Assistant Director, Information Technology & Information Security Officer—May 2020 to Present
Increased organizational maturity in information security
Wrote the System Office’s Information Security Control Standards Catalog. The 163 controls are based on NIST SP 800-53. They were developed to improve the organization’s security posture and bring the System Offices into compliance with legal requirements including Texas Administrative Code, § 202 and Texas Government Code, Chapter 2054.
Coordinated IT and information security audits by System Internal Audit, Deloitte, and Palo Alto Unit 42.
Led projects following processes and standards from the Project Management Institute, Prosci organizational change management, and TAC § 216 requirements
Led an initiative to provide a shared services authentication system for all A&M System Members. Worked with each A&M System Member IT group to configure and federate Okta tenants and synchronize employee Active Directory accounts.
Migrated System Offices Shared Services groups from Service Now, the ITSM platform shared with Texas A&M University, to a self-managed instance of TeamDynamix.
Managed a project to develop ITIL 4-based service, incident, problem, and change management processes for three IT support groups.
Implemented an IT project portfolio management system for the IT Project Management Office and a TAC § 216 compliant project management process for the System Offices IT department.
Led a project to migrate the System Offices from Syncplicity to Microsoft OneDrive and Teams.
Drove an effort to purchase an enterprise email marketing system for the System Offices. Led the implementation, migrating departments from five mass email systems to one.
Improved websites and web operations for the Office of Information Technology
Rewrote the System Office’s IT WordPress theme, including most PHP, SASS, and JavaScript. The new code increased the Siteimprove accessibility score from the low 70s to 99.5 out of 100, eliminated numerous security vulnerabilities, added developer documentation to every file and function, eliminated the need for multiple plugins, and replaced four themes with a single codebase.
Wrote a WordPress plugin to implement a documentation system supporting financial system users. The plugin implemented the Divio documentation system in custom post types and Gutenberg blocks. Led content owners to replace an unstructured collection of PDFs with organized, searchable, and accessible web pages.
Developed a static site template in Jekyll using the markup and SASS from the IT WordPress theme to enable the A&M University System Cybersecurity, enabling their effort to migrate from WordPress to more secure, static websites.
Built an auction website for the System Offices Statewide Employee Charitable Campaign.
Implemented code version control using Git for the System Offices IT websites.
Developed new websites and reworked existing sites for System Offices IT departments. Conducted content audits, user experience testing, and accessibility testing. Coached content authors on writing for the web and using plain language.
Implemented a documented process for conducting manual web accessibility testing using the WCAG Evaluation Methodology.
Texas A&M University Health Science Center
Associate Director, Web Services—August 2013 to April 2020
Lead Webmaster—July 2011 to August 2013
Directed web operations
Directed web operations and managed a full-stack web team responsible for web design, development, accessibility, content strategy, analytics, SEO, and infrastructure for more than 160 websites.
Successfully lobbied for more positions to grow the web team, and invested in continuing education for staff allowing us to leverage specialization of labor. As a result, the quality of our work, efficiency, and staff job satisfaction all improved.
Campaigned to increase salaries, and worked to improve culture and work-life for staff, ending a revolving door of web developers.
Researched and recommended enterprise products and negotiated purchases resulting in discounted rates from vendors including F5, Hannon Hill, Cludo, and Flywheel. Responsible for vendor management for projects with RedHat, Microsoft Azure, and Amazon Web Services.
Served on the IT senior staff team responsible for IT operations for the institution. As a team, we led the organization through significant change including a merger, and audits. We developed IT policy, and business continuity plans, acted as a change review board, and provided project management and strategic planning.
Established an accessibility program for Electronic Information Resources. Created a dedicated Accessibility Coordinator staff position. Provided accessibility training and procured new accessibility resources including Siteimprove.
Developed a strategy to significantly improve the quality, consistency, and business impact of each of our college websites
Interviewed college leadership to gain buy-in, gathered information, found ways to use websites better to support their KPIs; presented executive reports including user research, and analytics; proposed and presented a strategy; developed project plans then executed to rebuild each site.
