‘Life-changing experience’: 26 NYC employees graduate from city’s first IT Management Academy
On Friday, more than two dozen New York City employees marked their completion of a “life-changing experience,” becoming the first to graduate from the city’s Information Technology Management Academy, a new, in-house learning program for tech leaders.
New York City’s IT Management Academy was announced in August, and over the last three months, the 26 participating city employees — which were all full-time city employees at a director or above level — met once per week, in person, for a series of workshops led by expert consultants, senior managers and IT executives from across various city agencies. It was inspired by the Management Academy housed within the Department of Citywide Administrative Services, which has served as the city’s premier professional development program for managers for more than two decades.
The IT Management Academy sessions included formal classroom learning, group discussions, cases studies, moderated panels and leadership engagement. The curriculum focused on three core areas: developing and using human resources, understanding the operational aspects of city systems and processes, and learning best practices from IT executives.
Each participant was nominated by agency leaders. They were selected from more than 100 nominations, based on their leadership potential, impact to their current roles, commitment to public service, and communication and collaboration skills. NYC’s Office of Technology and Innovation covered the full program cost for the initial cohort to eliminate financial barriers to participation, and to demonstrate the city’s commitment to investing in its digital future.
Lisa Woods, the director of Apple support and operations for OTI, graduated from the program Friday. She said that in addition to the experience being “life-changing,” every aspect of the program was helpful. She compared the collaboration the course helped to foster with other city IT leaders to “lightning in a bottle.”
“It was the combination of the people that were chosen to participate, the facilitators that presented, the [chief information officers] and [chief financial officers] who joined us for panels,” Cook said. “My academy peers often talk about how we’d be in a session, and I’d be in the back and say, Hmm, that’s interesting. Or, I’d say, That really resonated with me. … I feel like the design of the curriculum was just chef’s kiss. Very well done, very thoughtful. They touched on every subject that we as IT leaders need, and I’m just very grateful to have been able to participate.”
Clara Gomez, IT support director for the Department of Citywide Administrative Services, another graduate of the new program, said she too felt the experience was transformational.
“It allowed me to see that we, as managers in the City of New York, have very similar responsibilities and many different challenges, and having to collaborate with other groups and learning from other special coaches helped a lot in identifying problems that we face every day, and figuring out how to collaborate with other people,” Gomez said. “I also learned a lot about coaching my own staff and thinking more strategically about decisions that we sometimes have to make on behalf of the city and our systems. There was a lot of transformation for me overall, as a leader and as an employee for the City of New York.”
