Carolyn Parnell, ‘trailblazer’ who served as Minnesota’s first IT commissioner, dies

Carolyn Parnell, an innovator in life and career who was pivotal in developing information technology in Minnesota state government, died after decades of work in the public sector.

Parnell died from cancer Thursday at the age of 76.

In the 2010s, Parnell was instrumental in consolidating the state government’s technology systems into the agency now known as MNIT.

“She’s been such a trailblazer for women in IT,” said Jenel Farrell, a longtime colleague in the state’s IT services department. “There weren’t many women when I started in it in the 1990s and she was working in the field decades before that.”

Former Governor Mark Dayton appointed Parnell to the be the state’s chief information officer in 2011. A few months later she was made MNIT’s first commissioner. She retired in 2015.

But Parnell’s daughter, Julia Parnell Alexander, said her mother’s life started with very different expectations.

Growing up in the 1950s and early 1960s between the upper Midwest and Staten Island in New York, Alexander said, Parnell’s Lutheran minister father did not encourage her to go to college. She completed her bachelor’s degree from the University of Minnesota Morris in her early 30s, Alexander said, when she already had three children — and after a stint in the typing pool at the Pentagon and a hippie turn that involved going to Woodstock.

Getting the degree, Alexander said, and starting a career as a child protection worker in southern Minnesota, gave Parnell the fortitude and financial freedom to leave her marriage and strike out on her own with three children.

Parnell came to information technology when her union of social workers went on strike and a friend found her an entry-level job at the U. Fifteen years in, Alexander said, her mother was running the U’s Networking and Telecom department.

Parnell went on to become the IT director for Minnesota Public Radio’s parent company American Public Media, and became chief operating officer at Minnesota State Colleges & Universities in 2009.

In her varied career, Farrell said Parnell oversaw the construction of many computer systems Minnesotans use every day and take for granted. And she was always encouraging other people, Farrell said, especially other women.

Margaret Anderson Kelliher, city operations officer in Minneapolis, worked with Parnell while Kelliher led the Minnesota High Tech Association, now known as the Minnesota Technology Association. She said Parnell’s work consolidating disparate IT groups in state government was transformative for Minnesota. Kelliher saw Parnell as a blueprint for how to be a leader when Kelliher was tapped to lead the state Department of Transportation.

“When I became commissioner of transportation, I thought back to Carolyn Parnell, how she led,” Kelliher said. She said Parnell’s focus on people above all else is still an example.

The current commissioner of MNIT, Tarek Tomes, agreed.

“She showed me, and so many others, that technology was really about people,” Tomes said in an email, adding Parnell left a legacy of systems that will continue to serve Minnesota.

“It really blows my mind the amount of people she’s positively influenced,” Farrell said, bringing along other women into the IT field. Parnell mentored Farrell at American Public Media, and later brought her on at the state IT department, where Farrell still works.

After her retirement and during the pandemic, Alexander said, Parnell missed connecting with people, practicing kindness, respect and appreciation for others. Alexander said connecting with people was akin to a spiritual practice for her mother.

Though her first career in child protection seems far from the world of computer networks, Alexander said Parnell’s focus was always on helping.

”People were her focus. She always managed and led with a heart,” Alexander said. “She was very in tune with people. That might seem contradictory in a tech field, but that’s one of the reasons she excelled.”

Parnell had been treated for cancer, but Farrell and Alexander said it returned aggressively this summer. She was given a prognosis of one week in early July.

“She said, I really want this to be a week of joy and laughter,” Alexander said.

Friends flew in from all over to say goodbye.

“We had more belly laughs, we laughed until we were going to pee our pants or cry or both,” she said of the gatherings at Parnell’s bedside.

A celebration of her life will be held in August.