Higher Ed IT Strategist · AI Governance Leader · Senior Director, Yale College
Darice
Corey
Digital strategy, AI governance, and student-centered systems in higher education
I lead digital strategy across academic and administrative teams in decentralized university environments, focusing on AI governance, student experience, and institutional alignment. At Yale, I connect enterprise priorities to systems people can actually use — including building Yale College Voices, a multi-platform storytelling initiative I created and lead.
In decentralized universities, central mandates have limits. My work focuses on building adoption models that hold up across units — where institutional authority runs out and local judgment takes over.
How I Think
Four ideas that shape how I work.
Decentralization is something to design for, not work around. The goal is models that hold up when the center can't reach.
AI adoption is shaped by risk tolerance and institutional context, not just access to tools. Governance has to account for that.
Technology strategy should start with student experience. If it doesn't improve something real for students, the case for it weakens.
Governance should support thoughtful experimentation. Institutions that only allow low-risk adoption will always be behind.
What I Stand For
I help institutions make technology usable, trusted, and worth adopting.
My work sits at the intersection of institutional strategy, digital systems, and real-world adoption. I care about whether something works in practice, not just whether it gets deployed. That means understanding how people actually use technology before deciding how to build or buy it.
In decentralized university environments, adoption doesn't happen because leadership says so. It happens when people trust a tool, understand why it exists, and see that someone thought through how it fits their work. Governance that accounts for this reality looks very different from governance designed for a centralized organization. That gap is where I focus.
At the center of my work is translation: strategy to systems, systems to people, and institutional goals to tools people can actually use every day.
What This Looks Like in Practice
Building AI support models that work across Yale College and partner units, without relying on central mandates
Connecting local institutional needs to enterprise platforms and university-wide strategy
Designing tools and workflows that people trust, return to, and recommend to colleagues
Supporting adoption through clear communication, hands-on guidance, and community-building
Grounding research questions in real leadership work, then bringing findings back into practice
Current Focus
Right now, I'm focused on:
Co-leading Yale's AI support strategy across academic and administrative teams, building shared adoption models that work where institutional policy runs out and individual judgment takes over.
Helping faculty and staff adopt new tools in ways that feel manageable, not imposed, through community-based engagement and hands-on learning.
Researching how risk, authority, and institutional context shape AI decision-making in decentralized universities, and feeding those findings back into my leadership work.
How I Lead
Stewardship over speed. Judgment over novelty.
I lead through context, care, and clarity. I am most effective working at the intersection of complexity and uncertainty, helping institutions move forward with emerging technology without losing sight of their values. I prioritize listening before acting, restraint alongside creativity, and transparency in every decision.
My role in AI leadership is not to chase tools, but to shape how AI is thoughtfully introduced in environments with real constraints: privacy, security, equity, and long-term sustainability. That means framing the problem AI is meant to solve, being clear about what it should not be used for, and establishing guardrails before experimentation begins. I view AI leadership as an exercise in judgment — determining when innovation serves the institution, and when restraint is the more responsible choice.
Strong operations create the foundation that allows institutions to innovate responsibly. Part of my work is making invisible infrastructure visible to decision-makers: clarifying tradeoffs, surfacing inefficiencies, and aligning technical decisions with financial and organizational realities. The goal is not efficiency for its own sake, but resilience that endures.
Leadership Principles
Frame the problem before selecting the tool — clarity about purpose matters more than speed of adoption
Make invisible infrastructure visible to leaders who have to make decisions about it
Build governance structures that reflect how the institution actually works, not how it should work in theory
Treat restraint as a leadership choice, not a limitation — knowing when not to act is as important as knowing when to
Sustain change by investing in people and community, not just systems and processes
Impact at a Glance
Numbers that tell the story.
About
I connect the work on the ground to the strategy at the top.
"I took a blank slate as an invitation to build something that truly serves Yale College."
When I stepped into this role, Yale College's digital presence was largely undefined. There was no unified web strategy, no governance model, no clear line between local site decisions and institutional standards. I built those things. Over 13 years, I grew the role from web operations into a senior leadership position that now spans AI strategy, cross-unit governance, student-facing platforms, and enterprise IT planning. The blank slate became a foundation other work could stand on.
Today my work operates across several interconnected areas. I oversee a $981K IT budget and govern 50+ websites across Yale College's academic and administrative units. I serve on Yale's IT Leadership Council, a university-wide body of technology leaders that advances IT strategy, policies, and standards across Yale's schools and units — working as One IT to align resources and promote institution-wide innovation. I co-lead Yale's AI support and governance model for faculty and staff, a cross-university initiative that connects policy, community, and measurable outcomes. I also created and lead Yale College Voices, a multi-platform institutional storytelling initiative now in its fourth season. My role is as much about building alignment across units as it is about managing systems.
Alongside this work, I'm an Executive DBA candidate at Fairfield University, expected to complete in 2028. My research focuses on how professionals in decentralized universities decide whether to experiment with AI tools, and how risk, authority, and institutional context shape those decisions. It's a question I live with every day at Yale, and the research makes my leadership work sharper. I also serve as a textbook reviewer for Processes, Systems, and Information: An Introduction to MIS — a small but meaningful way of staying connected to how the field teaches what practitioners actually do. And for more than 14 years I've taught IT, database systems, and e-commerce across four institutions, an experience that shapes how I explain complex ideas to people who aren't technical, which turns out to be most of the people I work with.