Liv Gjestvang is Vice President and Chief Information Officer at Denison University, where she leads IT strategy and innovation with a focus on digital transformation, student success, and a strong commitment to positive team culture.
Before joining Denison, Liv served on Amazon Web Services’ Higher Education Strategy team, supporting institutional leaders in digital transformation. She spent 15 years at The Ohio State University, including eight years as Associate Vice President for Learning Technology. There, she led the university’s Digital Flagship initiative, providing iPads and coding curriculum to undergraduates, and launched the Affordable Learning Exchange, saving students $44 million in course content. She co-authored College Ready Ohio, a $13.5 million grant to support college readiness, and partnered with Apple to develop Ohio State: Wellness, a wellness app. Her leadership also earned national recognition for Ohio State’s Digital First initiative, which received the New Media Consortium’s Center for Excellence Award and was twice named an Apple Distinguished Program.
Liv has served as faculty for the EDUCAUSE Learning Technology Leadership Institute, the CAUDIT Leadership Institute in Australia and New Zealand, and the EDUCAUSE New Managers Institute. She chaired the Big Ten Learning Technology Leaders group and has received several national awards, including the 2017 EDUCAUSE Rising Star Award, the 2022 AWS Think Big Award, and the 2024 ORBIE Award for Ohio CIO of the Year. At Ohio State, she was honored with the Distinguished Staff Award and the Glass Breakers Award from the President & Provost’s Council on Women. Her work has been featured in books and journals including Studies in Art Education and Interrupting Hate: Homophobia in Schools and What Literacy Can Do About It.
Earlier in her career, Liv worked at a PBS affiliate in New York and taught filmmaking to youth at the Sundance Film Festival. She founded Youth Video OUTreach, which produced 20 Straws: Growing Up Gay, a documentary that screened at festivals, schools, and human rights conferences across four continents.
She lives in Ohio with her partner and their two children, ages 12 and 14, who are rapidly gaining on her in both height and swimming speed who are rapidly approaching her height and will soon overtake her in the pool. She loves reading, hiking, swimming, and takeout.
This conversation examines how higher education leadership is adapting to artificial intelligence, emphasizing the need to balance risk and experimentation while preparing institutions and students for rapid technological change.
Higher education leadership can gain valuable insights from outside the academy. This conversation explores how experiences in higher education and the private sector shape strategic thinking and offers a healthy perspective on the challenges leaders face.
Hiring Resilience is issue #7 in the 2024 EDUCAUSE Top 10.
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