Anand Padmanabhan

Vice President and Chief Information Officer

Anand Padmanabhan is a global technology leader and a creative, strategic, and entrepreneurial chief information officer. He has led several organizations through digital transformation efforts, conceptualizing strategies and delivering platforms that align technology with academic and business objectives.

Prior to coming to Fordham, he was the founding chief technology and information officer for Whittle School & Studios, a global institution for students ages 3 to 18, where he led an initiative to support a multisite, multinational K-12 education system in China and the U.S. He has been a CIO at multiple universities around the world, and has led strategies for statewide and university-wide initiatives on various aspects of using technology in teaching and learning, data security, high-performance computing, data analytics, and building student-centered technology ecosystems.

Padmanabhan earned an M.B.A. from NYU Stern School of Business, an M.S. in computer engineering from Louisiana State University, and a B.E. in electronics and telecom engineering from Madras University. He has received numerous national and international honors for his work and on behalf of the teams he has led, including two CIO 100 awards (one in the U.S. and one in India), the 2017 Cloud Leadership Award, and Campus Technology’s Innovation in Teaching and Learning award. He has served on multiple boards and has published papers in peer-reviewed journals.

Prior to working at Whittle, he was the senior vice president and chief information officer for the New School (which includes Parsons School of Design). He has also served as the corporate chief information officer for HCL Corporation and for Shiv Nadar Foundation in Delhi, India; as CIO at Everonn Education in Chennai, NYU Stern School of Business, Hunter College of the City University of New York, and Tennessee State University; as executive director of IT for Seton Hill University; and as an educational technologist at NASA Center for Educational Technologies.