Jim Stanfill is named chief information officer of New Mexico State University. Stanfill began the position Sept. 19. (NMSU photo by Josh Bachman)
Source: NMSU News Release
Sept. 30, 2024
WRITER: Minerva Baumann, mbauma46@nmsu.edu
Jim Stanfill is bringing more than 30 years of IT leadership experience to New Mexico State University as its new chief information officer. Stanfill was selected from finalists named by an NMSU committee after a six-month search. He started the CIO position Sept. 19.
Stanfill has worked with most major technology companies in the country, handling major IT transformations for Hewlett Packard, General Dynamics, General Motors and IBM. He was the founder, president and chief technology officer of InVinci Systems, Inc. and served as a strategic technology advisor and enterprise data architect to Fortune 500 clients across various industries before his retirement.
“I am extremely pleased to be selected to come and do this job,” Stanfill said. “I’ve got all this broad knowledge that I’ve captured over the years with all these technology companies I’ve been working with, and I want to give back. I want to help. That was the impetus behind coming to the university.”
Stanfill was born in Ruidoso and grew up in Tularosa, New Mexico, where his mother was once mayor. After a seven-year stint in the military, he returned to New Mexico and decided to get a college degree. He started at the NMSU Alamogordo campus, then completed his degree in business administration at the NMSU Las Cruces campus in 1986, majoring in business computer systems.
“I’m now back at the university where I started my career, 40 years later,” Stanfill said. “The foundations of my success, all the classes I took in business and computers, those were all stepping-stones for the fantastic career I had after I left here.”
In 2022, Stanfill and his wife returned to Las Cruces to be closer to family and to enjoy the culture and community of the region they both grew up in. But retirement doesn’t suit Stanfill, and the chance to join NMSU in the CIO job lit a fire under him.
“We need to propel NMSU to the next level,” Stanfill said. “We need to make IT the innovation engine of this university, and there’s huge opportunity here to do so.”
