Open to VP of IT, CIO & fractional roles
✦Built with Claude
Shawn Gifford
Vice President, Information Systems / Fractional CIO
Technology exists to unlock human potential — not the other way around. I walk into organizations where IT has been treated as a cost center and change the equation: through patient listening that turns skeptical executives into strong allies 8 times out of 9, and early wins that have driven 62% average process efficiency improvements. The result isn't just better technology — it's IT as a strategic partner, not in title but in practice.
Shawn is a technology executive with 26 years in IT — the last 11 in senior leadership — most recently as CIO / VP of Information Systems at The Baby Fold, reporting directly to the CEO and board. His path into the C-suite is unusual: engineering mechanics and psychology research at the University of Illinois, a summer inside a Department of Energy facility designing non-nuclear components for the U.S. nuclear stockpile, and fifteen years as a hands-on infrastructure engineer, vCIO, and fractional IT manager before ever taking a full-time management title.
That path is also the point. Deep technical depth, executive fluency, and a psychology-trained instinct for what people actually need from technology — combined, they make him hard to categorize and effective in the seat. Across four employers he has repeated the same pattern: take an under-resourced or under-governed IT organization and rebuild it into a strategic asset. Modern cloud infrastructure. Real data governance. Board-approved AI adoption that gets used, safely. Automation Centers of Excellence that outlast his own tenure.
He's now exploring his next VP or CIO seat — and taking on select fractional and interim engagements for organizations that need executive IT leadership without a full-time hire.
From hands-on sysadmin serving Fortune 500 clients to the CIO seat at a 120-year-old nonprofit — a two-decade arc where the technical scope grew but the philosophy stayed the same.
Ask about specific engagements, leadership philosophy, technical decisions, or fit for a particular role. The chatbot is trained on Shawn's full career history and speaks on his behalf.
Whether it's a full-time seat or a fractional engagement to stabilize IT during a transition, I'm glad to talk through where you are and where you need to get to.
This page was designed and built in collaboration with Claude — layout, copy, and a working AI chatbot trained on Shawn's full career history — as a demonstration of how he puts agentic tools to work.