Richard Germano is the Senior Director and Chief Operating Officer
for Information Technology Services. He is responsible for IT business
and day-to-day operations supporting electronic messaging, application
hosting, and telecommunications services, as well as organizational
oversight and leadership for business and strategy execution. Rich
joined Vanderbilt in May, 2004.

Rich has led development and implementation of several major process
improvements, resulting in a substantial savings to Vanderbilt ITS. He
spearheaded an aggressive business assessment comprised of
organization, process, and finance. After establishing a baseline, a
plan was developed to realign strategic product and services to the
Vanderbilt mission.

He assumed a pivotal role in the development of IT Best Practices
for IT operations and staff development and led the development of a
Capital Management and Leasing program to rectify capital asset
underfunding issues.

Rich's current responsibilities include steering the ITS planning
lifecycle. This includes governing all resources, business processes,
and strategic management as well as leading efforts to multi-source IT
services. Additional responsibilities include ITS Human Resource,
Finance, and executive sponsorship for ITS's Living Disaster Recovery
program.

Before joining Vanderbilt, Rich was a Senior Vice President at Bank
of America, and a Service Delivery Manager in the bank's Wealth and
Investment Management division.

Rich began his career in 1991 with the AA Blueprint Company, where
he was a technology consultant to CAD/CAM and manufacturing operations
throughout Ohio and West Virginia. In 1993, Rich became an independent
consultant and project manager, providing technology services to
businesses across northeast Ohio. His clients included manufacturing
and service shops, non-profit organizations, and a higher education
institute.

In 1997, Rich accepted a position with The Scott Company. He managed
and supported implementations at Scott's Miracle-Gro campus in New York
and satellite sales and support offices around the United States. He
also provided executive support to senior executives at the Marysville
campus and as they traveled globally.

In 1998, Rich was recruited out of Columbus, Ohio by Bank of America
(NationsBank), accepting a position as a Systems Engineer in support of
the Wealth and Investment Management division. He relocated to
Charlotte, NC and began work on the division's Windows NT
implementation, eventually taking over management of the North and
South Carolina migration. He led several national projects, including
infrastructure growth initiatives and network consolidations for the
Wealth and Investment Management division. During the 1999 Bank of
America/NationsBank merger, Rich led the migration and conversion of
the Capital Management Group's west coast locations and the
infrastructure consolidation of Wealth and Investment Management.

In 2001, Rich was promoted to Senior Vice President and accepted the
position of Service Delivery Manager for the Wealth and Investment
Management division. He supported infrastructure products and services
and led infrastructure financial transparency efforts.

Rich led a team of service delivery and project managers for
operations in New York City, San Francisco, Charlotte, Los Angeles,
Dallas, St. Louis, and the Cayman Islands. In his role as Service
Delivery Manager, Rich sponsored and secured funding for several key
technology initiatives. These began Wealth and Investment Management's
migration toward Blade server technology, ultimately resulting in cost
reductions through server consolidation.

In addition, Rich oversaw the design and deployment of a Highly
Available Unix shared environment that prepared the business for
several new growth initiatives. While leading his team, Rich also
championed several Six Sigma Greenbelt projects and created an
initiative forecasting model that became a benchmark for Initiative
forecasting.

Rich holds a Bachelors of Business Administration and is completing
a Masters in Management at Boston University in December 2007. He holds
certifications for Six Sigma Greenbelt, PMI's Project Management
Professional, and Information Technology Infrastructure Library
Foundation (ITIL).