Rice University CEO and leadership

Laura Neff is a Chief Executive Officer at Rice and President at Rice and is based in W 23rd St, Houston, Texas. She attended Pine Manor College.

Allison Thacker is a President, Rice Management Company and Chief Investment Officer at Rice and is based in Houston, Texas. She has worked as Managing Director, RS Growth Group at RS Investments; Analyst at Putnam Investments; and Financial Analyst at MERRILL LYNCH & CO., INC.. Allison attended Rice between 1992 and 1996 and HARVARD UNIVERSITY GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS between 1998 and 2000.

As the Vice President for International Operations and IT, Klara Jelinkova responsible for strategic technology issues ranging from governance, policy and resource allocation to protocol and organization as well as operational issues connected to Rice’s global footprint and interest. She represents the university nationally and internationally. The Office of Information Technology (OIT), the Information Security Office (ISO) and International Operations Team report to her. Under her leadership, Rice University received two CIO 100 Innovation Awards (2018, 2019).

Before joining Rice, Ms. Jelinkova served as the Chief Information Officer and Senior Associate Vice President at the University of Chicago. From 2006 - 2010, Ms. Jelinkova served as the Assistant Vice President of Shared Services and Infrastructure and interim CISO at Duke University. Prior to arriving at Duke, Ms. Jelinkova spent 10 years at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Ms. Jelinkova is an active member of several regional and national higher education organizations. She currently serves on the boards of Internet2 and the Lonestar Education and Research Network (LEARN), and several industry advisory boards. Ms. Jelinkova is also the Vice-Chair of the RHEDcloud Foundation. For her work related to identity and access management, she received the Internet2 Leadership Award in 2019. She holds a Master's in Education from Boston University and a Bachelor's in Economics and Slavic Languages from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Paul Padley serves as Rice University’s Interim Vice President for IT and Chief Information Officer. In this role, he is responsible for overseeing the university’s technology strategies, ranging from governance, policy, and resource allocation, to protocol and organization. Paul works closely with the university president and other senior leaders to deliver innovative uses of technology and support the university mission.

Paul is a Professor of Physics and Astronomy and the Director of the T.W. Bonner Nuclear Laboratory and has been with Rice for over 25 years. He is internationally regarded as a leader in particle physics and currently leads the United States’ contributions to the operation of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland. He is also a Fellow of the American Physical Society.

Paul holds a Ph.D. and master’s degree in Physics from the University of Toronto, and a bachelor’s degree in Physics from York University.