Bradford Rowland — Global Technology Executive

Enterprise AI

Most companies are piloting AI. I've put it into production — with governance.

The hard part of enterprise AI isn't the model. It's identity, data boundaries, cost control, policy, and getting thousands of people to actually adopt it. I build the infrastructure — and the guardrails — that let enterprises actually use AI.

In the enterprise

Flagship — Azure AI Foundry

A governed AI landing zone for every development team

Designed and built a secure AI landing zone on Azure AI Foundry that gives each development team its own isolated environment to build company projects — without a central bottleneck and without an ungoverned free-for-all.

Per-team environments, each with its own token allocation, chargeback billing, and governance ruleset
Self-service onboarding for teams as requested, with guardrails applied by default rather than by review
Cost attribution built in from day one — every dollar of inference traces back to a team and a project

Microsoft Copilot

Enterprise-wide Copilot rollout

Deployed Microsoft Copilot to the full user base — not a pilot group. Paired the technical rollout with the change management, licensing strategy and data-boundary work that determines whether adoption sticks.

Copilot Studio

Agent building, with full governance

Currently onboarding business users to Copilot Studio so they can build their own agents — wrapped in governance, structured training and ongoing support so that citizen development scales without creating shadow AI.

Microsoft Agent 365

Managing agents like employees

Secured Microsoft 365 E7 licensing to implement Agent 365 — bringing agent identity, access control, observability and lifecycle management into the same operational model we already use for people.

Policy & standards

Twelve new AI policies, written from scratch

Authored the enterprise framework that makes the rest of it defensible: Enterprise AI, Agentic Enablement, AI Risk Assessment, AI DLC & Change Management, AI Firewall, DLP, Observability, and AI-assisted Coding.

Built personally, hands on keyboard

aitechtoolkit.com

An AI-automated publication

I built and run a blog covering AI tooling for technology leaders — an end-to-end agentic content pipeline I designed, deployed and operate myself.

Automated research, drafting, publishing and distribution
Self-hosted and self-maintained, start to finish
A live testbed for the agent patterns I evaluate at work

Visit the site →

lilyfuluxuryhomes.com

An AI-built lead engine for a luxury real estate practice

Designed and built a complete lead-generation site for a Las Vegas luxury realtor using Claude and ChatGPT — conversion copy, layout, and the automation behind it.

Lead capture with timeline qualification, routed by automated email to the agent for follow-up
Calendly integration for direct consultation booking — no phone tag
Connected to Google Workspace tooling and live MLS listings
Built and shipped by one person, using the same tools I write enterprise policy for

Visit the site →

ChatGPT · n8n · Google Sheets

An agentic calorie tracker, now at Version 2

Built a nutrition system where the entire interaction is photographing a meal. Version 2 added record-level actions: unique entry IDs, per-item logging, safe conversational delete, weekly analysis and AI-generated charts — all through one natural-language surface.

Capture → transaction → retrieval → analysis → visualization, conversationally
Guardrails for destructive actions: retrieve, identify, validate, act, confirm

Read the case study →

Full-stack SaaS · Google Antigravity

An AI-900 certification practice platform

A multi-user web application for Microsoft AI-900 exam prep — accounts, login, a question bank, and every answer written to a backend database so progress persists. Built by directing an agentic development environment rather than hand-writing the stack.

Authentication, persistent data model and deployment, end to end
A firsthand education in where AI-assisted coding needs a human gate

Read the case study →

Why the personal builds matter

I don't think you can credibly write AI policy for an enterprise if you've never shipped anything with the tools yourself. Every governance framework I've built at work is shaped by what I've learned actually building with these models on my own time — where they're brilliant, where they quietly fail, and what a real person needs to be productive with them.

See all four projects in depth →

Leadership scope

The full breadth of a technology organization.

AI is the newest layer, not the whole job. I've owned engineering, operations, security, delivery, budget and people — the complete set of functions a CIO is accountable for.

Infrastructure & Cloud

Hybrid-cloud modernization, data center consolidation and exit, virtualization, VDI at scale, and the retirement of legacy estates that quietly hold companies back.

AzureAWSVMware exit1,800-seat VDIContainerizationData center consolidation

Security & Compliance

Zero-trust identity, SASE, IAM, and audit programs built to pass. CISSP-certified, with hands-on ownership of PCI, SOC 2, ISO and SOX programs — including a facility security clearance under FBI/DSS review.

