David Bessen joined Arapahoe County Government in December 2011 as the Director of Information Technology. In the past two years, he has established IT governance, moved the IT Department along ITSM path and established liaisons between IT and its colleagues in the County Departments and Offices. Prior to joining the County, he was in the media (newspaper and website) industry where he served as Vice President and Chief Information Officer at MediaNews Group, the second largest newspaper chain in the U.S. (headquartered in Denver) and IT Director at Copley Newspapers in San Diego. His responsibilities ranged from managing transactional systems for advertising and subscriptions, to ERP implementations, web content management systems, business intelligence, networking and DR/BCP.  David has also consulted in the publishing industry, as well as designed and managed projects for Fortune 350 firms.

David began his career in publishing technology as the founder of a small typesetting company specializing in academic journal publishing. Later, he worked as a support analyst and software trainer with Bestinfo, the software company that developed one of the first commercial-grade publishing systems that operated on a personal computer. He then worked for Management Processor Integrators as Vice President of Operations, consulting on electronic page-building projects at TV Guide and Copley Newspaper’s Fox Valley Press near Chicago.

In his former career, Dr. Bessen taught ancient, medieval and Renaissance history at several Midwestern colleges. His other interests include cooking, photography and hiking in the Rockies.