Lev Gonick

In fact, it's a first principle.

And ASU is a mission-driven institution committed in a radical way to democratic access to education and to learning outcomes.

in a way that, you know, I'm a bit of a student of the history of universities, in a way that sort of is grounded in the initial sort of American ideal of creating public universities for people to be able to participate in, learn, discover, and unlock, you know, their own passions and their own commitments and hopefully the right skills to achieve them.

along the way.

And so, you know, ASU is mission driven.

It has a remarkable CEO.

And again, again, you know this because we've talked about this a lot over the years, you know, working with and for a CEO who gets technology is a gift for a CIO.

In our careers, I know this, you know this, sometimes you're bringing the whole enterprise along with you, dragging, sometimes kicking and screaming.

This is a very different situation.

Our CEO, President Michael Crow, is a remarkable leader in our space, a unicorn in many ways, very special.

And he and I have known each other for well over 25 years.

And I followed him when he was in Columbia.

He's been now 23 years at Arizona State University.

And when the opportunity knocked, as I was looking to pivot to new opportunities, and he and his team reached out, it was a great opportunity for me to join Michael.

And I've been doing this work here for nine years.

We measure our success as an institution, and we are the largest public university institution

you know, in the country with almost 194,000 students, Ed.

You know, we measure our success by who we include, not who we exclude.

And we measure our success by how they succeed, not how the institution, quote unquote, succeeds by being the elite in that kind of sort of way in which public higher education in our country has evolved.

And again, there's room for all those great, great