Executive Team

Laura K. Ipsen is president and chief executive officer of Ellucian.

Laura has more than 25 years of experience as a technology executive, working to drive transformation in the public and private sectors and spur adoption of comprehensive solutions in high-growth industries.

Laura joined Ellucian from Oracle Corporation, where she most recently served as general manager and senior vice president for Oracle Marketing Cloud—leading all customer-facing aspects of the business, including sales, account management, marketing, and customer services. Previously, she served as corporate vice president of Microsoft’s worldwide public sector organization, where she led a team of more than 2,000 sales and marketing professionals serving government, education, and non-privatized healthcare customers in more than 100 countries.

Laura’s experience also includes more than a decade at Cisco Systems, where she led an effort to transform how the world manages energy supplies and build smart-grid solutions for utilities around the world. Prior to that, she established and managed Cisco’s global policy and government affairs division, where she led the company’s public policy agenda as it related to the Internet and global adoption of broadband access. Laura has also held leadership roles at PricewaterhouseCoopers, Acer America, and Hitachi Data Systems.

Laura currently serves as a member of the Board of Directors for Verisk, a leading data analytics provider, as well as the Business-Higher Ed Forum (BHEF) based in Washington, D.C. She is also a member of WomenCorporateDirectors (WCD). She previously served on the Board of Directors of Monsanto for nearly eight years, and as the chair of the Washington, D.C.-based Information Technology Industry Council.

Laura holds a bachelor’s degree in international relations from the Woodrow Wilson School of Foreign Affairs at the University of Virginia, and she studied Arabic at Yarmouk University in Jordan. She is also a Senior Fellow of the American Leadership Forum, Silicon Valley Chapter.

As executive vice president and chief financial officer, Harshan Bhangdia is responsible for leading Ellucian’s finance operations, including key financial and strategic initiatives, financial reporting, and technical accounting.

Prior to joining Ellucian, Harshan served as acting chief financial officer, vice president, and controller, as well as senior adviser to the chief financial officer of QuintilesIMS (formerly IMS Health), a publicly-traded, Fortune 1,000, multi-national information services company. He also served as a financial leader at Juno Online Services, Inc., a publicly-traded, high-growth, internet-based technology company that at one time had three million active users.

Harshan began his career with Anchin, Block & Anchin and later moved to PricewaterhouseCoopers. He holds a bachelor’s degree in biology from Wagner College in Staten Island, New York, and an MBA from Pace University’s Lubin School of Business in New York City. He has been a certified public accountant since 1994.

As chief revenue officer, Steve Harris is responsible for driving Ellucian’s revenue generation, including developing new strategic go-to-market plans, expanding efforts to capture new business and global partnership opportunities, and driving deeper alignment and integration across the business.

Steve brings more than two decades of technology leadership and a deep-rooted passion for higher education. He comes to Ellucian most recently from Dell Technologies, where he served as President of Dell Federal Systems and Senior Vice President and General Manager of Public Sector Strategy. In this role, Steve had overall responsibility for revenue, strategy, operations, compliance, and contracts.

Prior to this, Steve served as Vice President for Dell’s State and Local Government and Education (SLED) and healthcare businesses. He also served as an executive leader in Dell’s Public Business Group as an area vice president for the higher education and healthcare sales organizations. Along with his extensive public sector and industry knowledge, he has a proven track record of driving IT transformation and value across some of the most complex enterprises in the public sector in the U.S. and globally.

He is also actively engaged in his community and serves on several boards of directors, including AFCEA International, Dell Technologies Political Action Committee, Executive Mosaic, Greater Baltimore IT Committee, and USO Metro-Washington.

Steve holds a bachelor’s degree in management science from the State University of New York at Geneseo.

As Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Mike Wulff leads Ellucian’s engineering teams and drives growth initiatives focused on digital transformation and cloud adoption.

Mike has more than 20 years of experience in the software industry, architecting and developing complex industry-focused solutions. Previously Mike served as a vice president of R&D at Ellucian, leading the teams responsible for the development of Ellucian’s ERP and SIS solutions.

A strong proponent of agile development practices, Mike leverages his foundational experience as a developer and technology leader to drive successful product releases from inception through deployment. His recent development efforts have focused on building native SaaS applications inclusive of the full DevOps pipeline and toolchain.

Mike holds a bachelor’s degree from Virginia Tech.

As chief people officer, Greg Giangrande leads all aspects of Ellucian’s global people organization, including employee experience, HR business partners, talent acquisition, total rewards, diversity, equity and inclusion, learning and development, and internal communications.

Greg has deep experience as a transformative human resources and communications leader. He comes to Ellucian most recently from McKinsey & Company where he served as a senior advisor working with clients across sectors and geographies on enterprise transformation, employee experience, human resources, organizational health and culture, leadership development, diversity and inclusion, and communications strategies.

