Chris Sedore, BU’s IS&T Leader, Named First Chief Transformation Officer
He says the role is all about turning “big ideas into real improvements”
Chris Sedore, BU’s first chief transformation officer, says that the new job entails modernizing administration and supporting major changes in University operations.
Chris Sedore, BU’s IS&T Leader, Named First Chief Transformation Officer
He says the role is all about turning “big ideas into real improvements” and about “dedicated focus and accountability for institution-wide change”
During your time at Boston University, you may be asked to fill out an electronic form. You would sign in with your BU email and password, and then be presented with a form asking for your name, email (again), BU identification, and other information. You might even have wondered, “Why do I need to enter all this information—don’t you already know it?”
Problems like this seem trivial on their own. But across thousands of daily interactions, they shape how people experience the University as a staff member, a faculty member, or a student—and how much time we spend doing work that could, and should, be simpler.
This will be the type of opportunity to improve that will now fall to Chris Sedore, vice president for Information Services & Technology, who has been named the University’s first chief transformation officer. As the University rolls out its multipronged strategic framework, called “Charting Our Future,” Sedore’s new role will help drive the “Operational Excellence” component of the vision.
“In simple terms,” Sedore says, “my job is to help the University turn big ideas and plans into real, measurable improvements—especially in how we operate, serve students, faculty, and staff, and use our resources wisely.”
Sedore came to BU in August 2024, crossing the Charles River from nearby Tufts University, where he oversaw its $60 million, 280-person IT organization. His extensive background in academic IT includes 20-plus years at Syracuse University, as well as at the University of Texas at Austin and the New York State Education and Research Network. He spoke with BU Today about why the University created his new position and what he hopes to achieve in it.
“BU already has many talented leaders and teams doing excellent work,” Sedore says. “What this role adds is dedicated focus and accountability for institution-wide change.”
Q&A
with Chris Sedore
BU Today: What are the new duties you’ll perform?
Sedore: Universities are complex organizations. We often have good strategies, but they can take a long time to move from concept to execution, particularly when work crosses units. My role is to help connect those dots: to bring focus, coordination, and follow-through to major institutional change efforts. That includes clarifying priorities, aligning people and resources, tracking progress, and making sure we see results—not just plans or reports.
Importantly, this role is not about centralizing control or telling people how to do their jobs. It’s about enabling change, reducing friction, and helping the University move deliberately and effectively through periods of significant transition.
Transformation is not a one-time project—it’s an ongoing discipline. This role is about helping BU build the capacity to adapt, improve, and evolve over time, while staying true to its academic mission and values. My view is that roles like this should be catalytic rather than permanent: they exist to help an institution catch up, build momentum, and embed new ways of working. I see this work as deeply collaborative, and I’m excited to partner with colleagues across the University to do it thoughtfully.
My view is that roles like this should be catalytic rather than permanent: they exist to help an institution catch up, build momentum, and embed new ways of working.
BU Today: BU, like a lot of institutions, has old systems, old mainframes. Can you talk about why it’s so hard to update and improve upon systems that might be decades old, and how you will help the institution move forward?
Over time, people across the University created local ways to streamline their work, often building forms, emails, or manual steps to solve immediate needs. Some of that grew out of older systems, including the mainframe, which remained part of BU’s operations longer than at many institutions. But the bigger story isn’t any single technology; rather it’s how work evolved organically across units, with each solution making sense in the moment, while gradually adding layers of complexity and local variation.
Tracing these forms out, for example, shows that many of them turn into emails to a person who then has to process them, often by looking up a record in a University system and then updating it. That ends up creating more work for already busy staff without improving the experience for the person submitting the request. Today, there are better approaches that allow these straightforward requests to move forward automatically, reducing manual effort and making the experience better for the person on the other end.
Some foundational improvements are already underway, including adding prerequisite checking to the registration process and automating graduation clearance/degree completion, both of which will reduce manual work. There is much more to come, with some work simply catching up on processes that should already feel seamless at a leading university like BU, and some using newer tools, including AI, to remove steps people shouldn’t have to think about at all.
BU Today: Are there one or two projects or initiatives you’ll be addressing immediately in your new role that you can share a few details about?
In the near term, my focus is on laying the foundation for transformation, rather than launching a long list of new initiatives.
One immediate priority is establishing a clear, shared framework for how major change efforts are selected, governed, and supported. That includes improving visibility into what’s already underway, how initiatives connect to institutional goals, and where we may be stretching our capacity too thin.
Another early focus is on operational efficiency and administrative modernization, particularly where improvements can reduce unnecessary complexity and free up time for higher-value work—reducing friction for faculty, staff, and students in University processes. In many cases, this means using better data, smarter automation, and clearer decision-making rather than adding new layers of process. In fact, we may find we can remove some layers of process and get better outcomes.
BU Today: Will you continue with your current title/duties?
Yes, I will continue in my current role as vice president and chief information officer, and I also continue to serve as interim vice president and associate provost for Enrollment & Student Administration.
The work here is to change—transform—how we operate, to identify local approaches that could be scaled, rethinking processes that evolved over time, but were never designed with user experience or efficiency in mind, and helping the University work in more coordinated and intentional ways.