From NASA Engineer to University CIO | People-First Tech Leadership with Brian Benn (Ep 008)

In this episode of the DATA SECRETS Podcast, I sit down with Brian Benn, CIO of Clark Atlanta University and former CIO at the Atlanta Housing Authority, to explore how business process mastery unlocks the true potential of organizational data.

Brian Benn pulls back the curtain on his journey from NASA software engineer to IT leadership in public sector and higher ed, sharing how confidence, continual learning, and a focus on people shaped his rise to the CIO seat. We discuss:

• Why understanding business processes is foundational to data strategy and digital transformation
• The art of mapping handoffs, avoiding silos, and fostering interdepartmental trust
• Key advice for technology practitioners looking to move into executive roles (including the difference between a mentor and a sponsor)
• Challenges of managing “small-town sized” data at Clark Atlanta, from police departments to museums, sports arenas, and beyond
• How to wrangle mountains of diverse data into a single source of truth for actionable insights
• Real stories of using data to drive investment, improve graduation rates, and support community success
• The critical role of governance, retention policy, and identifying the “right amount” of data for decision-makers
• Vanity metrics, weird KPIs, and the North Star numbers that matter most in higher education

Whether you’re leading data strategy in higher ed, government, or the private sector, Brian Benn offers practical wisdom on connecting technology, process, and people for powerful, enduring impact. If you’ve ever wondered how a CIO views the secret life of data across an entire ecosystem, this episode is packed with insights.

Drop your questions in the comments—we read and respond to every one!

Connect with Brian: 
🔗 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bwbenn/
📸 Instagram: @brianwbenn

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Transcript

Brian Benn [00:00:00]:
Before we start talking about the data, we think we have to have a clear understanding of the business processes. And I think that is so important so we understand where the handoffs are, who's using the data, where is it, how is it being acted upon, where's the data when it's at rest? And to do that, we've got to make sure that these individual departments are all having that business process assessment.

Nathan Settembrini [00:00:27]:
Your data has secrets, secrets that could change everything if you only knew where to look. Welcome to the Data Secrets podcast. Welcome to the Data Secrets podcast where we uncover how business leaders crack the code, find truth in their data, and turn insight into action. Today's guest is Brian Behn, the CIO of Clark Atlanta University and former CIO of the Atlanta Housing Authority. He started his career at NASA as a software engineer and he's passionate about people and creating digital equity. Brian, welcome to the podcast.

Brian Benn [00:01:09]:
Thank you. It's great to be here this morning.

Nathan Settembrini [00:01:12]:
Awesome. Well, thank you for taking the time. What was it like launching your career at NASA? That's amazing.

Brian Benn [00:01:21]:
Well, honestly, when I. When I first stepped into that role, I didn't think as much of it as I do now. But what it did provide is it just provided me that immediate confidence and almost that courage, because you have to have a level of conf. Competence to be able to work with that type of. Those type of colleagues. And I thought I was a pretty bright guy, but as soon as I started working there, I realized it was really regular, which was a good thing, real life, because it kind of. It kind of engenders that approach to let me get more competent, let me be better, and then that brings that confidence and obviously you have to have that courage. And it kind of helped me combat the imposter syndrome that some of us all deal with still.

Brian Benn [00:02:09]:
So starting my career off at such a high level kind of catapulted me and kind of made me ready for anything, if you. So to speak.

Nathan Settembrini [00:02:18]:
Yeah. That's amazing. Yeah. So walk us through your journey from that experience at NASA to where you are today.

