Joe Ayala is the Director of Technology at Santa Clara Unified School District, where he leads a 20-person IT team serving 17,000 students in the heart of Silicon Valley. Over two decades in California public education, he's built a practical point of view on what AI adoption actually looks like inside a district. At SCUSD, he stood up the district's AI framework from scratch, launched an AI Advisory Committee spanning teachers, students, and classified staff, and led a full cybersecurity audit remediation. He speaks at CoSN, CASBO, CALIE, and CALSA on AI and security — because in K-12, they're the same conversation.