Bret Blackman

Bret Blackman is the Vice President for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer at the University of Nebraska, a role he has been in since 2019. Blackman began his career at the University of Nebraska in 1999 as a technology coordinator.

In his role as Vice President and CIO, Blackman leads a university-wide team at the University of Nebraska at Kearney, University of Nebraska–Lincoln, University of Nebraska at Omaha, and the Office of the President locations, providing enterprise technology services at scale. As a member of the president’s Executive Cabinet, he works closely with university leadership on strategic information technology initiatives to serve the university community. Blackman sits on the Big 10 Academic Alliance CIO group and is the current board chair of Unizin.

In his previous role as Associate Vice President for IT, Blackman played a key leadership role in the reorganization of independent IT divisions at UNK, UNL, UNO and the Office of the President into a new unified “OneIT” organization in 2017. The new innovative division initially achieved $6M in permanent budget savings and continues to realize millions of dollars in savings each year by leveraging IT scale and maximizing efficiencies across the university.

He is a proud double alumni from the University, receiving both his undergraduate and masters degrees from the University of Nebraska at Omaha.