Brian Benn [00:02:25]:
So I was at NASA for a few years. I was actually co oping with NASA, interning with NASA when I was in university. After that. I worked with them, I think, for about five years. Then I started with Accenture. It was actually Anderson Consulting at the time, so I was doing a little consulting work after that. I worked with Cisco for a while, then with some buddies, some university buddies of. We started our own IT consulting firm for a while, was pretty viable for a while, then it was hard to compete with that construct where the people we were competing against had the infrastructure to bring in those resources, especially when things started happening offshore. And I don't think we necessarily had the. The infrastructure set up to be able to compete with that type of paradigm. It was exciting. I think I could have done it, but having a wife and two kids, I was like, okay, well, let me get something that know it's gonna work, it's gonna be steady. So I missed that challenge. And it did. It was viable for a while, but jumped back into the workforce. I think that's probably. Probably when I came back. I think I came back to Cisco and then was with Cisco for a while, then was thrust into some leadership roles there and came over to Atlanta Housing, where I was in the leadership role there, reporting directly to the Chief Information officer. Left that organization for a couple years to lead MCIC Vermont, which is a medical malpractice firm, lead that IT department. And then my former CIO left Atlanta Housing, and I guess you can go home again. So that opportunity opened up. I had led more than half of the team when I was there, and so it was easy to go back. There was no learning curve and really was. Was excited to go back, lead that organization. Led that organization as CIO for four years. And then a little over four years. Yeah, just over four years. And then I came. I stepped into higher ed, which was my first foray into this type of dynamic. And I've been here now for just over two years, since August of 2023. So.

Nathan Settembrini [00:04:48]:
Awesome. Yeah. So we'll dig into some of those, the transitions and the challenges. But pause for a second, because that's one journey to the CIO seat. There's potentially a bunch of listeners who are currently technology practitioners who aspire to become a CIO someday. What advice would you give to them kind of as they plot their path to the CIO role?

Brian Benn [00:05:18]:
I would say that, well, the technology is easy for a lot of us in this field. I did computer science and math undergrad. So tech just comes easy. Started as a developer at NASA and what have you, but it's really more about a couple things. For me, it's continuing to learn, continuing to grow, especially in the field that's so dynamic. You don't have to know everything, but you need to understand different dynamics, whether it's networking, different aspects of technology, whether it's the data, whether it's development. You need to have a good understanding of how it all works together, how it can support an organization by having so you need to be able to strategize, and you need to. The biggest part, the most important part for me is the people aspect of it. Leading people and understanding the investment required in those relationships, both horizontally and vertically. And so having those healthy relationships. I had a mentor of mine that told me before, he said, brian, you'll get that job because of your competence, but you'll keep that job and thrive in that job because of relationships. And there's a transactional component to every engagement, every opportunity, every relationship. But when it's more relational and not just transactional, we get the best outcomes. The one thing I'll add about the ad is make sure that you have a mentor and a sponsor. And those are two different things. That mentor may or may not be in your field, but will lead you, tell you how to navigate some of these water orders, but that sponsor is the one that will speak up for you. When you're not in the room, they're usually in your field or what have you. And sometimes a lot. Well, a lot of times those conversations and those opportunities arise when we're not in the room. So it's good to have that sponsor and that mentor. And it's also good, as we ascend, to make sure that we're mentoring as well. And so many times I've found that the lesson doesn't come from the mentor. When I'm mentoring, it often comes from the mentee. And I've got to be humble and leadable and teachable to understand that. I'm learning, I'm growing as I think I'm helping someone.

Nathan Settembrini [00:07:32]:
Love that. Yeah. So as you transition from the housing authority to Clark Atlanta, what was surprisingly similar or very different about leading technology in those two contexts?

Brian Benn [00:07:49]:
Well, I think it's. I think, a couple of things. I think we all are talking the same things, no matter what your industry, no matter what your. What size your team is or what have you. We're all talking cybersecurity, and we're all talking digital transformation. For us, that digital transformation is simply that no symbiotic relationship between people, processes, and technology. And towards that end, all of these organizations have that same challenge where they may understand that symbiotic relationship, but they may not understand that's also hierarchical, meaning people first, then processes, then technology. So you have so many organizations with the similarities are they're trying to address a problem at the technology level that may need it to be addressed at the people and the process level, and then you don't amass all this technical debt. And create all these different silos. So that challenge is, is similar. Making sure that you have to be strategic, making sure you understand the organization that you're working for, understand the business side of it. And both of these dynamics, whether it was Atlanta housing or whether it's Clark Atlanta University, in order for me to thrive, it's not just about those relationships, which is primary, that I talked about before, but it's also understanding the business. It's also understanding and knowing those leaders and knowing what their needs are. And once I know what their needs are, we can better leverage technology and harness technology to accommodate them or help them achieve those strategic goals. So I think there are a lot of similarities, many more similarities than people identify when they go from position to position, especially as you ascend as a leader and you understand it's about those relationships. It's about understanding the business and it's about being strategic. Not just an independent strategy, but a strategy that's supportive of and anchored by that overarching strategy.