OKTA MFAPalo Alto Prisma SASESailPoint IAMPCI DSSSOC 2 / ISOSOXCISSP

Operations & Resilience

ITSM and service-desk transformation, incident/problem/change discipline, and disaster recovery programs that are actually tested — including a 91% RTO reduction through DR reengineering and automation.

ServiceNowITILZerto DRBCPSLA governanceRecord CSAT & FCR

Team Building & Culture

The result I'm proudest of: cutting engineering turnover from 94% to 4% in a single year and posting the highest employee engagement scores in company history, by building an "Engineering Forward" ethos.

Global team leadershipCulture changeTalent developmentEngagement

Delivery & Program Management

Portfolio prioritization, demand pipelines and delivery discipline across technical and application programs — raising project success rates from 50% to 96% through Agile practice and KPI transparency.

Agile / ScrumPortfolio governancePMP trainedDemand managementKPI reporting

Strategy, Budget & the Board

Multi-year roadmaps, multimillion-dollar budget ownership, M&A IT integration, and translating technical reality into business language for executives and boards — including $10M saved through consolidation and negotiation. Pepperdine EMBA.

IT strategyM&A integrationBoard reportingCost optimizationVendor negotiation

Experience

Where I've done it.

2021 — Present

Vice President, Global IT Infrastructure & Operations

Rimini Street, Inc. — Las Vegas, NV

Global leader in enterprise software support and services, operating in 22 countries. I own cloud, data centers, network, security, VDI, identity, desktop, backup, DR and service desk for a global hybrid workforce, with teams in the US and India.

Pioneered enterprise-wide generative AI adoption — Microsoft Copilot and Azure AI Foundry with a secure AI landing zone
Reduced engineering turnover from 94% to 4% and delivered the highest engagement scores in company history
Retired the entire legacy estate: Windows 2012, VMware, switching, domain levels and a secondary data center
Negotiated and implemented OKTA MFA, Palo Alto Prisma SASE, SailPoint IAM, Amazon Workspaces VDI and Zerto DR
Achieved the highest-ever CSAT and First Call Resolution scores on the service desk

2020 — 2021

Director of Engineering, Infrastructure

Nordstrom — Los Angeles, CA

Led a 60-person team owning infrastructure across 4 e-commerce sites, 350 stores, 12 supply chain sites and 4 data centers for a $15B enterprise.

Led the pandemic response — a 4-month technology and business continuity plan for 66,000 employees
Delivered $10M in savings through tooling centralization and enterprise buying power
Migrated from a single data center to containerized AWS hubs, reducing VMware dependency
Consolidated infrastructure, application and operations teams through post-merger integration

2015 — 2020

Director of Engineering, Technical Operations

NordstromRack.com / HauteLook — Los Angeles, CA

Owned all engineering and operational functions for a $2.5B business division through a period of hypergrowth.

Led a $20M technology revamp of a 1M sq. ft. fulfillment center, increasing throughput 50%+
Implemented VDI for 700 users, cutting setup from 3 days to 1 hour
Established the PCI certification program and passed the first two audits
Rolled out ServiceNow with incident, change and problem management
Director of the Quarter for transformational leadership

2012 — 2014

IT Director

Republic Indemnity (American Financial Group) — Encino, CA

Ran infrastructure, support and engineering for a $9B insurance carrier's IT division during 25% annual growth.

Raised project delivery success from 50% to 96% through Agile, KPI tracking and prioritization
Reduced monthly incidents by 40% and cut RTO by 91% through DR reengineering and automation

2004 — 2012

President & Founder

SPAR Technology LLC — Camarillo, CA

Built a boutique consulting firm serving as the outsourced IT executive for dozens of companies, including the U.S. Navy, Philips and Sotheby's.

Managed 24/7 infrastructure supporting 300+ servers across multiple data centers
Doubled the contract customer base in 2009 — the deepest point of the recession — largely on referrals
Served as Facility Security Officer, obtaining classified clearance through a 6-month FBI/DSS review

Global mindset

A global mindset, earned the long way.

Long before I was accountable for technology across two dozen countries, I was learning how the world actually works — studying in Madrid and Buenos Aires, and traveling through 26 countries across Europe, Asia and the Americas. A mostly different list than the one on my org chart today. It's no coincidence the two ended up in the same place.

Countries visited

Personal travel and study across three continents, including a semester at the International Institute of Spain in Madrid, coursework at OBU University in Buenos Aires, and two seasons coordinating and mentoring MBA students deep in the Patagonian mountains.

