Director, IT Portfolio Management

Director, IT Portfolio ManagementReporting to the Executive Director of Information Technology, the Director of IT Portfolio and Project Management leads how technology work is selected, sequenced, delivered, and governed at Columbia Business School (CBS). The Director owns the School's technology portfolio end to end: the annual planning cycle with the Dean's Office, intake and prioritization of new demand, the project management function that delivers it, and the standards used to determine when a solution is ready to become a supported institutional service. The role sits at the point where business need becomes technology commitment, and ensures technology investments are deliberate and well-governed rather than reactive. This position requires both strategic judgement, including the ability to recommend against a proposed initiative, and hands-on delivery management. The Director serves as a senior member of the CBS IT leadership team.For over a century, Columbia Business School has helped develop leaders and builders of enterprises who drive value for their stakeholders and society at large through our MBA, MS, PhD, and Executive Education programs. We are equally committed to cultivating new scholars and teachers, and to creating and disseminating pathbreaking knowledge, concepts, and tools that advance the understanding and practice of management through our faculty research and PhD programs. Our vision is simple: to develop ideas and leaders that transform the world - from the very center of business. Our ever-evolving curriculum, featuring pioneering courses, STEM certification, and immersive experiential learning, prepares students to excel in key areas such as digital transformation, entrepreneurship and innovation, twenty-first-century finance, the intersection of business and society, and climate and sustainability.ResponsibilitiesPortfolio Planning and GovernanceOwns the annual technology portfolio cycle in partnership with the Dean's Office - assessing the strategic alignment, health, and business fit of the School's technology ecosystems, translating that assessment into a recommended portfolio plan, and bringing it forward for approval, refinement, or rejection.Establishes and runs a quarterly portfolio review with School leadership covering delivery progress, emerging risk, resource contention, and requests that have arrived outside the annual cycle.Maintains a single authoritative view of the technology portfolio - every project and program, its business sponsor, its named accountable owner, its funding, its status, and its dependencies - and ensures that view is trusted by both ITG and its business partners.Partners with the Executive Director to ensure portfolio decisions reflect the School's strategic priorities and the ITG technology roadmap, and to make the trade-offs visible when demand exceeds capacity.Demand Management and Enterprise ReadinessDesigns and operates the intake process through which business units request technology work, ensuring requests arrive with the business justification, sponsorship, and success criteria needed to evaluate them.Assesses incoming demand against the School's business and technology ecosystem framework, identifying duplication, consolidation opportunities, and requests better served by an existing capability than a new build.Establishes and applies enterprise-readiness criteria that govern the path from prototype to supported institutional service - defining what a solution must demonstrate before ITG will operate it, and who is accountable for maintaining it once deployed.Ensures every approved initiative has a defined lifecycle, including a stated decommissioning path, so that the portfolio retires work as deliberately as it adds it.Project Delivery and PMO OperationsLeads and develops the project management function, providing direction, workload balance, and professional growth for a team of project managers supporting initiatives across academic, administrative, and enterprise systems.Establishes consistent, appropriately scaled delivery standards - planning, status reporting, risk and issue management, change control, stakeholder communication, and closure - and holds the function to them without imposing process weight that outpaces the work.Ensures accountable ownership is assigned and maintained for every active initiative, and that ownership transitions cleanly when people change roles.Serves as an escalation point for delivery risk, resource conflict, and cross-functional dependency, resolving what can be resolved and surfacing early what cannot.Reporting, Standards, and PartnershipBuilds and maintains portfolio reporting for School leadership - delivery performance, budget consumption, benefits realization, and risk - on a defined cadence, with the same figures used internally and externally.Coordinates the portfolio interface with Columbia University Information Technology, ensuring shared initiatives have agreed scope, sequencing, ownership, and reporting on both sides.Partners with IT financial planning on project budgeting, forecasting, and variance, and ensures funding decisions are traceable to portfolio commitments.Drives continuous improvement of the portfolio and delivery practice, including the tooling that supports it, based on measured outcomes rather than process preference.Minimum QualificationsBachelor's Degree required. Minimum of 5 years of progressive experience in project, program, or portfolio management, or owning a multi-project portfolio.Demonstrated experience establishing or significantly improving portfolio governance - intake, prioritization, reporting, or delivery standards - with particular value placed on candidates who have done this in less mature or informal environments.Track record of delivering technology projects involving multiple business stakeholders, competing priorities, and cross-organizational dependencies.Ability to engage credibly with senior leadership, translate between business intent and technical delivery, and hold a position on prioritization when challenged.Familiarity with portfolio and work management tooling and with IT service management platforms.Preferred Qualifications7+ years of experience, including at least 3 years leading project managersExperience in higher education or a similarly complex, multi-constituency environment with a fixed academic or operating calendar.Experience operating in a shared or federated IT model, coordinating delivery across a local and a central technology organization.Familiarity with enterprise administrative and academic systems - for example, admissions, student records, CRM, alumni, or learning platforms.PMP, PgMP, PfMP, or equivalent certification; Agile or hybrid delivery experience.Experience establishing governance for emerging technology, including criteria for moving prototypes into supported production use.Equal Opportunity Employer / Disability / VeteranColumbia University is committed to the hiring of qualified local residents.