Nathan Settembrini [00:09:48]:
Nice. So at Clark Atlanta, I imagine you have quite a number of stakeholders. You have students that you're serving alongside the faculty, but then you are serving the faculty as well. And then I imagine there's the community and alumni and many other things. So how do you think about who your customer is and how you go about serving them?

Brian Benn [00:10:15]:
Well, so you're spot on in terms of the different Personas. We've got the student that we're trying to help, we are a customer service entity in terms of we have our internal customers, all those other business units, we even have the parents that we're ultimately trying to help. One thing that makes this dynamic even more interesting is I equate Clark Atlanta University to a small town in terms of the fact that we have a police station, we have a museum, we have several residence halls, a dining hall, a football stadium, a basketball arena. So that goes back to my point about how important it is to understand what the business is and what those needs are so that we can better serve. I need to understand. Oh, and then while this is happening, we've got all this acreage, it's a lot of property. Then we've got 1600 cameras tied in with the city of Atlanta. So. So that. So who we're serving depends on what that need is at the moment. What's the. Obviously we have an operational day to day things where we're making our investments, our opex and what have you, and that's keep lights on. But as we want to be forward thinking and we want to increase. And we want to enhance that end user experience. End user being the students, we want to enhance the teacher's ability to leverage technology and create a dynamic learning experience. And it's a Research, an R2 research institution. So we want to make sure that we set up a construct where our bright professors and PhD professors that want to do research have the bandwidth, have the access, have the security and have that playground so they can do what they need to do. So that of course brings in segmentation and some of those challenges. So yeah, it depends on. We're serving everybody and I guess the squeaky will gets the, gets the oil. But, but we're also looking at this strategically and we have things prioritized and force ranked. So while we're doing those day to day operations, we can continue to follow that strategy and making sure that we're meeting all of the varying needs. Needs.

Nathan Settembrini [00:12:31]:
That's good.

Brian Benn [00:12:32]:
Yeah.

Nathan Settembrini [00:12:33]:
And imagine there's also a lot of partnerships. I remember when I was at Georgia Tech studying electrical engineering, some of my best buds were actually Clark Atlanta students who were in my labs at Georgia Tech. So yeah, that's pretty cool. So thinking about the data underneath the city or above the city in the cloud. Right. However you want to think about it, but there's a lot of data being thrown off of this, such a dynamic environment. So how do you think about wrangling that data both from a technology standpoint, but also process and people? Maybe if you want to explain how your team is organized and to try to make sense of all that data, but just give us just a brief picture of that landscape on the technology side.

Brian Benn [00:13:24]:
Well, so I'm glad that you made this point regarding data because whether we're talking about any dynamic technology, whether we're talking gen AI, that's all the rage right now, predictive analytics, Internet of things or machine learning, or just AI in general, that's been around for years. For any of these dynamic technologies to be maximized and really realized, it all comes down to the accuracy and accessibility of the data. So that is the new oil, the water, if you will. And so it's so important that we have that single source of truth. And towards that end, wrangling the data means we've got to reduce those disparate sources, we've got to decommission legacy systems where we can. And then we go back to that strategy and we say, hey, how do we want to look at this data before we even start talking about governance and some of the other things we have to employ we need to understand where the data is, what we're looking at. Structured versus unstructured data we're talking about. So we look at it in a couple ways. We took it, we look at it from the academic and student success standards standpoint where we may be tracking enrollment, retention, academic success with the coursework and then we look at it from an operational standpoint and that's with things that we're leveraging. Like for instance, from an IT standpoint, we want to make sure that the ticketing is good, the that we're resolving these tickets and we're looking at a time to resolution. We're looking at the cyber events. From a finance standpoint, they may be looking at things as simple as revenue generation and grant funding. From a risk and compliance standpoint, where we're talking about the legal department, the compliance department and the finance department, IT department coming together, we're looking at IT audits, we're looking at accreditation. So it's just several things to look at. Even the institutional advancement, that division may be looking at the alums and what we're doing with them to re engage them. And what's that giving look like? So, so much stuff that we're tracking. But again, to do it effectively, we've got to be able to make sure we've got that single source of truth so we can access it accurately and then we can leverage it for those data driven decisions. And it's a much bigger job that begs for some strategic approach, some force ranking and then that governance around it as we're employing it. And of course with governance we're talking about access controls and, and all the, we can drill down, but it, yeah, so that's where it's daunting but exciting at the same time.