Coached developers and acted as the lead developer; architected the HTML, SASS, and JavaScript framework built on Bootstrap 4 for the institution's websites, and built a Jekyll and Gulp-based development environment for a distributed team.
Developed standardized, shared components in the Cascade CMS including a page builder, directories, bio pages, and emergency alerts.
Improved efficiency, relationships, and culture resulting in more effective websites, more effective operations, and better service
Led extensive website redesign projects in 2011 and again in 2018 for the institution, its five colleges, and twenty centers and institutes.
Built tailored search applications for public websites using Cludo including custom searches tailored for each college, multi-site searches, and search applications for faculty experts, healthcare providers, and academic programs.
Built a news site that saw traffic grow from about 6,000 monthly page views in 2012 to over 230,000 monthly page views in the fall of 2019.
Implemented new systems including Asana project management, MailChimp email marketing, Slack instant messaging, marketing analytics, SEMRush search engine optimization, Siteimprove web quality assurance, Lynda.com, and TeamTreehouse online continuing education platforms.
Developed a comprehensive web application security initiative
Implemented monitoring, penetration testing, and internal information security auditing. This work enabled timely identification and remediation of vulnerabilities, prevented at least one major HIPAA violation, and stopped active attacks. As a result, there were no successful security breaches of the websites, web applications, or web servers managed by our team.
Standardized procedures for securing Linux web servers; added application and server monitoring, standardized patching, backups, and web application hardening; replaced multiple authentication systems for web applications with a single service.
Procured and implemented F5 web application firewalls replacing ineffective legacy systems, resulting in greatly improved application security, uptime, and six-figure cost savings.
Documented web team processes and infrastructure, enabling staff to resolve problems faster and configure systems more consistently.
Served Texas A&M through leadership teams and campus communities
GoWeb leadership team: campus community established to elevate web disciplines at Texas A&M. Our team coordinated special interest groups, workshops, retreats, and conferences.
GoWeb Web Security Special Interest Group: developed and taught workshops, championed migration to HTTPS for all Texas A&M web traffic, shared resources with campus stakeholders, and promoted security best practices.
GoMobile leadership team: established campus strategy for mobile, promoted responsive web design, co-taught workshops and conference talks for campus resulting in wide adoption of responsive web design across Texas A&M.
Texas A&M System EIR Accessibility Coordinators: worked to improve accessibility compliance for member universities by providing training, tools and shared services.
Texas A&M University Libraries
Web and Information Designer—May 2007 to July 2011
Rewrote the front-end for the library’s websites in HTML5 and standards-compliant CSS, replaced table-based layout with accessible, semantic markup. Assisted with web redesign and CMS migration. Designed and developed the first mobile website for the library.
Implemented digital signage hardware and software for campus libraries.
Liles & Tarpley Web Development, LLC
Co-Owner, Web Designer & Developer—February 2006 to July 2011
Designed and developed websites and touch-screen kiosks for small businesses, university departments, researchers, and charitable organizations.
Texas A&M University Department of Computer Science
Systems Administrator, Help Desk Manager & Building Proctor—May 2004 to May 2007, Network Technician—November 2003 to May 2004, Windows Technician—July 2002 to November 2003
Managed a team of more than a dozen student IT technicians. Promoted to Systems Administrator in September 2006. Two-time recipient of the Computer Science Department Staff Award.
Education
Texas A&M University
Mays Business School—August 2000 to May 2004
Bachelor of Business Administration, Information and Operations Management, MIS track.
Certifications and Continuing Education
Certified Information Security Professional (CISSP).
More than 100 hours of continuing education in the past year in PMP project management, Prosci organizational change management, information security, ITIL-4, and programming.
Eagle Scout.
Core Competencies
Team Building, Mentoring, Coaching & Management • Project Management •
Organizational Change Management • Web Design & Development • Web Security • User Experience
Design • Web Accessibility • Search Engine Optimization • Web Performance Optimization • SASS
• CSS • HTML • PHP • JavaScript • Apache Velocity • Jekyll • WordPress •
Hannon Hill Cascade CMS • Git • Photoshop • Linux Administration • NGINX • Apache Web
Server