Biography

Laura K. Ipsen is president and chief executive officer of Ellucian.

Laura has more than 25 years of experience as a technology executive, working to drive transformation in the public and private sectors and spur adoption of comprehensive solutions in high-growth industries.

Laura joined Ellucian from Oracle Corporation, where she most recently served as general manager and senior vice president for Oracle Marketing Cloud—leading all customer-facing aspects of the business, including sales, account management, marketing, and customer services. Previously, she served as corporate vice president of Microsoft’s worldwide public sector organization, where she led a team of more than 2,000 sales and marketing professionals serving government, education, and non-privatized healthcare customers in more than 100 countries.

Laura’s experience also includes more than a decade at Cisco Systems, where she led an effort to transform how the world manages energy supplies and build smart-grid solutions for utilities around the world. Prior to that, she established and managed Cisco’s global policy and government affairs division, where she led the company’s public policy agenda as it related to the Internet and global adoption of broadband access. Laura has also held leadership roles at PricewaterhouseCoopers, Acer America, and Hitachi Data Systems.

Laura currently serves as a member of the Board of Directors for Verisk, a leading data analytics provider, as well as the Business-Higher Ed Forum (BHEF) based in Washington, D.C. She previously served on the Board of Directors of Monsanto for nearly eight years, and as the chair of the Washington, D.C.-based Information Technology Industry Council.

Laura holds a bachelor’s degree in international relations from the Woodrow Wilson School of Foreign Affairs at the University of Virginia, and she studied Arabic at Yarmouk University in Jordan. She is also a Senior Fellow of the American Leadership Forum, Silicon Valley Chapter.