Colorado tech chief Alex Pettit returns to Oregon for digital transformation role

Alex Pettit, who has served as Colorado’s chief technology officer since 2020, announced on Friday that he’s headed back to Oregon to serve as its digital transformation projects director.

The move, which he shared on LinkedIn, is a return to the west coast for Pettit, who before joining Colorado’s government nearly six years ago, served as the chief information officer for Oregon from 2014 to 2018. He also served as Oklahoma‘s statewide CIO from 2011 to 2014.

According the Colorado Governor’s Office of Information Technology website, Katie Shakun has been tapped to serve as the state’s interim CTO. She most recently served as the state’s senior director of infrastructure operations, since May 2024. Before that, she was the director of IT operations and information security at Relay Therapeutics, a biotech startup in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

“After several years with the State of Colorado, I’ve stepped away from my role as Chief Technology Officer at OIT to return home to Oregon,” Pettit said on LinkedIn. “Serving the people of Colorado during a time of intense modernization, audit remediation, and innovation was both challenging and rewarding. I’m very proud of what the teams accomplished — from cloud transitions and data governance advances to securing and sustaining critical systems under pressure.

“Now, I’m excited to rejoin the State of Oregon, where I’ve previously had the privilege of serving,” he continued. “This next chapter allows me to bring hard-won experience from the field and apply it to familiar soil. I’m honored to once again contribute to Oregon’s technology future — helping modernize legacy platforms, evolve our enterprise architecture, and prepare for the demands ahead.”