IT executive joins Andover

PA’s first chief information and technology officer, Patrick O’Connor, will begin his tenure June 1, leading Andover’s Office of Information Technology and reporting directly to the head of school. 

This new role was created to address the rapidly evolving technology field and to provide strategic leadership for campuswide information and technology initiatives—academic and administrative—including legacy systems, AI and other emerging technologies, cybersecurity and risk management, and data and network infrastructure.

An accomplished information technology executive, O’Connor is currently chief information officer and associate vice president for technology at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. He has been instrumental in helping to digitally transform business and academic operations, modernize campus infrastructure, enterprise computing, and enterprise applications, and implement measures to make computing more secure, equitable, and affordable for students.  

O’Connor has held a wide variety of positions over the past 35 years. He was director of information technology at Columbia University’s School of the Arts, where he built the technology department from the ground up and transformed the school’s post-production facilities from analog to digital. He also worked in Silicon Valley for several years as a quality assurance engineer at firms including Apple and Macromedia (now part of Adobe). 

O’Connor earned a BS degree from Cornell University. He also has an MFA in film directing and an MS degree in technology management from Columbia University. He is an avid skier and enjoys travel, cooking, movies, music, biking, and spending time with his wife, daughter, and son.