Paige Francis
Chief Information Officer
Academia, University
Tulsa, USA
Paige Francis, Vice President for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer for the University of Tulsa in Tulsa, Oklahoma, is a strategic and performance-focused executive with 15+ years of innovative, energetic technology leadership across a variety of industries. Paige is an expert in defining and implementing strategic priorities for applying technology in any environment, rallying consensus, fostering teamwork and collaboration, and creating a constant learning environment at the pace of technology. She is a motivational and nationally recognized leader known for clearly defining mission and goals, aligning people and resources, and consistently delivering results that exceed expectations.
Paige is a Computerworld Premier 100 IT Leader, a continuously named Huffington Post Top 50 Most Social CIO and routinely provides content for InformationWeek, CIO.com, University Business and eCampus News.
Paige Francis on Breaking Gender Roles
Cynthia Golden and Jack Suess interviewed Paige Francis on February 10, 2022 for EDUCAUSE & The Integrative CIO Leadership and Professional Learning. Below is an excerpt from that interview:
So what are some of the strategies that you’ve learned that can help your women employees and other women be successful or even achieve more prominent roles in their organizations?
Paige Francis: I don’t think in many ways the issue is a lack of interest from women. I think it’s a lack of acceptance when they get into it and it becomes a hassle and I’ll just go in a different direction. IT is not at all what I thought it was 20 years ago. IT is certainly wildly different year over year. What I try to do is paint a realistic picture of what IT is, acknowledge the fact that you’re going to come across some bias in our field, but it’s really just your job to do your job. And that has legs of its own.
I made a pivot when I was at Fairfield University. I had almost categorically turned down participation in some of the DEI efforts because I was still stuck in that mindset of not wanting to differentiate myself based on my gender. And I had received an invitation to attend an event in New York City. And they had those very often, but this was a full day and the topic was going to be about the value of women in technology. And it was going to be a deep dive into the importance, you were going to hear from individuals about the impact of women and all of this. And it was like a three hour event. And I was like, oh, okay.
So for whatever reason, I looked at it and I started to consider it. It was all male presenters. I don’t know what it was about that day and about that invitation, but I actually sent a response to the individuals that were putting on the event. And I just said, I go, “This is shameful. Because what we need are men letting an entire room full of women, let them know how valuable they were, but this was an opportunity for women to be on a stage modeling for women about their impact that they would have in technology.”
Well, within two days that entire team was sitting around my conference table at Fairfield University, and they were explaining what their intention was, and they acknowledged the fact that they missed the mark. But that lit a fire in me and made me aware of the fact of I am in this elevated leadership position. How dare I not use this position to support and further others that might not have an easy of a road as I did getting into IT or into IT leadership? There is so much opportunity in IT that I really want to share the wealth with my gender and encourage them to give IT a second chance because it doesn’t matter whether you go into HR information systems, you look at those starting salaries for HRIS versus HR and it’s easily a $15,000 gap.
