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Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Wolters Kluwer Financial Services
By Katie Ford
Today, Jay Levine is a C-level executive who leads product development for a nationally recognized financial-services firm. He manages a team of 400 employees and oversees a $50 million annual budget. It's a tall order, especially for someone who began his career designing systems for libraries, hospitals, and even the U.S. Secret Service.
“I was a horizontal gunslinger in those years,” says Levine, executive vice president and chief technology officer for Wolters Kluwer Financial Services. “I didn't specialize in any one technology or application domain. I focused on enabling technology and applications that were used across multiple domains.”
But Levine didn't want to be a systems engineer forever, and he knew he needed to broaden his knowledge base to get ahead. Already, he was a late bloomer of sorts, having waited 10 years into his career to earn a bachelor's degree. He pursued his undergrad degree part time while holding down a full-time job at the Analytic Sciences Corporation (TASC). As soon as he reached that goal, Levine set his sights on a master's degree in information systems at George Mason University .
“TACS is a high-end engineering firm for the intelligence community; when I was there, they were very proud that 70 percent of their employees had doctoral degrees,” Levine says. “I knew that to move up in management, I needed more education.”
Levine opted to pursue his master's degree part time while working at TASC. His employer reimbursed his tuition, which provided financial relief, but Levine admits that mixing graduate school with the responsibilities of a full-time job and a family was tough—and the journey was long. He started his degree in 1991 and didn't finish until 1996.
