Brook Colangelo, Senior Vice President & Chief Information Officer of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• His experiences in CIO roles in the government sector (Executive Office of the President) to his current employer in the private sector
• How he prepared for his new role by gathering insights from friends in media,  education, and even colleagues at the White House
• How he focused on listening and “meta listening” during his first 100 days at the firm to simplify technology and to reduce complications in the system
• How HMH’s team outside the IT division is uniquely tech savvy, as exemplified by  their CEO, a former Microsoft executive
• His philosophy to focus on customer and user experience first and to design the technology following it
• Eye on trends:  Education as the next frontier in technological innovation- ways to enable and adapt to the learning process

Brook is Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, an educational and trade publisher. He has held this role since January 2013.  In this role, he is responsible for core IT operations and infrastructure services across HMH’s global office network.

Prior to his time at HMH, Brook was the CIO of the White House, a role he had held since the beginning of President Obama’s first term.

Prior to that, he held several senior IT leadership roles, including roles within the Democratic National Convention Committee, The American Red Cross’ Hurricane Recovery Program and QRS Newmedia.

He has been recognized for exceptional information technology leadership in Computerworld’s 2012 Premier 100 IT Leaders, Federal Computer Week’s The Federal 100, and InformationWeek’s The Government CIO 50 lists.

Brook holds a bachelor’s degree with honors in Political Communications from The George Washington University.