There’s something different about people that work in education. Speak with someone like Bharath Prabhakaran and you feel a sense of purpose and drive for positively impacting future generations. You don’t always find that in other walks of life. But then, Prabhakaran has always been passionate about the power of learning. From his formative years in his native India seeing how it helped his father rise to self-made CEO of a large automotive firm, to his own experiences arriving as a grad student in the US thanks to a scholarship from the University of Maryland.
After a successful career in technology leading complex transformations, including 18 years at software giant Oracle developing and building from the ground-up native application and cloud solutions, and working at Silicon Valley startups, his first foray into higher education in January 2020 came easily.
Transformation in Education
While Prabhakaran joined the University of Cincinnati (UC) in a transformation-focused role, finding an organisation dedicated to driving the innovation with technology as a fundamental strategic focus, the education sector more broadly varies in its approach to tech. “Having worked on both sides of the house I think it’s generally behind from a technology perspective, particularly when it comes to infrastructure and the tech that supports it,” he says.
In UC, Prabhakaran found an organisation passionate about innovation and keen to explore the ways in which digital transformation positively impacts education. It is a large public urban university with Research 1 (R1) status, a classification that denotes higher education institutes at the forefront of research and innovation. UC currently serves around 53,000 students – a record enrollment figure bucking the trend of declining enrollments overall in higher education. This growth comes thanks to a pioneering spirit encapsulated by the overarching vision of the strategic direction ‘Next Lives Here’, centered on nurturing the future generation of global changemakers.
Technology Innovation at UC
Prabhakaran was brought in to guide UC’s technology transformation, an effort wholly supported and driven by the organisation’s president Neville G. Pinto, who views digital transformation as a foundational element in the university’s Next Lives Here vision and a key strategic differentiator. Early work included an assessment of UC’s technology capabilities and strategy across the board, necessary to understand key areas of focus and development.
“The foundation of any digital transformation in my opinion is people, process, technology – in that order,” he states. “People and culture are always the most challenging areas to evolve because you’re changing mindset and behaviour; process comes a close second as in most organisations people are wedded to legacy ways of working. In some respects, technology is the easy part, you always implement the tools but they’ll not be effective if you don’t have the right people and processes.”
