Ellucian Appoints Jeff Ray As New President and Chief Executive Officer

FAIRFAX, Va.--()--Ellucian’s Board of Directors has appointed Jeff Ray as the new President and Chief Executive Officer. Ray will lead Ellucian’s 2,700 higher education technology professionals to accelerate the company’s strategy of helping colleges and universities around the globe fulfill their educational missions. Ray’s experience and focus on customer success, driving product innovation, and leading global teams will propel Ellucian to a new level of performance and growth.

Higher education is in the midst of unprecedented change and is facing an array of new challenges. From sustaining enrollment levels, to driving student retention and graduation rates, to containing costs, to pursuing new non-traditional educational models and global opportunities, colleges and universities need innovative new technology solutions more than ever to expand access and drive positive student outcomes. “Jeff Ray has a proven record of helping clients solve their toughest challenges through the innovative application of new technologies. He has led global teams at market-leading enterprise software companies during his tenure as CEO of Ventyx and of DS SolidWorks. This record combined with his personal passion for education will make Ellucian’s customers and employees successful,” said Anupam Mishra, Lead Director on Ellucian’s Board, and Managing Director of private equity firm Hellman & Friedman, Ellucian’s majority shareholder.

“I’m excited to work with the executive team and all of our employees to help accelerate the strategy set by the leadership team and supported by the Board of Directors,” said Ray. In the past three years, Ellucian has driven industry-leading levels of customer satisfaction, introduced a number of innovative new software solutions, increased the investment in enhancing its enterprise platforms, and has established itself as a leader in the Cloud for higher education with over 1,500 clients benefitting from Ellucian’s cloud-based services and solutions.

“While Ellucian has achieved so much in the past years, I also believe there is so much more that we can do to work with our customers to make technology a transformative force in driving the evolution of higher education and making more students achieve their educational dreams,” said Ray. “Our customers are obsessed with driving student success and our job at Ellucian is to remove every obstacle they face in delivering on this mission,” continued Ray. “Helping our clients take full advantage of our cloud-based services and SaaS software solutions to deliver a consumer-web experience to students, to reduce TCO, and to free up staff to focus on strategic initiatives is just one example of how we can help lead higher education into the future,” added Ray.

Prior to joining Ellucian, Ray served in executive leadership roles at various scale, market-leading enterprise software companies. In his most recent role as Chief Executive Officer of Ventyx, an ABB company that is the leading supplier of enterprise software and services to critical infrastructure providers, Ray worked with customers to solve some of their biggest business challenges with the help of innovative software solutions.

As Chief Executive Officer of DS SolidWorks, Ray oversaw the introduction of a next-generation online platform for cloud-based offerings, the first platform built upon Services-Oriented Architectures in the engineering industry. SolidWorks also earned “Best Companies to Work For” and “Top 100 Companies to Work For” from the Boston Business Journal and The Boston Globe, respectively, under Ray’s leadership.

Ray has been active in local education for many years and served on the Boards of the Boston Match Charter School and the Paul Revere Innovation School. Jeff was also involved in statewide education reform as a member of the Massachusetts High Tech Council.

Ray succeeds John F. Speer III. Speer will continue to serve Ellucian in his role as Chairperson of the Board. Ray will take over the CEO role immediately and be based at the Ellucian headquarters in Fairfax, VA.

About Ellucian

Ellucian is the world’s leading provider of software, services and insight to higher education. Ellucian helps the higher education community—students, faculty, and staff—achieve their goals more efficiently, effectively, and with reduced risk. Ellucian’s comprehensive suite of software solutions includes student information systems (SIS), finance and HR systems, recruiting and retention systems, among other offerings. With more than 1,500 institutions subscribing to Ellucian’s cloud services and SaaS offerings, the company is one of the largest providers of cloud-based solutions. Ellucian also supports the higher education community with a range of professional services, such as application software implementation, training, education, and management consulting. More than 2,400 institutions in 40 countries rely on Ellucian to help enable the mission of higher education. Visit Ellucian at www.ellucian.com, follow Ellucian on Twitter (@EllucianInc) and join the conversation on our ConnectED blog.

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Contacts

Ellucian
Jewel Jones, 703-261-2219
Director, Public Relations
jewel.jones@ellucian.com

Release Summary

Ellucian’s Board of Directors has appointed Jeff Ray as the new President and Chief Executive Officer.

Contacts

Ellucian
Jewel Jones, 703-261-2219
Director, Public Relations
jewel.jones@ellucian.com