Princeton University named Daren Hubbard as its vice president for information technology and chief information officer, effective Jan. 3, 2024. Hubbard will succeed James “Jay” Dominick, who has served in this role since 2012.
Hubbard has more than 25 years of leadership in higher education and strategy, having served as vice president of information technology and CIO at Georgia Tech since September 2020 and previously as associate vice president and CIO at Wayne State University.
“Daren Hubbard distinguished himself in our search by his clear understanding of data governance and the potential for new technologies to transform administrative use cases on campus and beyond,” Princeton University Provost Jennifer Rexford said. “His empathic leadership will allow him to understand the needs of our teaching and research community and offer the right technical services and solutions. I look forward to working with him and his team during this exciting era of innovation.”
“I am delighted that Daren will be the university’s next CIO and am enthusiastic about welcoming him to the EVP executive leadership team,” said Princeton Executive Vice President Katie Callow-Wright, to whom Hubbard will report. “Daren is a collaborative administrator and a service-minded leader. He places users at the center of technology solutions and grounds organizational decisions in the context of institutional strategy. He is a curious and innovative thinker who brings great warmth, humility and humor to his work.”
As the chief strategist and operational leader of the Office of Information Technology, the vice president and CIO is responsible for providing strategic leadership to identify, develop and implement information systems, services and the technical infrastructure that enables the Princeton community to achieve its mission to advance learning through research and teaching of unsurpassed quality.
The OIT organization has a staff of over 300 people working across six core functions: the information security office, enterprise infrastructure services, software and application services, the service management office, the project and technology consulting office, and operations and planning.
Hubbard will be responsible for successfully transitioning OIT to a new organizational structure, reporting to the executive vice president, where it will be strategically aligned with other large, operationally focused units such as Facilities, University Services, Campus Life and Human Resources.
“The OIT organization is a natural partner for the areas in the purview of the EVP, and I believe the new alignment will be a springboard for facilitating digital initiatives across service organizations, leveraging enterprise software for resource planning and protecting the University from cyberthreats,” Callow-Wright said.
Research computing, which has historically been part of the OIT organization, will be a stand-alone unit reporting to the Office of the Provost. Hubbard will maintain strategic collaborative partnerships with the provost, with the dean for research and with research computing, in addition to ensuring that the whole of OIT sustains close working partnerships with IT staff in academic and other administrative units who are not under the direct purview of the VP and CIO.
