT architecture, information security, portfolio management, and strategic planning in the higher education, health care, public transportation, and energy industries.

As senior manager of Application Development & Support at Utah Transit Authority (UTA), Kololli oversaw the development and support of more than 110 custom applications and Oracle’s JD Edwards Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system.

As UTA’s deputy chief information systems manager, he led IT operations, support and staffing efforts in coordination with the chief information officer. Kololli has served as director of Information Technology & Communications at Weill Cornell Medical College, and taught information technology as an adjunct faculty member at Eagle Gate College and Neumont University.

Kololli holds a Bachelor of Computer Information Systems degree from Weber State University, and a Master of Business Administration degree specializing in information technology from Jones International University, in addition to several professional certifications.

Please join us in welcoming Kololli to the Network Services group.

 

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