Mark Payton
Director of Technology and Head, Department of Computer Science
BA, Kansas University
Mark Payton joined King's Academy in 2008 as director of technology and as head of the Department of Computer Science. His varied career includes time spent teaching preschool and kindergarten, teaching English in an elementary school and computer programming at the high school and college level, writing for and producing a weekly newspaper and working in a day treatment program for mentally challenged adults, in addition to more than 25 years of IT management and consulting.
Much of Mr. Payton’s early IT career was spent as the IT director for Burton Snowboards in Burlington, Vermont and Innsbruck, Austria, followed by several years of consulting for clients that included Kodak, Danka, Sweetheart Cup, Nortel, Stowe Mountain Resort and Vermont Academy, an independent boarding school in rural Vermont, USA.
After working for several years for Vermont Academy as a consultant, he was asked to become their IT director, a position he held for the last 10 years. In addition to his IT responsibilities, he was also a dorm parent, advisor, coach and teacher. During this time, he designed and implemented the school-wide educational technology program, including a one-to-one Tablet PC deployment. He sits on the organizing committees for two international conferences on technology in education and is a regular contributor to Hewlett-Packard’s and Intel’s Digital Learning Environments Blog.