I have been doing video interviews with a number of C-level execs and practitioners about acrobatics they have been seeing in various vertical sectors during the COVID-19 crisis and the "New normal" they can expect as the economy wakes up. Here is the index to the growing list of interviews.
This time it is Eric Dirst. He is President of DeKonsultere LLC, providing CIO/COO/Board level services to small/mid-size companies & portfolios of VC/Private Equity firms, Chief Technology Advisor at Align Capital Partners, CTO at Cloud5 Communications, and CIO at Renew Corp.
He previously had executive positions at Adtalem and DeVry, which are leading for-profit trade and tech educational institutions and was CIO at Sirva (Allied Van Lines) President of DeKonsultere, LLC.
Given his long background in higher education, we talked about heroics as universities, colleges rushed to migrate from campus to distance learning and massive scaling demands on tech providers like Blackboard. We discuss likely business model changes as education moves more on-line and about changes in labor needs post-COVID and how the education sector needs to evolve to support more trade and blue collar skills. We also discussed the elaborate testing, contact tracing and other protocols as campuses re-open.
We also talked about pivots and acrobatics in the startups he advises.
Very pragmatic point of view.
