Josh Work Articles Michigan IT 2021 MichiganCIO® ORBIE® Awards

Since 1998, the CIO ORBIE Awards have recognized technology executives for leadership, innovation and excellence in this rapidly growing, CIO-led national professional association. The Michigan CIO of the Year® ORBIE® Awards honors chief information officers who have demonstrated excellence in technology leadership. CIOs are typically recognized in multiple categories, based on the size and scope of their organization and responsibilities.

"The MichiganCIO ORBIE winners demonstrate the value great leadership creates. Especially in these uncertain times, CIOs are leading in unprecedented ways and enabling the largest work-from-home experiment in history," according to Jen Wise, executive director of MichiganCIO. "The ORBIE Awards are meaningful because they are judged by peers-CIOs who understand how difficult this job is and why great leadership matters."

U-M's own Ravi Pendse, vice president for information technology and chief information officer, won in the nonprofit/public sector category in 2020 and was nominated for the national award in 2021.

We're proud that in 2021 our own CIO, Cathleen Curley, was a finalist in the Enterprise category (up to $1B in annual revenue).

Curley writes, "Our greatest accomplishment was enabling the shift from a residential campus experience to remote and hybrid teaching, learning and research. We expanded lecture capture and video streaming services to 260+ classrooms to support 4,000+ classes taken by 20,000+ students. We provided new software, training, templates, and assessment alternatives for 3,300+ faculty, lecturer's and graduate instructors. We developed applications to manage return to campus planning; student roll call, research lab restart, course guide changes, self-service study space reservation system, virtual orientation, online chat, virtual appointments and virtual commencement."

Our greatest accomplishment was enabling the shift from a residential campus experience to remote and hybrid teaching, learning and research.

Michigan IT had three other finalists in 2021:

Congratulations to all four nominees and winner Andrew Rosenberg!



Back to my articles and books page
Back to my work page
Back to my home page

Last update Oct20/21 by Josh Simon (<jss@clock.org>).