Overview
New York, USA, Champion since 2024
Sarah Christen, serves as the Deputy Chief Information officer at Cornell University where she oversees the IT infrastructure, staff, strategy and management for Cornell University on the Ithaca campus as well as the Weill Cornell Medical Campus in New York City. In her more than 20 years at Cornell, she has worked in almost all areas of the IT organization. In her current role, overseeing infrastructure on two campuses, Sarah has found that strategic infrastructure planning is the basis for strong, successful technology innovation across the whole campus. Sarah has a vast network of IT professionals in Higher Education from institutions all over the world. She believes that collaboration and partnerships with other institutions bring great value to the shared mission of Academics and Research.
In addition to her leadership at the University, Sarah is a leader within the higher education cloud community. In 2015 she founded the Cloud Forum to bring together technologists to strategize how to bring cloud to their institutions. Nearly 10 years on, the Cloud Forum is a premier gathering for cloud thought-leadership in higher education. Sarah serves on the steering committee of the Common Solutions Group, and is a member of the Internet2 NET+ Cloud Services Technology Architecture Advisory Committee, and the EDUCAUSE/Internet2 Joint Cloud Working Group. She is also on the Board of Directors for NYSERNet, the New York State Research and Education Network.
Sarah has two Master of Business Administration degrees, one from Cornell University’s Johnson School of Business and one from Queen’s University and a Bachelor of Arts in Spanish Language and Literature from Colorado State University.
Sarah lives in Ithaca, New York with her husband Jeff, two sons Tommy and Alex and two border collies.
Learn more about Sarah
Former roles
- Director IT Infrastructure
- Assistant Director of Community Platforms and Cloudification Services
- Security and Policy Integration
Education
- Cornell University, Johnson School of Business, Master of Business Administration
- Queen’s University, Master of Business Administration
- Colorado State University, Spanish Language and Literature
What is the AWS Champions Program?
The AWS Champions program recognizes, celebrates, and supports organizations and individuals driving digital transformation with cloud computing. AWS recognizes AWS Education Champions, AWS State and Local Government Champions, AWS EdTech Champions, and AWS GovTech Champions.
The purpose of the program is to acknowledge customers that have used AWS products and services in innovative ways to improve the service to their communities, constituents, customers, stakeholders, staff, students, faculty or researchers. Champions’ experiences and success stories serve as inspiration for other education, state and local government, EdTech and GovTech customers to reference as they think about their own digital transformation journey.