Spotlight on Raylene Dufresne

I have 18 years of progressive IT leadership experience across construction, higher education, and nonprofit organizations, specializing in IT governance, cybersecurity, cloud transformation, and vendor management. I currently lead an IT division at a construction firm using a hybrid in-house/managed services model, and I believe in leading from where the work happens, spending time in the office and in the field to find practical ways to improve processes.

A fun fun fact about me: I go to 50-60 concerts a year.

Learn more about the Washington, DC CIO community here.
 

Give us a brief overview of the path that led to your current role.

My path to this role was built by being handed IT divisions that needed fixing. Over the course of my career across higher education and nonprofit, I kept getting asked to step into teams or functions that were struggling — governance gaps, vendor chaos, security exposure — and turn them around. After doing that repeatedly within different divisions, I decided to make the jump to leading an entire IT organization, and to do it in a new industry, which is what brought me into construction. It's given me a chance to apply everything I learned turning around pieces of IT to running the whole function.
 

What is one of your guiding leadership principles?

One of my guiding leadership principles is servant leadership — I see my job as removing obstacles for my team, not standing over them. That means empowering my team to own problems and drive their own solutions, giving them the trust and support to lead rather than waiting to be directed.
 

What is the greatest challenge CIOs face today, and how are you addressing it?

The greatest challenge I'm facing right now is preparing our organization for CMMC compliance. It's not just a technical checklist — it requires building out documented processes, access controls, and continuous monitoring that many organizations, including ours, haven't historically needed at this level of rigor. I'm addressing it by treating it as a long-term governance initiative rather than a one-time audit prep, building the controls into how we operate day to day so compliance becomes sustained rather than something we scramble for each cycle.
 

What is the key to success for someone just starting out as a CIO?

The key to success for someone just starting out in this role is being a good listener and following through with people, even when you don't have the answer yet. People remember whether you came back to them, not whether you had every answer on day one. Building that trust early is what gives you the credibility to lead later.
 

How do you measure success as a leader?

I measure success as a leader by whether things still run well when I'm not in the room. If my team can make sound decisions, solve problems, and keep the business moving without needing me to weigh in on every detail, that means I've built something durable — not just a team that depends on me.
 

What is the value of being a member of Gartner C-level Communities?

Being part of Gartner C-level Communities gives me direct access to peer insight and research I can't get anywhere else — real conversations with other IT leaders navigating the same pressures around AI governance, cybersecurity, and vendor management, not just theoretical frameworks. It's a place to pressure-test decisions before I make them and to stay ahead of where the industry is actually heading, rather than reacting after the fact.
 

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