Prior to McKinsey, Greg served as executive vice president, chief human resources officer and chief communications officer for Time Inc. where he oversaw human resources and communications for 10,000 employees globally. Previously, he held leadership roles in human resources and communications at News Corporation including, Dow Jones, The Wall Street Journal, Barrons, and HarperCollins Publishers. Greg is a career advice columnist for the NY Post, the fourth largest daily circulation newspaper in the U.S., and he is an adjunct faculty member of New York University (NYU).

Greg holds a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism and Master of Arts in Communications from New York University.

As senior vice president and chief customer experience officer, Chris Collins drives key initiatives that accelerate customer success across Ellucian’s portfolio, and serves as a champion and advocate for customers at every step on their Ellucian journey. In this role, he leads all aspects of Ellucian’s global Customer Success, Professional Services, Technology Management, Global Enablement, and Cloud organizations.

Prior to Ellucian, Chris served as senior vice president of global services, education and partner management at Medallia, Inc., a customer experience management platform provider, leading field professional services, education, insights, and partner management teams. Previously, Chris served as general manager and senior vice president for professional services and education at CA Technologies – where he established global programs to serve customers in an evolving, high-volume product business, and worked to optimize and accelerate the sales and delivery process.

Chris’ experience also includes leadership roles with Mercury Interactive, Gemstar-TV Guide, and Allibra Incorporated, where he played a transformational role building Cloud strategy and preparing the company for the leap to SaaS.

He holds a bachelor’s degree in international business from San Jose State University.

As senior vice president and chief legal officer for Ellucian, Jim Bennett is responsible for managing the legal affairs of the company and in so doing, works closely with public and private universities around the world.

Jim began his career with Ellucian as deputy general counsel for Systems & Computer Technology Corporation (SCT), a publicly-held company that serviced the information technology needs of entities in the higher education, local government, utilities, and process manufacturing marketplaces. When SCT was acquired by SunGard in 2005, he joined the corporate legal team. He served as general counsel for SunGard’s local government and K-12 divisions, and then became general counsel of SunGard Higher Education. In 2012, Hellman & Friedman LLC acquired SunGard Higher Education and combined it with Datatel to create Ellucian, bringing Jim and the rest of his legal team to the new company.

Jim was recognized by the Philadelphia Business Journal in 2015, when he received their Corporate Counsel Award, and in 2016, Ellucian’s legal department was cited as “Pennsylvania’s Best Legal Department—General Excellence” by The Legal Intelligencer.

Jim is a graduate of Holy Family University, where he received his BA in English, with a secondary teaching certificate. He earned his JD from Villanova University School of Law.

As senior vice president of revenue strategy and operations, Melissa King leads Ellucian’s product teams with a focus on the processes and methodologies that enable industry-leading, global product strategy, and delivery. Melissa is responsible for the identification and development of business opportunities to expand Ellucian’s global market presence and alignment of solution portfolio, go-to-market methodologies, and strategic partnerships required for success. Melissa also leads new product launch and release management across Ellucian teams.

Previously, Melissa served as vice president of R&D within Ellucian, where she led global product development teams through the delivery of centralized common functions and services, including engineering centers of excellence, test engineering, and user experience design. Over her 15+ years of service, she has provided leadership to teams focused on new product development and the introduction of emerging technologies and methodologies. Her specialties include building a global workforce, business transformation, acquisition integration, opportunity analysis, and change management.

Melissa is also engaged in community and industry programs that promote women in technology and STEM education. Melissa studied at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the University of Hawai’i at Manoa and holds a B.B.A. with concentrations in applied information systems and business.

In his role as senior vice president and managing director for Latin America and the Caribbean, Alberto Chacin is responsible for business and operational management strategy and regional go-to-market ownership. With his strong background in digital transformation, cloud, and large solutions deployments, Alberto is passionate about helping transform higher education institutions striving to achieve greater results in student success and community growth. 

Alberto has over 30 years of experience in the information technology industry in Latin America and the Caribbean, with a strong multi-country, multicultural focus. Before joining Ellucian, Alberto had a successful 23-year career at Oracle, where he held numerous positions. Over the last 12 years, Alberto led Oracle’s cloud services in Latin America, while previously he was the strategic projects manager, global account manager, and alliance manager for the Latin American region. 

Alberto holds a bachelor’s in mathematics from the University of Florida at Gainesville. 

As senior vice president and managing director for Ellucian’s Europe, Middle East, and Africa, and Asia Pacific regions, Darren Hunt is responsible for business and operational management as well as the regional strategy and go-to-market ownership. 

Prior to joining Ellucian in 2017, Darren was a board director for SAP in the United Kingdom and Ireland. There, he was responsible for the strategic industries business, which included public sector, financial services, and retail. Prior to SAP, he was a main board director for UNIT4 Business Software, where he was responsible for sales and marketing functions, overall management of UNIT4 Ireland, and head of global higher education sales. 

Darren has held numerous sales and consulting roles, including time with PricewaterhouseCoopers as a director in their government consulting business.