Navitas secures new IT chief

Listed private education firm Navitas has brought Mick Campbell on board as its new CIO, following the retirement of long-serving IT chief Neil Hitchcock.

Campbell has made the leap into education from the healthcare sector.

Most recently he was in charge of IT and digitisation strategy at the Cerebral Palsy Alliance, and served as CIO for Ramsay Health Care between 2006 and 2014, according to his Linkedin profile.

He was named NSW volunteer of the year for his extracurricular work with the cerebral palsy charity, for which he cycled 4800 km across the US to raise money to buy iPads for families affected by the disease.

His CV also includes stints in IT for Ashurst Lawyers, PeopleSoft, and Westpac Financial Services, plus a degree in computing science, mathematics and statistics from the University of Glasgow.

“The education sphere is on the cusp of being transformed through digital technologies and I’m looking forward to exploring these to produce even better quality outcomes for Navitas students," Campbell said.

CEO Rod Jones welcomed the appointment.

“Mick has a rich career covering many portfolios, and we are confident his strong knowledge of the IT sector will shine through in his work at Navitas,” he said.

Navitas partners will tertiary education institutions globally to recruit international students and deliver language courses and top-up pathways into their courses. It operates across 120 colleges and 27 countries.

Last year Hitchcock told iTnews the Perth based organisation was focusing on standing up an IBM Websphere-based enterprise services bus to integrate the geographically dispersed company’s applications and deliver increasingly demanding students a better digital experience.

Hitchcock had been with Navitas for 19 years before his retirement earlier this year.