Nathan Settembrini [00:16:07]:
Yeah. So mountains of data and that's why we call this the Data Secrets podcast. Right. Every business, every organization has secrets that are hidden deep within this mountains of data. And it's our job to either with our own hands or with the power of our team to go bring that data out of the different silos, pull it together into a common source of truth so that we can start to tell those data secrets. So as you think about your time at either, you know, so stories from your past or from your current role, you know, what are some, some stories that you have about maybe an insight that surprised you in the data or a way that you kind of led the team to, to extract those secrets.

Brian Benn [00:17:00]:
One of the biggest things that helps me today, that helped us, whether it's Atlanta Housing or even helps us now with enterprise information management is before we even start talking about, before we start talking about the data, we think we have to have a clear understanding of the business processes. And I think that is so important. So we understand where the handoffs are, who's using the data, where is it, how is it being acted upon, where's the data when it's at rest. And to do that, we've got to make sure that these individual departments are all having that business process assessment. It helps with business continuity, it helps when there's retention, it helps with succession planning. It just undergirds that digital transformation that goes back to us talking about the fact that it's not just a symbiotic relationship, it's an hierarchical relationship where you talk about the people first. So once we understand the business and the business processes and they identify, and you may have a business department or business unit that says, well, we don't have those processes, well, yes you do. You have something that you do regularly. We just need to make sure it's documented and we need to make sure there's consistency with the other units. And we also need to make sure what the handoff is and what that looks like. And then we can start talking about the governance and the access controls and all the things before we even start talking about technology. So I think it's so important for us and we get our best outcomes when we undergird this with the business process assessment. And then we also leverage what we call capability based planning. That's all based on the data, how it moves, where it moves. It helps us secure it better, it helps us identify it. Of course, you can't secure it if you can't identify it. But it also stops us from being duplicative by having different silos using different things. Because at the end of the day, our users, our internal customers just want that convenience. They just want access to whatever. So if Johnny has to set up an Excel spreadsheet, if somebody's over there, Sally's using an access database, who knows what Billy has over there behind the wood pile. At the end of the day, they're just all trying to be successful with their job. So it's incumbent upon us to make sure that they're doing this business process assessment, that we're not being duplicative, that we're being fiscally responsible, but we're saying, well, this is where the handoff is, this is where the actors are and this is how we're going to address it. But it also has to be done in a construct where they understand you're trying to help them be better at their job. And within all of that, within all of that, what we're really trying to do is still make sure that the data is secure because that is primary.

Nathan Settembrini [00:19:53]:
Yeah. Was there a specific story that comes to mind maybe at Atlanta Housing where you, you know, your team was trying to make or help the business make some, or the organization, I guess in this case make some important decision, but the data wasn't there and so they had to help surface that insight. Is there a, is there a story that comes to mind for you?

Brian Benn [00:20:17]:
There's a couple of stories there and I'll. And so there's stories there where the, the, the data wasn't there. And then there's the other story when there's too much data there. And you don't necessarily want to put that out because as you know, data can be used to tell, you can take the same data and you can tell the same story. So that goes back to the, to the governance in terms of who owns it and who should have control of it and when should it be, when should it be presented and how should it be used. And you don't want to be dishonest. That's the other thing. So you want to make sure they have all of the data, but all of the data isn't necessarily good data. So I think. So there are always those horror stories there where you either looking to present something and you can't find it, or you're ready to present something. But now that you've opened up to access, you're showing you have too much data. So that's where you've got to really also start talking about another piece beyond governance is you gotta, or part of governance is you gotta talk those retention policies, you gotta draw a line in the sand. How far are we going back here? How much data do we really want to use? How is that going to impact the query anyway? Is this even useful? So when you draw that line in the sand, some of it you may be directed to keep because there may be some legal concerns. You've got to start thinking about the regulatory concerns of the construct or the industry within which you're working, whether that's ferpa, whether that's hipaa, whether that's gdpr. So I think all of those things give me nightmares. If we're trying to access this data and present this data for those data driven decision and those controls aren't in place and that governance is not in place. So yeah. So my story is sometimes, my hard stories is sometimes when we don't have enough data or when we're showing too much data, and again, not to be dishonest, just to make sure that it's the right data, that it's useful and that we're not, you know, running a query that's going to have this thing spinning as well. But all that is supposed to be sorted out when the, when the sausage is being made. By the time it's ready, it should look a lot prettier.

