Collins Named Finalist for Prestigious CIO Award

10/05/2022

Saint Louis University Vice President and Chief Information Officer Kyle Collins has been named as a finalist for the 2022 St. Louis CIO of the Year ORBIE Awards. Collins is nominated in the Nonprofit/Public Sector category.

Kyle Collins. Photo by Sarah Conroy.

The award is presented by the St. Louis CIO Leadership Association (St.LouisCIO). The ORBIE Award is the premier technology executive recognition program in the United States. Since its inception in 1998, over 2,000 CIOs have been honored as finalists and over 500 CIO of the Year winners have received the prestigious ORBIE Award.

As a finalist category, Collins will be honored at the ORBIE Awards on November 18, 2022.

The ORBIE honors chief information officers, and those in equivalent roles, who have demonstrated excellence in technology leadership. Winners are selected by an independent peer review process, led by prior ORBIE recipients, based upon:

Leadership and management effectiveness
Business value created by technology innovation
The size and scope of responsibilities
Engagement in industry and community endeavors

“The Orbie award is a recognition of the dedication and accomplishments of everyone in the ITS division in support of SLU,” Collins said. “I am blessed to have the opportunity to work with such an amazing team and be in the position of being named a finalist for this award.”

Collins became the leader of SLU’s Division of Information Technology Services in April 2021 when he was appointed permanent vice president and CIO.

Collins has served in higher education IT leadership roles for more than 20 years, including more than a decade with Saint Louis University. He became interim CIO shortly before SLU had to transition to remote learning and working because of COVID-19.

“Over the last year, Kyle has demonstrated incredible leadership guiding our University’s IT function through the unparalleled challenges we have experienced because of the pandemic,” said David Heimburger, vice president and CFO, when Collins was appointed to his current role. “During that time, he has worked collaboratively with faculty, staff, and student leaders to ensure the IT needs of our University community were met.”

Under Collins’ leadership, the key accomplishments by the ITS division at SLU include:

Re-establishing of University’s on-site service desk enhancing the University’s IT customer service approach, especially at a time when technology demands and stresses among the SLU community were high.
Procuring and implementing SLU’s contract with Zoom in just four days in March 2020, which allowed University operations to continue successfully upon the overnight transition to remote work for the majority of the University’s faculty and staff.
Implementing a holistic and leading-edge information security platform resulting in significant improvements to the overall cyber security for the University.
Implementing the Respondus LockDown Browser and Monitor to enable a secure test-taking environment in Blackboard.
Launching the Okta password security software to improve password security and ease of use.