Michael Dobe

Background

About Michael Dobe

I am currently serving as Chief Digital Officer (CDO) for Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez (UAI) in Santiago, Chile. As the CDO I lead the university's digital transformation program while overseeing the modernization of the university's IT operations, cybersecurity, and service delivery model. Our purpose is to transform the institutional culture to create a modern agile workplace with the tools and processes to enable our core mission of student development and success. Starting with a comprehensive change management program and overseen by robust transformation program governance, the tansformation technical portfolio includes upgrades to our digital infrastructure executed simultaneously with the selection and deployment of three primary platforms: a new world class ERP, Student Information System, and Data Lake. We are partnering with the Chilean National Education and Research Network (REUNA) and leading global service providers to modernize our people skills, processes, and technologies to build an organization capable of continuous improvement. Before moving to Chile, I spent six years working for one of the world's leading global service providers as a senior consultant and professional services practice manager at Amazon Web Services (AWS), where l updated my own technical skills while building and leading technical teams that delivered digital technology modernization projects for enterprise commercial and public sector customers in the US and Latin America. At AWS, I wore many hats, including service as a hiring bar raiser and senior technical product manager for field force enablement programs that aimed to improve consulting skils across our global delivery teams. But as we like to say in Texas, AWS was not my first rodeo. I brought twenty-years of IT leadership experience in the USA, Europe, and Arabian Gulf Region to my roles at AWS, which made me an old timer both in terms of tenure at the company and in the industry. Indeed, my career journey began with service as a military intelligence officer in Germany during the final years of the US-Soviet Cold War, followed by wartime service in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Kuwait in Operation Desert Shield/Storm. Serving for a time in the Army reserve while in graduate school, I developed my IT skills portfolio starting in the trenches with desktop support and network operations, advancing to senior roles and spending over a decade as a CIO in the US and the Middle East, a trajectory that culminated in a two year stint as president of a technology-enabled US-style liberal arts college in Dubai.