Nathan Settembrini [00:22:30]:
Yeah. So how, how do you think about making insights more accessible to leaders, either in public sector or higher ed?

Brian Benn [00:22:40]:
I think the first thing is to make sure that we're having those conversations and we're having those discussions and they understand what the capabilities are. So they understand that what this dashboarding can provide, the, the impetus, it can be used to, to acquire money, it can be used to support different initia, it can be used to tell a story, which is the best thing you want to do when you're trying to garner some support for something. So this is what we have to use. It's not, it's not even optional when I'm talking. I don't go before my board of trustees without some type of data. Whether it's more or whether it's less, whether I'm reporting on cybersecurity, whether our score has gone down, we want it to improve. We want to see where we can do better, whether we want to leverage, leverage technology to make sure that we're hardening our cyber security posture, to make sure that we're increasing the actual revenue by attracting more students. What it is. So I think it's, so I think it's so important that we, we first educate our users, our customers on what this data can do. And then we also need to educate them on some of the, how the data can be misinterpreted, how it can be misused. So if they see the possibilities and they're ca about the guardrails, then they can determine in alignment with the strategy what is most useful. And I assure you that once they start getting it and start seeing it and they're getting these dashboards and these reports, they're going to want more and more and more and they're going to want it faster and faster. So you better be ready after you educate them to be able to deliver.

Nathan Settembrini [00:24:23]:
Yeah. Was there a time when a specific insight helped you course correct in a specific way?

Brian Benn [00:24:33]:
Absolutely. So, so when we're Atlanta housing, we were looking at some of the metrics in terms of where we're spending the money, where should we invest? We can look at these, we can look at these zones or we can look at these MPUs by neighborhood and determine that when investments are made here, we get a higher roi. We can look and say that he, we wanted to bring some investors or some, some developers here. And at the end of the day what we were really trying to do is to get our participants off of the program, get them where they were self sufficient. So we would use those metrics to help us determine if this is in place and this is in place and this significant investment is here. Then we can definitely tell you to a man that the kids from this age to this age will improve. They have a higher graduation rate, they have a better CH in the workforce, they're developing higher, their grades are significantly higher. So we can definitely look at that correlation or correspondence with the investments made in terms of what we're really trying to do and that is to make sure our participants were self sufficient off the program. And then you could follow them throughout and you could always also follow them all the way to what their children are doing. So when you've helped them and supported them, you're not just changing those individual lives, but you're changing the lives of families and the trajectory. And there was 70,000 residents in the city of Atlanta that Atlanta housing was supporting. So that impact was huge.

Nathan Settembrini [00:26:08]:
That's amazing. Well, cool. Let's start to land the plane with our lightning round the KPI corner Metro Mystery Theater. And so here we're going to talk about a series of KPIs. Either we can focus on higher ed or the housing authority either way. But what is a fundamental KPI that all leaders should keep an eye on in higher ed?

Brian Benn [00:26:39]:
I would say a fundamental KPI is that graduation rate. Because we don't really care as much about the number of students coming in per se as are they, are they graduating and are they graduating on time? So I think a fundamental is that graduation rate is fundamental. I think also making sure that their improvements in terms of their GPAs, making sure that GPA looks good, even from a GPA standpoint, you want to make sure it's going in the right direction. If you have a GPA that's 3.5, 3.4, that's not a bad GPA. But if it started a 4.0 and it's trending downward, then you've got to look at that also. So you've got to, you've got to look at KPI guys like graduation rate, gpa, but also the trending associated with it.

Nathan Settembrini [00:27:28]:
Yeah. Is graduation rate. Is that a cohort based thing where it's like of all the students who came in in fall of 2025, you know, that's your denominator and then whoever graduates, that's your numerator or how do you.

