Vice President for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer
Office of the Treasurer and Chief Financial Officer
To: Executive Vice Presidents, Chancellors, Vice Presidents, Vice Chancellors, Vice Provosts, Deans, Directors, and Heads of Schools, Divisions, Departments and Offices
Fr: William E. Sullivan, Treasurer and Chief Financial Officer
Date: November 7, 2018
Re: Vice President for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer
I am pleased to announce that we have hired Gary Desai as the new Vice President for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer, reporting to me with a dotted line to the Provost. Gary will head ITaP on the West Lafayette campus and provide leadership to campus distributed IT units while also serving as the CIO for the Purdue system. He will begin work on December 3rd.
Gary’s successful career has been marked by leading multiple IT transformations that take advantage of technology’s promise for improving the way the businesses he is serving do business – enhancing their ability to focus on and accomplish their core missions, and to do so efficiently and cost effectively. In addition, he has a strong background in assembling and leading IT teams and experience in myriad nuts-and-bolts IT functions, from building data centers and security to remaking web platforms and help desk services.
Since 2014, Gary has been Senior Vice President and CIO for the Icahn Automotive Group in Detroit, the largest end-to-end automotive aftermarket company with holdings in AutoPlus, Federal-Mogul, Hertz, Lyft and Pep Boys. He has deep experience with SAP, which underpins Purdue business and academic systems, and which is integral to the ongoing Transform Purdue initiative. He has led more than 20 SAP implementations involving globally dispersed data centers.
He holds an MBA in Management Information Systems from Northeastern University and a Bachelor of Technology in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai.
Gary takes over as CIO from Executive Vice President Gerry McCartney, who is moving to a position where he is solely focused on the new online learning effort in Purdue’s strategic plan, which was adopted by the Board of Trustees in June.