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Goshen, IN
Goshen College has appointed Raj Biyani, a 1992 alumnus and former Microsoft executive, as its first chief innovation officer, marking a new step in the institution’s approach to artificial intelligence and leadership in higher education.
Biyani brings more than three decades of experience in technology and AI to the role, returning to the Indiana-based liberal arts college where he began his academic journey. His appointment signals the college’s intent to shape what it describes as responsible AI leadership within an academic setting.
The announcement follows Biyani’s visit during Homecoming 2025, where he received the college’s Culture for Service Award. Since then, he has contributed his time to support the institution’s efforts to adapt to the growing influence of artificial intelligence, underscoring both his ongoing ties to his alma mater and his view that the evolving landscape requires new approaches to leadership, education and service.
Since September 2025, he has delivered guest lectures in more than 25 classes, engaged more than 100 regional business leaders, and designed and taught a 12-part AI seminar customized for Goshen faculty and staff. He has also been the catalyst behind Goshen College’s AI Innovators Program, which has already generated 45 funded innovation projects from faculty and staff across 14 academic departments and 10 administrative offices — a signal of the creative energy being unleashed across campus.
“At Goshen College, we are not limiting ourselves by just asking what AI can do, but rather what we should do with it and why. I am excited to contribute to this mission because those are questions worth dedicating the next chapter of my life to.” — Raj Biyani, chief innovation officer
The appointment is both strategic and personal. Goshen College is making a deliberate bet: that the future of AI in higher education is focused on cultivating our human wisdom to use these new tools at our disposal.
After graduating from Goshen College in 1992, Biyani earned an MBA with honors from the University of Chicago and later completed the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School. At Microsoft, he served as the managing director of Microsoft IT’s India operations and drove a transformation so significant it became a case study at Harvard Business School, the Indian Institute of Management and Singapore Management University. Earlier, he served as general manager of strategic initiatives reporting to Microsoft’s CIO, and he was the founding product manager of what would become the Microsoft App Store.
He co-authored To the Cloud: Cloud Powering an Enterprise (McGraw Hill, 2012), co-produced a CNBC documentary on India’s IT industry that reached an audience of approximately 15 million viewers, and holds multiple U.S. patents.
