Five months after announcing a nationwide search for a new Chief Technology Officer (CTO), the Peralta district decided to promote from within to fill the position.

Antoine Mehouelley, who has served as Peralta’s Director of Technology Services for the past five years, was named the new Chief Technology & Information Systems Officer by the Board of Trustees at the March 9 meeting. The announcement was made after a second closed session that evening. Prior to assuming his position with the district in 2016, Mehouelley worked in various roles for the Laney College IT department for 14 years.

Mehouelley, originally from Senegal in West Africa, earned his Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Dakar. He also took classes at Laney College, earning a certification from Laney’s “Cisco Academy,” a partnership between the college and the Bay Area networking company.

Mark Johnson, Peralta’s Executive Director of Marketing, Communications & Public Relations, described Mehouelley’s story as “inspiring as an immigrant and Laney alumni success.” He also praised Mehouelley’s “focus on the importance of collaborative governance to inform decision making and aid communication across the District and Colleges.”

Mehouelley managed the first phase of Peralta’s recent upgrade of its PeopleSoft computer system which launched on February 16 with what Johnson said were relatively few issues. Interim Chancellor Carla Walter praised Mehouelley’s work in a letter to the Peralta community on February 16.

“I want to thank Director Antoine Mehouelley, the District IT team, and the Oracle team who have worked on this project tirelessly over the past nine months – often including nights, weekends, and holidays” Walter wrote.

The Citizen called Mehouelley but he declined to comment due to district policy. He did confirm, however, that the district will be hiring a new Director of Technology Services to fill his current position which will allow him to focus on his expanded responsibilities as CTO.

Mehouelley’s new position will require him to work at a more strategic level, as described in the job description posted by the district last October. According to that document, Mehouelley will be “responsible for providing a vision and leadership for the integration of IT services consistent with the District’s overall mission and program needs.” He will also be representing the district at “national meetings dealing with technology issues.”

Mehouelley will report directly to Walter. The base salary for the position is $161,402 plus benefits of $85,490 and a stipend of $3,600, according to a document presented to the Board of Trustees at its October 13, 2020 meeting.

One responsibility not mentioned in the job description is negotiation with IT vendors such as Oracle. This has been an ongoing concern for Trustee Linda Handy, who has long advocated for the hiring of either a CIO (Chief Information Officer) or CTO for the Peralta district. She compared vacancies in those positions during a major IT upgrade to a candy store where the owner is out to lunch and vendors such as Oracle take advantage.

Handy and several other Trustees questioned Oracle’s addition of licensing fees to the PeopleSoft upgrade project at the November 10 Board of Trustees meeting. Those licensing costs are $312,892 per year, or $1.6 million over the five year life of the contract. Based on an earlier presentation in late May 2020 by former Chancellor Regina Stanback Stroud and former interim general counsel Delisle Warden, Handy and the other trustees thought the package cost of $6.3 million was all-inclusive, which turned out not to be the case.