San Francisco CIO Linda Gerull Announces Retirement

The pioneering IT leader at California’s lone consolidated city-county will step down by year’s end.

Veteran public servant Linda Gerull, San Francisco’s award-winning chief information officer, is retiring, the organization announced Friday. Her last day in the office will be Dec. 29; starting Jan. 1, San Francisco’s Chief Information Security Officer Michael Makstman will serve as the interim director of the Department of Technology (DT). The city-county will mount a recruitment for Gerull’s permanent successor.

Gerull, whose time as San Francisco CIO and executive director of DT dates to July 2017, posted Sunday on LinkedIn that after 40 years of public service, she will be retiring and moving to St. Louis to help care for her new granddaughter. Prior to joining San Francisco, Gerull was with Pierce County, Wash., for nearly 23 years, the seven-plus most recent as information technology director.
In the news release announcing her impending departure, the city-county called Gerull a “trailblazer and leader in the public digital space, having advocated for digital equity and efficiency across city departments” and highlighted her work spearheading the Fiber to Housing program, to bring free high-speed Internet to residents of San Francisco’s affordable housing buildings. “Through her leadership, the fledgling program has become a national model and has connected over 15,000 units in over 100 affordable housing sites,” the city said, noting: “Today, Fiber to Housing provides access beyond affordable housing, and #SFWifi is available in our downtown area as well as across a myriad of greenspaces throughout the city.” The program kept thousands of children and young adults connected during the pandemic, when learning went remote, and it received the San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association’s “Good Governance” award this year.

In an August 2021 One-on-One interview with Industry Insider — California, the CIO said work was happening quickly on closing the digital divide, and the city’s work providing free Internet to affordable housing units was accelerating with support from capital investment. In an email Monday to IICA, Gerull said there were many projects for which she was proud of the DT team for accomplishing and highlighted work on legacy and broadband.

“The teams have done an amazing job of transforming and replacing legacy technology that prepares the city for a secure and resilient future,” Gerull said. “A project that is underway is the FFA [Federal Funding Account] broadband grants that will be awarded in March 2024. The DT team has made great strides and connected 15,000 housing units to free Internet (low income, students, seniors) but there is more to do to complete this mission.”

Gerull’s honors as CIO included being named among the Top 25 Doers, Dreamers & Drivers of 2022 by Government Technology magazine* and receiving a San Francisco Good Government Award this year.

In emails to Industry Insider, Gerull’s fellow Bay Area IT leaders praised her years of service.

Ahsan Baig, now CIO/chief technology officer for the Department of Innovation and Technology at Alameda-Contra Costa Transit, recalled interacting with Gerull during nearly 14 years at Oakland, where he was deputy CIO from March 2016-2017. “I had the honor of sharing the stage with her in a couple of public speaking engagements,” Baig said. “I found her in my interactions and meetings strategic, thorough, cost sensitive, and customer experience-focused.”

Rob Lloyd, deputy city manager at the city of San José, who served with Gerull on the Metropolitan Information Exchange Board in 2019 and 2020, said she “cares deeply about community” and expects exceptional work from vendors, partners and her team — and will be missed.

“She and her CISO were fast to team with the city of San José and Santa Clara County on our joint Cybersecurity Products and Services procurement,” Lloyd said. “That created a strategic multiaward, multipackage toolbox for local governments to get the cybersecurity goods and services we would all need. It has been tapped by multiple communities, some in dire moments.” He also highlighted her support for Project DAHLIA, in which Google.org and San Francisco developed a new way to search and apply for affordable housing, calling it “the foundation for a regional approach that has serviced over 1 million housing applications between the Bay Area’s cities and counties.”

Commending Gerull’s work during the COVID-19 pandemic, San Francisco Mayor London Breed said DT’s work during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Economic Leaders’ Week, Nov. 11-17, was “instrumental” to the city hosting. “People like Linda don’t get the attention they deserve because too often the only time their departments are in the headlines is when something goes wrong — and Linda worked hard to ensure that didn’t happen,” Breed said in a statement, wishing the CIO luck and thanking her for her service.

City Administrator Carmen Chu said, also in a statement, that Gerull has “expanded the City's fiber backbone, implemented initiatives to improve reliability and resilience and has served us well as an early advocate for cyber security resources to protect vital city functions.”

“I am also honored to have worked alongside Linda during the COVID-19 pandemic where she effectively led the Department of Technology in standing up the City’s COVID-19 Unified Command Emergency Operations Center with Emergency Management, seamlessly enabled virtual meeting tools, and connected core IT infrastructure to support the City's community learning hubs and mass testing and vaccination sites,” Chu added.

This article was originally published by Industry Insider — California, Government Technology's sister publication.