CCRI hires new CIO in addition to Director of DEI and Organizational Development

January 5, 2022

The Community College of Rhode Island announced two new hires today with Nathan Brown of Carlisle, MA, joining the college as its new Chief Information Officer (CIO) and Andrea Ray of Providence serving as the Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and Organizational Development.

With more than three decades of experience in the Information Technology industry, Brown has served in a variety of roles in the higher education, non-profit, and corporate sectors and is a proven, hands-on executive technology and information security leader.

Prior to CCRI, Brown worked as an Information Technology Consultant for The Wing, a shared work and community space designed for women, where he helped relaunch spaces heavily impacted by COVID-19.

Brown also spent more than eight years as the Vice President for Information Technology and Information Security at Care.com, the world’s largest website for families seeking care for their loved ones. During his tenure, Brown helped drive the company’s growth from an internet start-up to a publicly-traded corporation, overseeing the implementation of an ERP system for finance, human resources and payroll, migrating the production infrastructure to Amazon’s AWS and building an exceptional global helpdesk.

Other roles for Brown include four years at Year Up, where he served as Senior Director for Information Technology and led the design and implementation of its learning centers across the country, and four years at Harvard Law School as its CIO, a role in which he led the implementation of a new student information system and transformed the college’s systems, infrastructure, and support processes.

Brown attended Providence Country Day School in East Providence, RI, and earned his Bachelor of Arts in Economics from George Washington University.

A highly-effective DEI and HR leader, Ray boasts a BBA in Business Law and an MBA in Human Resources in addition to nearly two decades of experience in the workforce. At CCRI, she will work collaboratively with internal and external audiences to develop an open, diverse, inclusive, and supportive learning and working environment with a specific focus on underrepresented and marginalized populations.

Prior to CCRI, Ray spent eight years as the Senior Human Resources Business Partner for CVS MinuteClinic, where she led the company’s diversity efforts, including creating its first Diversity Leadership Team at MinuteClinic, and managed the company’s review process by identifying and preparing top performing and high potential leaders for strategic development and professional growth.

She also served as a Senior Consultant for Diversity, managing the company’s Affirmative Action/Equal Employment Opportunity programs, and developed a company-wide diversity recruiting and hiring strategy that included forging partnerships with professional organizations to build and utilize best-practice tools to create effective DEI strategies. Her role also included building internal structures to empower all employees to embrace how effective DEI strategies were aligned with business goals and objectives. 

Ray also worked more than four years as a Senior Human Resource Associate at Boston Scientific, where she managed diversity initiatives and helped build out Employee Resource Groups and diversity recruiting efforts. She has also worked in senior-level recruiting positions at NurseFinders Staffing, Inc., Manpower Professional, and Bank of America.

An active member of the community – she serves as a member of the Community Investment Committee for the United Way of Rhode Island – Ray earned her BBA from Temple University and her MBA from Walden University, and also holds a certificate as a Diversity Practitioner from Cornell University.

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