Europe

Spain+ send me the list

Asia

+ send me the list

The Americas

United StatesArgentinaChile+ send me the list

Countries supported

Today I'm responsible for technology serving a workforce operating in 22 countries, with engineering and operations teams split across the United States and India. Different countries, same skill — and a set of operational problems you can only solve if you understand the people on the other end of them.

What that requires day to day

Follow-the-sun operationsDistributed team leadership Cross-border complianceGlobal vendor negotiation 24/7 incident commandMulti-region DR Cross-cultural stakeholder managementConversational Spanish

What travel actually taught me: that a deadline doesn't mean the same thing in every country, that directness reads as clarity in one culture and as rudeness in another, and that the fastest way to lose a global team is to run it as though everyone is in your time zone and your context. You can learn that from a management book. It sticks better when you've spent twenty years being the outsider in the room.

Concepción volcano rising above Lake Nicaragua, Ometepe Island — **Concepción Volcano, Ometepe**Nicaragua

The Great Wall of China descending through forested hills — **The Great Wall**China

Machu Picchu with a llama in the foreground — **Machu Picchu**Peru

Chureito Pagoda with Mount Fuji in the distance — **Chureito Pagoda & Mount Fuji**Japan

Two horses running along a dirt road at dusk — **Horses on the road at dusk**Puerto Vallarta, Mexico

Hobbiton sign and Gollum sculpture in Matamata, New Zealand — **Hobbiton, Matamata**New Zealand

Bradford Rowland and his wife in Rossio Square, Lisbon — **Rossio Square, Lisbon**Portugal

The Newgrange passage tomb in the Boyne Valley, Ireland — **Newgrange, Boyne Valley — older than the pyramids at Giza**Ireland

A few of the twenty-six. Nicaragua, China, New Zealand, Peru, Japan, Portugal, Ireland, Mexico.

About

My story

I've spent most of my career being handed the part of technology that's on fire — and being the person who makes it boring again. Daily outages, failed DR tests, 94% attrition, an audit nobody thinks will pass. The pattern is always the same: stabilize fast, build trust with the business, then modernize from a position of credibility rather than crisis.

What's changed recently is that the fire is now an opportunity. Enterprise AI is where infrastructure, security, identity, cost governance and change management all collide — which happens to be exactly the intersection I've worked at for twenty years. Most organizations don't have an AI model problem. They have a governance, adoption and plumbing problem.

I'm also a builder by temperament. I run an AI-automated publication, I've shipped production sites and automations for real businesses, and I use these tools daily on projects outside of work. The habit keeps me honest about what AI can and can't do yet.

Outside of that: Pepperdine EMBA, a stint coordinating and mentoring MBA students deep in Patagonia, 26 countries on the passport, and a strong belief that high-performing teams are built on culture long before they're built on tooling.

EducationExecutive MBA, Pepperdine University · BSBA, Washington University in St. Louis · International Institute of Spain (Madrid) · OBU University (Buenos Aires)

AI CredentialCertificate in Applied Agentic AI for Organizational Transformation — MIT Professional Education, 2026

CertificationsCISSP · AWS Cloud Practitioner · ITIL · Scrum Master · MCSE · MCDBA · VMware · Linux Essentials

RecognitionDirector of the Quarter, NordstromRack.com · Highest employee engagement scores in company history, Rimini Street

Short bio — third person

For conference programs, panel introductions, board packets and podcast hosts.

50 words

Bradford Rowland is a global technology executive with more than twenty years leading enterprise IT organizations at Fortune 500 and NASDAQ-listed companies ranging from $500M to $15B in revenue. As Vice President of Global IT Infrastructure and Operations at Rimini Street, he directs technology across 22 countries and leads the company's enterprise AI adoption.

100 words

Bradford Rowland is a global technology executive with more than twenty years leading enterprise IT organizations at Fortune 500 and NASDAQ-listed companies from $500M to $15B in revenue, spanning enterprise software, retail, financial services, insurance, distribution and manufacturing. As Vice President of Global IT Infrastructure and Operations at Rimini Street, he directs technology for a workforce operating in 22 countries and leads the company's enterprise AI adoption — deploying Microsoft Copilot, building a governed Azure AI Foundry landing zone, and authoring twelve enterprise AI policies. He holds an Executive MBA from Pepperdine University and a certificate in Applied Agentic AI from MIT Professional Education.

I lead enterprise technology organizations — and give them the AI capability to reach the next level.

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