Biography

Dr. Mark Koan is the Chief Experience Officer at Canyon GBS, a software company that is revolutionizing how colleges and universities can harness affordable AI-powered technology to drive student success. He has more than three decades of public and private sector leadership experience, with 25+ years in higher education IT organizations. In 2022, Dr. Koan was selected by CIOs across the state for the Orbie Award and named Arizona's CIO of the Year for the Public Sector. 

Previously, Dr. Koan was the Vice Chancellor and Chief Information Officer (CIO) for the Maricopa Community Colleges that served more than 130,000 students each year. Under Dr. Koan’s leadership, Maricopa’s IT team received a global innovation award for their rapid deployment of advanced unified communication technologies at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and earned the 2021-2022 Innovation of the Year Award for their creative combination of open source and cloud technologies to enhance student service.  While in that role, Dr. Koan also helped bring in nearly $2 million in public and private grant funding for the system. 

Dr. Koan also served as an Associate Vice Chancellor where he led the district's technology transformation efforts, launching the first system-wide mobile application for students and leading the development of Maricopa’s first comprehensive data lake. 

As the CIO for Phoenix College, Dr. Koan and his team earned the Innovation of the Year Award for the Maricopa Community Colleges for their development of a mobile-friendly student portal, later deployed across the entire 10-college district. 

Before working for the Maricopa Community Colleges, Dr. Koan was an IT leader at Arizona State University where he led several diverse teams across multiple locations and helped develop and advance strategic alliances for ASU's University Technology Office, including work with key industry partners such as Amazon, Google, and Verizon.

Dr. Koan also has a broad teaching background that includes secondary, undergraduate, graduate, and overseas courses covering a wide range of subjects.  Mark has presented at national and regional conferences on a variety of topics including innovation, AI, student success, and information security. He holds a doctorate in Educational Leadership and Innovation from Arizona State University, with an emphasis in policy and administration, as well as an M.A., B.S., and A.A.