Civitas Learning® announced the appointment of Will Ballard as the company’s chief executive officer today. Ballard has more than twenty years of experience managing large technical and engineering teams and supporting customer success for enterprise technology customers.
An accomplished technology company executive and engineering leader who first joined the company as chief technology officer in 2020, Ballard has built out the company’s team of software and data engineers to maintain and expand its best-in-class student success tools. Outgoing CEO Chris Hester will join the company’s board of directors, which includes original co-founders Charles Thornburgh and Mark Milliron.
“During this precarious time for higher education and students, identifying barriers and addressing gaps in college access and completion has never been more urgent and important,” Ballard said. “I’m thrilled by this opportunity to lead a team that is delivering best-in-class insights that will help more students achieve their educational goals—as well as the intuitive tools and resources that can help the administrators, educators and advisors who serve them.”
Before joining Civitas Learning, Ballard served for more than eight years as a technical leader with GLG (Gerson Lehrman Group), a global B2B platform for knowledge management that works with some of the world’s largest corporations, including more than half of the companies in the Fortune 100. He joins a talented team of engineers, educators, consultants, and data scientists now serving a network of nearly 400 campuses reaching more than 8 million students around the world.
In the last six months, a diverse group of colleges and universities across the country have joined as new Civitas Learning customers, including Valdosta State College, Rockland Community College, Michigan Technological University, North Orange County Community College District, Morehouse College, Northwest Missouri State University, Macomb Community College, Skidmore College, and San Joaquin Delta College.
I’m thrilled by this opportunity to lead a team that is delivering best-in-class insights that will help more students achieve their educational goals—as well as the intuitive tools and resources that can help the administrators, educators and advisors who serve them.
Will Ballard
Chief Executive Officer, Civitas Learning