Brian Benn [00:27:44]:
Yeah, I think and, I think and, and, and you can look at it several ways. Depends on how you're trying to parse it. They you'll have it broken down all those different ways. You'll have it broken down by school, school, you'll have it broken down by individual, you'll have it broken down by demographic. One of the things we can even do is we can even tell you if students from the Northeast seem to seem to do better or students that are right here at home seem to do better, or international students seem to do better, or students that are participating in sports seem to do better. One of the things we obviously want to know is that the students that are leveraging that, the academic help and the tutoring, obviously we want to see that they're doing better. And again, we want that trend there to be headed in the right direction.

Nathan Settembrini [00:28:24]:
Yeah, yeah. What about vanity metrics? So metrics that feel good but might not mean a whole lot.

Brian Benn [00:28:32]:
One of the things that we're, that we were hearing about is that, is that there were over 40,000 applicants over the last couple of years to CAU. Now, while that looks really good and I think that is, that that's telling, that's good that you have over 40,000 applicants, the reality is with it being a small private research institution, we're taking in about 4,300, 4,100 to 4,300 students every year. That's really the student population. So Whether you have 40,000 applicants or not, that's a vanity metric. It sounds good. One thing I will say is it does afford you that opportunity to be more selective and to get a higher quality student. But in terms of brass tech, that's more of a vanity metric, in my opinion. My colleagues may say differently, but being closely associated to the data, that's a vanity metric and we'll keep hearing about it. Sounds good. But one tenth of that 40,000 is what the student population really is.

Nathan Settembrini [00:29:38]:
Wow. Yeah. To me that sounds like a lot of work to go through all of those. It's like, are they the right 40,000 or would you rather just have the right 10,000 apply?

Brian Benn [00:29:48]:
Or that's.

Nathan Settembrini [00:29:49]:
Yeah, makes a lot of sense. What about a. The weirdest KPI that you've come across?

Brian Benn [00:29:55]:
The wear this KPI is probably around. Probably around something like it definitely has to do with. With the student. It would be a student demographic for me. It would be. And some of these times, sometimes these are scholarship based. When you have a student that might stutter, that might be a female from. So it's not. So it's weird in that it has all these different variables. And sometimes I wonder, well, why are we tracking that? But we can. So let's do it. So I mean, it's. Yeah, it's okay.

Nathan Settembrini [00:30:32]:
So weird demographic attributes about. That you guys are tracking.

Brian Benn [00:30:36]:
Right. So why do we care that this student has yellow hair and stutters and. But again, you know, I have a lot of respect for mine. I will be clear. I have a lot of respect for my colleagues and. And I actually learned from the things that they actually track. And I say, oh, now it may not be a big sample size. And it kind of makes me laugh and it's intriguing, but I'm sure there's some method to the madness that will sort itself out as these projects mature.

Nathan Settembrini [00:31:08]:
Yeah, that's funny. Yeah. Has freckles and plays the flute.

Brian Benn [00:31:12]:
You know, it's like, right, a freckled fruit player. That's vegan.

Nathan Settembrini [00:31:18]:
Yeah, that's interesting. Interesting. All right. A little bit more of a serious one. But what would you say is the North Star metric or a North Star metric in your world?

Brian Benn [00:31:30]:
I would absolutely continue to say that the North Star metric or North Star metrics would be around that graduation rate. And then I would also like to follow that Persona, follow that student into their career. These are even some of the things that you will see U.S. news and USA Today using when they're ranking these different universities in terms of how successful, not just where they at when were they. When they were at school, but how successful have they. Have they gone on to be? Are they in the C suite and what have you. And being able to track those metrics, align them with the course of study they took, I think is helpful. I think some of the North Star metrics also without. Without knowing them right off or around some of the things that are happening from the research standpoint. There's a lot of cancer research going on, especially with October on the heels of October coming up where you've. You're celebrating or you're supporting breast cancer, you're also supporting male cancers. I think comes up in November. So just the stuff that they're doing in the metrics, they're providing around some of the cancer research, some of the animal research they're doing, some of the combination with some of the research they're doing around animals to actually provide data that humans can use for their health. And I just think that that any of that stuff around health and wellness and being better individually and collect, even though I don't necessarily know the KPIs right off, that really intrigues me and I'm really excited to be able to support those initiatives as well.

