UC Tech News is excited to launch the UC Tech Leaders Q&A Series in 2026—designed to spotlight the voices shaping technology across UC.
What is Your Name?
Allison Inglett
What is Your Title? UC Location?
Associate Director of PMO Business Transformations, UC Santa Barbara
What are Your Top IT/Security Priorities in 2026?
In the spirit of doing more with less, we must provide leadership with the visibility needed for data-driven decision-making, ensuring total alignment between project execution and business strategy. Effectively leading our IT programs requires blending agile flexibility with traditional structures to navigate complex, high-velocity initiatives—focusing on trust, communication, and organizational dynamics to ensure business transformations deliver tangible value to the end customer.
What Emerging Tech Excites You for Higher Ed?
Generative AI—it comes in the form of many tools that started by improving our writing skills and automating routine tasks. I am particularly energized by the potential for AI to analyze historical data, generate project timelines, risk assessments, and resource plans. By leveraging predictive analytics, we can finally move from reactive troubleshooting to proactive forecasting, optimizing team utilization. It also doesn’t hurt that AI can categorize, filter, and summarize my inbox.
What Emerging Tech Worries You?
Generative AI is advancing faster than any previous tech. It is becoming integrated into our daily tools—often invisibly—and faster than our governance models can evolve. My priority is ensuring we don’t trade human intuition and critical thinking for ‘shiny’ new tools, keeping our people at the center of every transformation.
How Do You Balance Innovation with Security?
Innovation travels on the German Autobahn, while security often feels stuck on a low-speed, restricted rural road. For real business transformations, it is important to integrate security standards directly into the project pipeline—creating real-time safety rails rather than bureaucratic speed bumps. By assessing the scrutiny required for each project/initiative and trusting the team’s expertise, we can protect the right things without losing momentum.
What Principles/Values Shape Your Leadership?
I am not the smartest person in the room. Everyone has a value and perspective that adds to project execution, risk assessment, decision-making, and more—being innovative and successful means acknowledging that I am often the facilitator of collective intelligence.
What Books are You Currently Reading?
The Seven Rules of Trust (Jimmy Wales) and How Big Things Get Done (Bent Flyvbjerg/Dan Gardner)
What’s Your Favorite Thing to Do Outside of Work?
Treasure hunting in antique stores and estate/yard sales, cooking and meal prepping (including for family and friends)
Anything Else to Add?
I’m incredibly humbled to have been selected for the UC Tech Leaders Q&A Series. It is a privilege to work with talented individuals at UCSB and to be part of a culture that values collaborative innovation. Thank you to whoever put my name forward—it means a lot to me.
Thank you for the conversation, Allison!
Allison Inglett
Associate Director of PMO Business Transformations
UC Santa Barbara
Tech Leader Spotlights
UC Tech News is excited to launch the UC Tech Leaders Q&A Series in 2026—designed to spotlight the voices shaping technology across UC. The UC tech community values hearing directly from its leaders, and this series aims to be both inspiring and informative.
Are you a tech leader at UC? We’d love to hear from you! To participate, please complete the short Q&A form and please include a photo.
