IT Leadership Team

Greg is a seasoned IT executive, passionate about the role of technology in improving healthcare. Bitten by the life sciences bug, Greg devotes his considerable energies towards leading technology organizations towards meaningful Health IT solutions. 

Francesca is an innovative technology professional with experience in implementing industry best practices to improve delivery and customer service including Agile/Scrum. She has a proven track record of recruiting, directing, coaching high-performance teams, and driving performance in fast paced changing development environments.

Recently joining the health and education space, Francesca is focusing her strengths on building strong IT development teams that marry the power of technology with the energy and passion of health sciences education.

Hailing from an entrepreneurial background, Francesca understands the importance of building strong partner relationships, managing key accounts, increasing revenue and market share, and improving ROI. Her experience in building alliances has built strong and lasting organizations.

Creating a culture of innovation and excellence is really where Francesca’s passion lies. She knows that dedicated, happy, and talented people are the core of every successful enterprise.

Francesca enjoys all kinds of music including the wind in the trees and the sound of the ocean. She is loves travel and fine cuisine… and has an affinity for making jewelry.

Specialties: IT Automation Solutions Development and Delivery, Scrum/Agile, Managed IT Services Technical Solutions, Organizational Development, Outsourcing, Professional Services, Strategic Thinking, Building Partnerships, Innovation, Vendor Management, Compliance, SSAE16.

Patricia is an accomplished IT management leader with 25+ years of experience in research and the higher education sector. She creates and promotes the vision for organizational growth and performance by defining enterprise technology strategies and solutions that improve efficiencies, support organizational goals and maximize the technology investment. Patricia combines her passion for both science and technology. She started her career in scientific research and found a unique opportunity to dive into the world of technology.

Patricia dedicates her efforts to ensure cross-organizational collaboration to achieve common goals. With her valued understanding of the need for partnerships within an organization, her interactions with colleagues throughout the University increase synergy and enhance technical capabilities. Patricia manages academic technology, to support the mission of the academic communities.

When not working Patricia enjoys time at Cape Cod.

Chris has over 12 years of software engineering experiences in a range of industries including manufacturing, insurance, government contracting, home appraisal, and health sciences. In Chris’s career he has been involved in producing and managing the production of enterprise solutions for multiple industries. He has consistently demonstrated the ability to lead and achieve goals set for himself and by others. He strives to explore the latest that technology has to offer with a focus on machine learning.

 Chris joined the IT Leadership Team in January of 2017. His focus is to help medical school staff with their engineering needs through advanced technology solutions ranging from mobile development and HoloLens to responsive web applications and CMS systems.

Outside the office and technology Chris is family focused with his wife and two kids. In his spare time, he also enjoys endurance athletics.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-milton-91589111

Abhi has a Master of Science degree in Electrical & Computer Science with over 12 years of software engineering experience in higher education, manufacturing, finance, and publishing industries.

At UMass Medical School, Abhi leads technology teams responsible for implementing and maintaining software solutions that facilitate ongoing academic development. She carved out a niche for herself in deriving business value, improving processes, building partnerships while also being truly customer focused. She plays an integral role in implementing solutions that achieve commendable ROI in technology. She is a go-getter who loves challenges and is often seen taking pleasure in solving them with her teams. She strongly believes that only by embracing change can an organization continue to grow and succeed.

Abhi enjoys spending time with her family and loves to hike.

John Pelletier joined the Infrastructure team August 2015 and reports to ACIO of Infrastructure. John has over 20 years of enterprise network, security and voice design, implementation, and maintenance experience both domestic and international. John's experience includes over ten years of experience working with the Department of Defense and DISA in various leadership roles in Iraq, Afghanistan, Bahrain, and the Marshall Islands.

John holds several high level OEM certifications to include Cisco, Juniper, CheckPoint and both Bachelor and Master of Science degrees in CIS. He is currently pursuing a Master of Science degree in cybersecurity from UMass Lowell. Most recently John was the Network Infrastructure Manager and Principal Network Engineer at PlumChoice Inc in Lowell, MA.

Jenene is a scholar-practitioner of online education, academic, and instructional technology. With over 20 years of experience in this area, she has successfully led teams of instructional designers and technologists that focus on enhance teaching effectiveness and learning environments with technology, online course design and development, academic technology, and the assessment of online courses and programs. She is also very interested in learning science and faculty development that assists instructors to use research-based principles when using technology for teaching and learning.

Before joining the Academic Technology team at UMass Chan Medical School, Jenene was the Associate Director for Learning Innovation with Technology at Suffolk University where she led efforts to support, maintain, and improve the learning management system and other academic technology tools that contributed to innovative teaching and learning. Jenene also designed and delivered faculty educational development opportunities on inclusive pedagogy, diversity, and equity in the classroom, effective uses of technology, continuity of learning plans, and online course design.

Jenene received her Ph.D. in Higher Education from the University of Massachusetts Boston (2019) where her research focused on factors that lead community college faculty to adopt or reject innovative online pedagogy.

Outside of work Jenene participates in social justice activities particularly around ending racism and climate justice. She also enjoys riding scooters, playing volleyball, swimming, dancing, biking, gardening, cooking, and attending visual art events.

Brian’s path in software engineering began in high school with a programming class in QBasic. Brian continued to develop his skills in computer science through a well-rounded curriculum at St. Bonaventure University, exploring areas in application development, networking, databases, and robotics. Brian’s career since then has been as a full-stack software engineer for various industries, integrating systems to share information, creating backend systems to manage and report on information, and developing front-end interfaces to display this information in a responsive way.

