Faster Cars, Real Roads: What Higher Education IT Leaders Actually Need to Build - Webinar - presented by Boodlebox

Overview

Faster Cars, Real Roads:  What Higher Ed IT Leaders Actually Need to Build - Webinar - presented by Boodlebox

Where: Webinar/Virtual

When: Friday, November 6, 2026
11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. ET

Note: Zoom login instructions will be sent the day prior. If you have not received login instructions by 4:00pm the day before the webinar, please check your spam folder; if you still have not received the login details, please email nercomp@nercomp.org.

Workshop Organizers: Tracee Aliotti of Boodlebox

Registration Fee:
NERCOMP Member: Free
Non-Member: Free

Event Overview
Higher ed IT leaders have been told that checking the "US-based" box is the finish line for AI risk management. It isn't. It's the question everyone stops asking too soon. As AI makes generation nearly free, the real work — and the real risk — moves to the two ends of every decision: framing what you're actually protecting, and validating whether the answer you got actually protects it. Most AI procurement skips straight to a faster car (a compliance checkbox, a vendor's yes) without ever building the road underneath it. This session pairs BoodleBox's CEO/founder and CTO to walk campus tech leaders through what that means in practice: the architecture, cost, and security trade-offs hiding behind every data residency promise, and a concrete framework for interrogating them before they're in a contract.

Audience: Higher Ed IT Leaders, VPs of Academic Technology, CIOs

Key Themes:
 - The inversion: as generation gets cheap, the real decisions move to framing the right requirement and validating the vendor's answer to it-"US-based" vs. "US-bound" — what your data residency clause actually guarantees, and what that guarantee costs
 - Token architecture and optimization: what genuinely reduces cost and risk vs. what just looks like it
 - A five-question framework for evaluating any AI infrastructure claim before you sign it
 - Why geography is a jurisdiction question, not a security control — and what actually secures data

Accessibility
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Speakers

Kisa Brostrom, Chief Technology Officer, BoodleBox

Kisa Brostrom leads AI systems architecture, data strategy, and platform governance at BoodleBox. With over a decade of experience in data engineering, applied machine learning, and distributed systems design, she has spent her career building scalable, privacy-aligned AI infrastructure in startup and growth-stage environments — the kind of environments where the gap between what technology can do and what people actually use it for is most visible.

At BoodleBox, Kisa has led the development of a privacy-first AI platform serving 120,000+ learners across 1,300+ institutions, including a sustainability-focused token-reduction architecture that makes equitable access to AI practical at institutional scale. She works daily at the intersection of what AI can do and what it should do for the people trying to learn with it.

 France Hoang
 Founder & CEO, BoodleBox

France Hoang is the Founder and CEO of BoodleBox, a collaborative AI platform for lifelong learning, teaching, and work. Selected as AI infrastructure by over 100 colleges and universities and used by more than 120 companies, BoodleBox bridges the gap between education and the workforce by enabling students to learn not just about AI, but with the same workforce-grade tools they'll use in their careers.

A West Point graduate, Distinguished Visiting Lecturer at West Point, and former university trustee, France brings unique insights into preparing students for an AI-enabled workforce. His partnerships include Pikes Peak State College, Pueblo Community College, and the US Air Force Academy. France's work focuses on AI readiness—equipping students with the skills to collaborate effectively with AI while developing the critical thinking, creativity, and ethical judgment that define human excellence. Based in Colorado, he is a frequent speaker on AI literacy, human-AI collaboration, and the future of learning and work.