Sean Ball.
VP of IT looking for
VP, Infra & Ops in Denver.
Sixteen-plus years building, leading, and modernizing IT for community-focused credit unions. Currently leading infrastructure and operations at Direct FCU; previously VP IT Operations & Infrastructure at CapEd. Independently designed and built a per-tenant identity governance platform purpose-built for mid-market credit unions, after watching the same gap surface across two operations roles.
What I've moved.
6 headline metricsRedesigned core-system recovery; RPO held under 5 min. Documented and tested quarterly with the same team that runs production.
Reclaimed ~4 hours/week of analyst work. Baseline shifted from 'investigate every alert' to 'investigate what survives MDR triage'.
Cut average wait time by >50% through contact-center modernization and routing redesign.
License-tier rationalization across CapEd's M365 estate without removing any capability staff actually used.
Zero-cost Phase 0 governance earns the right to request Phase 1b platform budget — sequencing, not optimism.
Entra Managed / AD Linked / Importable / Attestation — pragmatic answer to 'what about apps that don't have SSO?'
Where I've done it.
Click any role to expandVP of Information Technology
— currentLeading IT for a cloud-forward Massachusetts credit union mid-modernization across phone, backup, endpoint, SASE, and infrastructure.
- ›Team of 4 (direct)
- ›Contact center: RingCentral → Glia
- ›Org-wide phone: RingCentral → MS Teams Phone
- ›Backup: Veeam-on-Data Domain → Veeam + Scality ARTESCA S3
- ›Endpoint: VDI → traditional desktops with ManageEngine Endpoint Central
- ›Network: Cisco firewall → Cato Networks SASE
- ›Infrastructure: on-prem virtual servers → hosted private cloud
- →Authored and presented the AI strategy now executing across the credit union
- →Sequenced governance-first to make Phase 1 budget asks credible
VP of IT Operations and Infrastructure
Owned IT capital and operating budget. Led the team that rebuilt DR, modernized the contact center, and rolled out MDR.
IT Manager → IT Specialist → Help Desk → Teller
Sixteen-plus year tenure climbing from a member-facing teller role to IT Manager, owning progressively larger pieces of CapEd's technology stack.
Three projects worth a closer look.
Tabs ↓AI as a Capacity Multiplier
Strategy presented to Direct FCU leadership · VP of Information TechnologyA governance-first AI strategy framing capacity (not headcount) as the win, sequenced so zero-cost Phase 0 governance work earns the right to request Phase 1 platform budget.
"The risk is not adopting AI; the risk is un-governed AI."
- 01Zero-cost Phase 0: governance framework, Microsoft DPA review, Customer Lockbox, 8-stage use-case lifecycle
- 02Phase 1a: Copilot Studio knowledge agent grounded on bounded SharePoint, capped under $2K/yr
- 03Phase 1b: Azure Golden Path + AI-Assisted Builder Program, $5–15K, gated on Phase 0 evidence
- 04Phase 1c: 12 weeks of stabilization before any Phase 2 scoping — measurement, not optimism
- 05AI-Assisted Builder Program: 4 approved surfaces, hard cap on review queue, no shadow tooling
- —No member-facing AI features
- —No autonomous decision-making
- —No member PII in external AI services
- —No core write-back
- —No role eliminations
The toolkit, with depth honestly labeled.
Filter ↓The day-to-day stack — what runs the business, who owns it, and what breaks.
Authoring and executing AI strategy in regulated environments — governance frameworks, use-case lifecycles, vendor evaluation, and the discipline to sequence governance before deployment.
Identity governance and joiner-mover-leaver automation across Active Directory, Entra ID, M365, and the long tail of credit-union applications that don't fit a clean SSO story.
How I think about the work.
How I pick a vendor
Three questions I ask before any line item over $25K.
Placeholder. Sean will replace this in M3 with a real essay.
The three questions
- Who, specifically, will I call when this breaks at 11pm on a Sunday?
- Will this still be the right product two renewals from now?
- What’s the exit cost if the answer to (2) becomes “no”?
These aren’t trick questions. They are the questions whose answers should already exist in writing before the contract goes to legal — not after.
Governance as foundation, not a tax
Why I sequence governance before deployment on emerging-tech adoption — and why 'the risk is not adopting AI; the risk is un-governed AI' is the right framing for regulated environments.
Placeholder. Full piece to come during Milestone 3, drawing on the Direct FCU AI strategy and operational experience at CapEd.
The argument in three lines
- BCG’s research keeps showing ~70% of AI outcomes are people and process, ~20% infrastructure, ~10% algorithms. Governance is where the value lives.
- AI is entering the organization whether or not anyone governs it — staff subscriptions, vendor-embedded features, regulator attention. The choice is governed front door or un-governed back door.
- Zero-cost governance work earns the right to request platform budget with evidence. It’s not bureaucracy — it’s how you make the budget ask credible.
Why this isn’t slow
The strategy that frames this work runs Phase 0 (governance) and Phase 1a (pilot knowledge agent) in parallel. Governance-first is a sequencing argument about budget asks, not a freeze on delivery.
Education and certifications.
- MBA, Information TechnologyWestern Governors University · 2024
- BS, Data Management & Data AnalyticsWestern Governors University · 2021
- AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner 2022
- CIW Data Analyst 2021
- CompTIA Project+ 2019
- CompTIA A+ 2016
- CompTIA Network+ 2016
This site, instrumented.
Mock data — M6 swaps in /api/metricsOn the deployed site this panel will read from a real Azure App Insights endpoint provisioned via Bicep — public observability is part of the proof-of-craft. Here it's mocked, but the schema is real.