Rick Rivetti | Technology Executive, CIO & CISO

My Story

I grew up on five acres in Santa Clarita, north of Los Angeles, and in 1996 I left the ranch for Marine Corps boot camp.

After boot camp came the Corps’ administration school at Camp Lejeune. I finished first in my class with a 99.8 average and was promoted meritoriously for it, which earned me the choice of any duty station in the world. I chose to come home.

Back in Southern California, first at MCAS El Toro and then MCAS Miramar, I joined VMFA(AW)-225, an F/A-18 squadron, working upstairs in the hangar on the flightline. Then the future arrived in cardboard boxes. Our unit took delivery of a large shipment of Dell computers running Windows 95, in an era when much of the world was still squinting at Windows 3.1, and they came with no instructions and no one assigned to figure them out. So I did not wait to be assigned. I unboxed them, built the network, and taught myself to run it.

That initiative earned me a Secret clearance and appointment as the squadron’s Terminal Area Security Officer, responsible for the security of the very systems I had just brought to life. I was a teenager on a flightline entrusted with what most industries reserve for people twice my age, and it fixed in me the conviction that has governed every decision since: technology is never the mission. Technology is what makes the mission possible.

It also means I can say something few technology executives can. I have been in security since the beginning, of my career and of the modern networked era itself.

Rick Rivetti on deployment with the Marines, working on a laptop at a field desk inside a tent

On deployment: a field desk, a laptop, and the start of an IT career before I even knew it.

Rick Rivetti in United States Marine Corps dress blues, official portrait

United States Marine Corps, 1996–2001.

The letter home: first place honor graduate, 99.8%. Open to read.

There was no elevator waiting for me in civilian life, and I never went looking for stairs. The Marines teach you to climb the rope: no steps, no rest, just grip, strength, and the refusal to let go. My career has been that climb.

Support desks, server rooms, network builds, security operations. I mastered each discipline before moving to the next, and that patience became its own credential. Somewhere along that climb I completed a degree in Neuroscience at USC, a choice that puzzled colleagues at the time and has distinguished me ever since. It trained me to see organizations as living systems, to recognize that resistance to change is information rather than obstruction, and to understand that lasting transformation is won in the minds of people long before it appears in any architecture diagram.

In 2017 I earned my first seat as Chief Information Officer. In the years since, I have guided transformations and turnarounds across six industries: healthcare and medical devices, retail, financial services, broadcast and entertainment, gaming and wagering, and industrial construction. I have modernized technology for global public companies whose teams spanned continents, languages, and cultures, and for operations that ran every hour of every day, where a minute of downtime carried a measurable cost. The industries changed. The discipline did not. Learn the business with humility. Earn the people with honesty. Deliver with precision.

That is the arc I bring to every organization: an outsider’s fresh eyes, an operator’s steady hands, and a builder’s refusal to leave anything the way I found it.

Today I am deepening that foundation at UCLA Anderson, where I am pursuing my Executive MBA, Class of 2028.

How I Lead

When something breaks, responsibility travels up to me. When something succeeds, credit travels down to them.

Servant leadership is often described as a philosophy. I think of it as an operating model. My role is to set direction, clear the path, and absorb pressure from above so my teams can do the finest work of their careers.

That model only works when the leader has standing, and mine was earned rather than conferred. I have performed nearly every role that now reports to me, and I have kept those skills sharp deliberately. Teams follow differently when they know their executive has pulled cable, rebuilt servers at two in the morning, and sat in the escalation chair. I never ask for effort I have not given myself.

The rest is the human discipline that my background in neuroscience sharpened into practice. Every transformation I have led was decided by people: executives guarding hard won territory, teams scarred by initiatives that failed before I arrived, cultures that had quietly learned to outlast change. I treat each of those as a signal worth understanding. When you address what people actually need rather than what the project plan assumes, skeptics become sponsors, and change endures long after the consultants go home.

The Marine Corps gave me the final piece, and it is the one I return to most: missions succeed through people, and no one succeeds alone.

Beyond Work

Light blue Ferrari California convertible parked beside the Pacific Ocean

Silver Ferrari F8 Tributo at golden hour with palm trees and mountains behind

Grey Ferrari 458 Spider parked along a coastal road

My Ferrari California, F8 Tributo, and 458 Spider.

The Prancing Horse

My surname is Rivetti, and my love affair with Ferrari begins there. I am of Italian descent, and I hold the sincere, admittedly biased belief that the finest things in the world come from Italy: the fashion, the food, and above all the cars. Ferrari is the pinnacle of all of it, quality, design, performance, and class in a single machine. I have owned three, and each one deepened my respect for an organization that simply refuses to compromise its standard. I hold my own work to the same test.

Turquoise 1961 Chevrolet Impala SS Convertible, front three quarter view

Turquoise 1961 Chevrolet Impala SS Convertible, rear three quarter view with the signature six taillights

A 1961 Impala SS Convertible

My other automotive love is classic Chevrolet, and I am a steward of a piece of American history. Nothing compares to dropping the top on a car built six decades ago: the rumble, the chrome catching sunlight, the road unspooling the way it did in 1961. And the car gives back more than drives. Cars and coffee mornings have become a favorite ritual, because nothing starts a conversation like an old Chevy, and some of my best friendships began in a parking lot.

Macro view of a circuit board on a dark workbench with tweezers and a precision screwdriver under warm lamp light

Building

I am a technology strategist who never lost the builder’s instinct. When I want to test an idea, I do not commission a six month study. I have a working prototype argue the case for me. It keeps my strategy honest, my negotiations sharp, and my respect absolute for the people who do the work.

Driver's view over a classic car hood on an empty desert highway at sunset, saguaros and mountains ahead

Driving

Italian thoroughbreds or American iron, it makes no difference. The road is where I do my best thinking, usually somewhere between Southern California and Arizona. My clearest strategic decisions rarely arrive in a conference room.