Nathan Settembrini [00:32:58]:
Yeah, I imagine around the little town that you have that the North Star metric for the police department is very different from the research.

Brian Benn [00:33:10]:
You're absolutely right and that's such a good point. The police department, those metrics would be around the crime, the crime reduction for us IT department would be around cybersecurity. Are we minimizing those? Obviously we don't want any breach to be realized or proliferated, but we even want the, to lessen the numbers that are coming in. From, from finance standpoint that would be obviously different in terms they would be looking at different revenue generators or what the, what's the pricing, the tuition, how does that help increase in the student population, help with the tuition and what have you. So that definitely as we as we traverse the city to the cau, that's going to look different. I'd be real interested in terms of what they're tracking from the museum standpoint. I hear a lot of dollars and so forth. What's that art work look like? Do you sell any of it? So there's so many opportunities there and even when we go to the sports programs, you can imagine the different interpolations in the way that the data can be extrapolated from that standpoint. So yeah, that's the one exciting part and daunting part about being in a small town and all the different things you have to track with the different departments.

Nathan Settembrini [00:34:26]:
Yeah, yeah. I, yeah I loved in our, in our earlier conversation you, your perspective on and really passion around people and so you know, just love. As we kind of start to land the plane here, just think, you know what, what really drives you, inspires you to do what you do.

Brian Benn [00:34:50]:
What inspires me every day is that I'm able to be a part of a group or team that leverages technology and harnesses technology to help people to make people individually and collectively better. From the day to day support we're providing to allowing them to be innovative and really pushing the envelope. So beyond just supporting the strategic initiatives of the university and just the stuff that we can do how we can leverage it to help the student, to help the teacher, help the student with his learning experience, enhance his or her learning experience from the faculty standpoint to that teaching experience to make it more dynamic, to make it more exciting from the researcher, the research PhD that's there being able to support some of that groundbreaking research that we talked about, the police department department trying to say hey Chief, why don't we try to incorporate this threat detection in part of these cameras that we're looking here almost like Minority Report where you could look at the pre crime but no but leveraging gen AI to even say hey we can use threat detection. We have an opportunity here putting autonomous vehicles on the, on the campus and just several things that we're doing beyond bolstering cybersecurity, enhancing the the network, the WI fi, but really comes down to leveraging and harnessing technology to help people better themselves, individually and collectively.

Nathan Settembrini [00:36:25]:
I love that. Any final words of wisdom for our listeners?

Brian Benn [00:36:30]:
Yeah, I would just like to leave everybody with it's the with the relational is greater than transactional. There's always a transactional component. Whether we're talking about engagement with our partners, my business, business unit leaders here, or even the individuals that we service and we work with, there's a transactional component that has to be part of it. But when it's more relational, when you're invested in their betterment, their wellness, their improvement, whether you're talking about those horizontal relationships, those vertical relationships, those secondary and tertiary relationships, when you're focused on people and bettering people, bettering yourself, you get the best outcome.

Nathan Settembrini [00:37:13]:
Amazing. Love that. If people want to follow you or get in touch with you, how would you recommend that they do that?

Brian Benn [00:37:22]:
I'm on LinkedIn. Brian Ben on LinkedIn. It's up to date. It'll have me listed as the CIO and VP of Clark Atlanta University. And on Instagram, Brian Wben B R I A N W B E N Amazing. Easy to find.

Nathan Settembrini [00:37:41]:
Cool. Well Brian, thank you so much for your time and for our listeners. If you, if we would encourage you to like subscribe. You know, if you go down in the comments on YouTube, we're going to read every comment. We'll respond. Maybe Brian will be in there responding to your questions. So that's another way to engage. And yeah, Brian, again, thank you so much and thank you. Yeah, absolutely.

Brian Benn [00:38:10]:
Have a wonderful day.

Nathan Settembrini [00:38:11]:
Thank you. And to all of our data sleuths out there, the answers are out there. You just have to keep searching. So we'll see you next time.

Brian Benn [00:38:18]:
Love it. See you next time, my friend.