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Stephenson Loveson, Chief Information Officer, CalPERS Stephenson Loveson, an engineer, who has earned MBA with a focus on IT management and a minor in finance. In the beginning of his career, he worked with a large systems integrator, where he gained hands-on experience in fast-paced environments, working with financial services clients across North America on application development, production operations and IT modernization. After a decade in the private sector, he joined public service. His experience in systems integration prepared him to jump into a large-scale legacy system consolidation project at CalPERS. He held various roles in software development as lead technical engineer and supervisor over the application engineering team before transitioning to the network and infrastructure space as Chief of the Data Center. He became the Chief Technology Officer in 2021. After a year, he took on the responsibility of executive leadership as the interim CIO and was later named the permanent CIO.
Through this article, Stephenson Loveson, CIO, CalPERS, highlights valuable lessons learned from navigating complex projects, fostering team collaboration and leveraging emerging technologies.
Transitioning to the cloud is a fundamental part of modern IT infrastructure, but it’s not without its challenges. I led the cloud assessment and migration service project, which involved standing up a greenfield environment in the public cloud and migrating several applications. The project was a huge success and paved the way for a strong public cloud presence for our organization. We had shared our success measures and as a result, our leadership team was committed to achieving success. The cloud is as advertised—powerful and transformative—but it comes with challenges. One of the biggest hurdles we faced was the skills gap, particularly as a multi-cloud enterprise. We addressed this by using a collaborative approach to train our teams. We ensured cross-functional participation, bringing together infrastructure, network, application, security and enterprise architecture teams. Development of our people was a key to our success. Ensuring security was always a top priority and keeping a sharp eye on costs was essential. Another critical aspect of cloud migration is having a clear strategy, using ‘Cloud Intelligent approach.’ Not all workloads belong in the cloud. IT leaders should be strategic about what is migrated and always operate with security and cost-efficiency in mind. Cloud infrastructure offers many advantages such as scalability and ease of management. However, if your applications cannot leverage these benefits, you may be replicating inefficiencies. It's important to be strategic about what you migrate.
Ensuring Effective Risk Management and Data Governance
Risk management is vital in the IT public sector, as we are responsible for safeguarding our constituents’ data and ensuring system availability for essential services. At CalPERS, we have established a comprehensive and consistent process for identifying, classifying, measuring and continuously monitoring risk. We also maintain a risk and control inventory, which we regularly test to identify vulnerabilities and implement corrective actions. The efficacy of risk management depends on strong governance and accountability, which our organization takes seriously. We also focus on good data governance, including data integrity, security and accessibility. Our enterprise data council oversees rigorous controls around data access, encryption and auditing while also empowering business users with data pipelining and visualization tools to make informed decisions. We exchange sensitive data with many public and private entities and the work this group does becomes very critical. We have strong processes when it comes to exchanging information.
“Organizations must understand the technology’s strengths and limitations while monitoring progress and being ready to adjust. This will inform the development of policies and guidelines to govern both its deployment and the identification of appropriate uses.”
Strategically Leveraging Emerging Technologies
Two years ago, ChatGPT caught the attention of the world. We are still feeling the effects of this disruptive technology. Emerging technologies like GenAI have the potential to revolutionize industries, but to gain a competitive edge, organizations must leverage them intentionally and focus on the return on investment they provide. We should also consider the technology’s impact on the business. Although GenAI is a powerful tool, it’s not a one-size-fits-all solution. I would recommend organizations start by developing a strong understanding of the technology’s strengths and limitations. This will inform the development of policies and guidelines to govern both its deployment and the identification of appropriate uses. As you are going through these pilots, keep in mind your success factors, monitor your progress and be prepared to adjust. Finally, invest in training both your technical teams that support the technology and the end users. Technology is only effective when it’s thoughtfully adopted and properly utilized.
Fostering Collaboration and Morale in High-Pressure Digital Transformation
High-pressure digital transformation projects can test even the most resilient teams, which is why fostering collaboration and maintaining morale are essential to success. My approach is to create a sense of shared ownership by regularly communicating our vision, explaining the “why” behind decisions, and including my teams in the decision-making process whenever possible. With more than 500 employees in the IT branch at CalPERS, I prioritize cross-divisional communication, providing teams some visibility into each other's work and offering opportunities for team members to pursue projects they are passionate about. I also strive to maintain a balance of being engaged to clear obstacles as necessary while also allowing for autonomy. My team is highly talented and I need them to know that I trust them to do their jobs. When you invest in people, they bring their best to the table. Strong morale and collaboration come from creating a supportive, inclusive environment.
Key Advice for Aspiring IT Leaders
Listen to your customers and keep your organization’s goal at the forefront. As IT leaders, we must stay up to date on emerging technologies while also being strategic about only acquiring tools that truly add value for the people we serve. Embed security into every layer of infrastructure to always protect your organization’s information and systems. I also cannot stress enough the importance of adopting a change management approach – successful digital transformation requires buy-in. Adoption is achieved through small, consistent wins and as users become comfortable with incremental changes, scaling becomes much easier. Finally, invest in your teams. Although the technology landscape moves quickly and we need to be agile, we also need to remember to slow down and celebrate every win.
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