Amar Yousif, MBA
Vice President and Chief Information Officer for Information Technology
UT Health
The University of Texas
Health Science Center at Houston

As vice president of information technology and chief information officer for UTHealth, Amar Yousif is responsible for IT initiatives and leads the teams in charge of executing and maintaining them. He works collaboratively with the clinical, educational, research, and business areas to develop strategic and operational roadmaps that promote the overall missions of UTHealth. He also oversees and coordinates all telecommunications, networking, data center engineering, user support, information security, disaster recovery planning, IT compliance/risk management, web services, applications training/support, and records management. The leaders of information technology at the university’s six schools have a dual reporting relationship to Yousif and to their deans.

Yousif brings over 22 years of diverse IT experience to his current position. His resume demonstrates success as a transformational IT leader who specializes in addressing difficult challenges and fixing systemic problems. He has built, staffed, and maintained several IT units throughout his career and is accustomed to collaborating with professionals at all levels of an organization, inside and outside of the technology arena. Yousif led the information security function at UTHealth for a decade before he was appointed as the CIO in 2019.

Prior to joining UTHealth, Yousif worked in the finance sector as the head of IT for an advisory firm where he established a strategic IT plan and overhauled company systems. After joining a multibillion-dollar oil and gas company, Yousif grew the company’s IT infrastructure department to include network operations, telephone systems, VSAT video, help desk, and data center engineering. He also served as an automation engineer with an international manufacturing company where he was tasked with creating the company’s first IT department, consolidating functions, staffing, setting up the company’s first global network, and implementing the company’s first Enterprise Resource Planning system.

Yousif holds a bachelor’s degree in engineering and a master’s degree in business administration. He earned an advanced computer security certificate from Stanford University. He is a proud member of the Houston community and feels fortunate to have raised his family here.