Presenter: Eric Evans, Director, Lincoln Laboratory
Our next Unsung Hero—Oliver Thomas started here as a student in 1989 and has been solving and preventing IT problems ever since. Oliver is now Manager of Faculty and Student Experience —affectionately known as FSX—in IS&T’s customer support area. With this team, which was primarily Oliver’s brainchild, he leverages his knowledge, experience, and collaborative skills to build solutions that meet the specific and challenging needs of faculty, students, and staff across MIT.
And his colleagues say that Oliver is as skilled a manager as he is a techie. Someone who has worked with him for more than a decade described his style of leadership this way, “Throughout his career at MIT, Oliver has supervised a huge number and range of people, from students and newly hired staff to senior IS&T innovators and project managers. Whether he is working with someone in their first staff position or someone who has been with the Institute for 20 years, he has a way of guiding each person so that they understand just how important their work is to the Institute. He helps them feel good about themselves and to find work they can excel at.”
I am pleased to honor Oliver Thomas with the Unsung Hero Award.