Craig L. Email & Phone Number

Evanston, Illinois, United States

Greater Chicago Area

Provide strategic leadership and guide program execution and fiscal integrity for almost $7 Million in social services programming to support children and families from under served communities through early childhood programs, youth mentoring and extended family support and services. Lead and support development initiatives to raise funds for the agency. Leverage operations experience to drive strategic initiatives to support agency growth.

Chicago

Guide the successful execution of high priority cross-functional projects. Advise college leadership staff on strategic priorities. Collaborate with senior leadership on critical issues that impact the district. Communicate college and district priorities to internal and external audiences. Maintaining confidentiality of privileged information, and performing a wide range of other duties assigned by the Chancellor that require tact, sensitivity, independent judgment, diplomacy, discretion, and flexibility.

I served as the Chief Executive Officer of the campus, providing education services and supports for over 6500 students annually, led a campus team of 540 employees. As President, I was responsible for day to day campus operations and ensuring that all students are successful in achieving their education and career goals. During my tenure the campus graduation rate improved from 20% to 25%, also improved student transfer rate by 2% over goal. Additional accomplishments included:*Ensure that the campus is fiscally sound by developing and managing a $26 million budget that maximizes resources and delivers maximum value to students.*Led the development and launch of new relevant programs that met student and employer demand.*Improve community engagement by developing and managing external stakeholder relationships and greatly increasing the number of unique visitors to campus. I led efforts to ensure that the campus was a key stakeholder in community initiatives and conversations to revitalize the neighborhood and increase access to learning opportunities.*Expanded partnership with Chicago Public School partners to advocate for campus to be a destination of choice for neighborhood students.*Made sure there was an intense focus on Increasing student engagement to better support students throughout their academic experience.*Launched new staff initiatives to increase transparency, improve decision making and give staff ownership of the campus goals.

Chicago

Provide strategic leadership and management of all information technology operations for the district. Leading a team of over 120 employees across 7 campuses and managing $19 million budget. Major accomplishments included a complete website redesign to increase engagement for both current and future students (www.ccc.edu). Enterprise system upgrades (PeopleSoft, Office 365). Also served as a senior champion for new academic system implementations to improve student engagement and enhance faculty effectiveness (Blackboard, GradesFirst, etc.)

District Office

Driving transformation and results across the organization by leading internal operations and high impact initiatives as a member of the executive team. I was a trusted senior advisor to the CEO providing insight and support for critical issues impacting student and organization success. Delivered over $5 million dollars to the bottom line by leading initiatives to improve internal work processes. Provided guidance and support to senior staff to ensure that all business units were working towards common goals.Responsibilities include: Organizational Leadership, Strategic planning, Operations Management, and External relations. Oversight of Information Technology and Human Resources operations.

Partnered with CIO to deliver effective technoloy support and services. Senior IT leader with responsibility for enterprise information strategies and delivery including data warehousing, instructional technology integration and overall technology operations supporting 45K users in the organization.

Mba, Information Systems/Marketing

B.A., Computer Science

Activities and Societies: Football, Baseball, Track, Radio