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Mary Evansen Named DoIT Communications Director

Mary Evansen has accepted the position of DoIT Communications Director. She served as interim director for the past 2 years after a decades-long career in UW-Madison IT communications—one that began at the Academic Computing Center before DoIT was formed.

During her tenure as interim director, Mary successfully led large-scale communication campaigns for initiatives such as MFA-Duo (multi-factor authentication) and the initial stages of the Administrative Transformation Program (ATP), restructured and refocused the communications department, and led DoIT’s communication efforts during the pandemic-required pivot to remote instruction and work.

During her finalist presentation, Mary upheld 4 leadership values: trust, transparency, relationships and team. Each has been key in Mary’s career, never more than during the pandemic.

“I’ve been given the opportunity during the pandemic to really strengthen relationships with university communications, university marketing, and with all of the folks in distributed IT,” she said. “Because we’re working virtually, we’ve had the opportunity to connect with each other on a daily basis, something that we wouldn’t have done otherwise.”

That daily connection has gone for her own team as well. Early in the pivot to virtual work, Mary instituted a daily, 30-minute, video-on-if-possible MS Teams check-in with communications staff—a practice that team members voted to continue indefinitely.

Mary earned her bachelor’s in communications from UW-Oshkosh and completed continuing professional development programs such as UW–‍Madison’s University Relations Leadership Development Program and Fully Prepared to Manage as well as the MOR Associates IT Leadership Program, among many others.

“Communication is an essential part of delivering IT services. The person in this position must help us communicate bidirectionally in a very complex world. Mary brings a wealth of experience and deep institutional knowledge to the position. I look forward to partnering with her.”

—Lois Brooks, UW–‍Madison Chief Information Officer and Vice Provost of Information Technology

Mary says she looks forward to applying that experience and knowledge to DoIT’s communication efforts in the years to come. Please join us in congratulating her!