Brian joined UMass Chan Medical School in 2018 as a member of the DivisionByZero team, which develops and supports applications that assist in the operations of the university while exploring new technology and how it can benefit IT’s products and service offerings. As a manager of software engineering, Brian also looks to provide solutions to the needs of the university through existing applications and services or custom-built applications that provide a high return value for the medical school.

When not behind a screen, Brian enjoys his time outside whether it is out on a run, relaxing by a campfire, sunning at the beach in the summer, or hitting the ski slopes in the winter.

LinkedIn

Doug has been in IT/Customer Service roles since 1984, when he began using an Apple IIe to operate a very large step and repeat camera.  That led to technical school, then into a variety of technical support positions.  His first role in IT Management was as a Desktop Support Supervisor with our Clinical Partner, UMMHC.  In the fall of 2003 he came to UMMS and became a critical part of the Desktop Support team.  During this time he became a de facto leader within the team, always striving to make things better.  His impact has been felt by many customers who rely on him as a Subject Matter Expert in many areas.  Over the last three years he was promoted to Lead Engineer, then Team Lead, and is now the Manager of Productivity Services.  

As the Manager, he is thrilled to be able to not only 'fill in the blanks' where processes did not exist or existing ones needed improvement for the benefit of all, but also to help steer the course of the organization.  Doug follows the "Leadership is action, not position" mantra and is known to lead by example whenever possible or when the need arises.  He has a highly motivated team with a tremendous amount of flexibility that trusts him to aptly represent them in the IT hierarchy.  He is looking forward to the upcoming improvements within IT as they will enable the move towards more proactive service and a better connected IT organization as a whole. 

Doug is a highly trained vocalist, studying with a unique coach who incorporated yoga, martial arts, and Chinese medicine into her lessons.  He came away with far more than just improved singing techniques, to his immense benefit.  Since then he has performed in ten states, and the hard work he put in shows every time he hits a stage, singing at top volume.

Cathleen Knowlton joined the Data Sciences & Technology team as a Senior CTMS Business Analyst in January 2016.   She has engaged extensively with stakeholders to support the development, training, and implementation of the Clinical Trial Management System (CTMS) within the UMMS community.  In addition, she serves as the CTMS application administration and works closely with users to manage and implement system configurations to support study teams in the administration and conduct of clinical research.

Prior to joining UMMS, Cathleen worked at the American Student Assistance where she held roles as a Product Manager and Senior Business Analyst. Cathleen holds a B.S. from Emerson College.  On her free time, she can be found at the beach in the summer and enjoys spending time with her daughter and husband.

Andy joined UMass Medical School as the Manager of Hosted Services in 2017.  He has 20-years of experience working with Information Technology infrastructure across various industries.  Andy brings a customer-focused approach and strongly believes in IT is a service organization.

Andy has been successful leading teams to build, deploy, and maintain stable and secure infrastructure solutions.  He is hands on with a wide range of technology which helps build a big picture view of how all infrastructure fits together to form the IT foundation for an organization.

Andy loves enjoying time with his family, camping, and learning about new technology.

Nancy is our Telecommunications Manager and has over 35 years of Telecommunications technical and leadership experience to include the last 11 at UMMS. Prior to joining UMMS, Nancy has work at several industry leading  telecommunications companies to include NEC, Verizon and Nynex BISC.

Currently Nancy is responsible for the Medical schools Telecommunications Infrastructure. This includes both enterprise and call center environments that span numerous vendor platforms and technologies to include traditional TDM as well VoIP. Nancy is responsible for the current project of migrating both the enterprise as well as Call Centers to our consolidated virtualized platform.  Nancy actively participates in mentoring and skills development of the telecom team to ensure UMMS keeps pace with technology trends.

Nancy lives in Bellingham with her family and enjoys summertime at her pool with her husband and friends. She enjoys crocheting many projects for friends and family as well as for her annual church Bazaar.

Vivek Joined UMMS IT in 2014 as a Manager, DevOps. He has over 23 years of IT (software Development, Quality Assurance and DevOps) experience in manufacturing, sales, infrastructure management, E-learning and health care domain. With his experience and knowledge, he provides customer satisfaction, by directing the team in proper planning, implementing and collaborating. He strongly believes in agile principles and is certified Scrum Master.

As Manager of DevOps, Vivek focus is to fill in the gaps between functions, listen to the ideas and concerns of peers, and seek ways to improve DevOps processes, empower DevOps engineers and unify DevOps across the teams/locations and take continuous integration and system operations to the next level.

Outside of work Vivek loves to spend time with his wife and daughter, watching movies/thriller drama.

Deborah joined UMMS in 2001 managing a portfolio of 40+ IT solutions involving life safety systems, access control and video management, integrated workplace management, asset and inventory control, property risk management, emergency notification, and business intelligence, including the development of PeopleCube, an administrative data lake. 

Deborah’s more recent work has been to provide leadership in defining, forming, and guiding a new Enterprise IT Delivery (EITD) team responsible for implementing large, enterprise-wide technology solutions and selected intra-departmental projects.     In addition, Deborah is the Program manager for several foundational services like Identity Management and Office365 migration/collaboration.

Deborah believes in the value of the team.  Building a team that is more than just a collection of people.  Providing coaching and mentoring them as individuals to create a synergy and mutual commitment.  She says “It’s great being part of a team!  It makes even the craziest of days fun!  I truly enjoy the people I work with.”