“In Technology, You Are a Student for Life”

A Data Evolution

Over his 25-year career, Scott Keaney, MSIT ’04, MBA ’06, PhD ’26 has seen a data evolution, from foundational data architectures to artificial intelligence (AI) insights. The pace of innovation is what keeps him motivated — and keeps him coming back to Bentley, most recently to earn an Executive PhD.

“In technology, you are a student for life,” says Keaney, a member of the first cohort of Bentley’s new Executive PhD program.

A Bentley MBA

Keaney’s early career at EMC focused on the safe storage of data. But he quickly learned that “even the best technology doesn’t win unless it solves a business problem.” To help him transition from a technical to a strategic role, he turned to Bentley’s graduate program.

“Doing the MSIT and MBA back-to-back was the catalyst that moved me from individual contributor to leadership,” he says. “It taught me that technology is often the solvable part. The hard parts are organizational alignment, strategy and finance.”

Keaney put his newfound knowledge to work at Dell, then Google, where he focused on the accessibility and scalability of data using the cloud. Today, as Google’s global cloud AI activation lead, he’s validating the “intelligence” of artificial intelligence. Essentially, Keaney is making sure data is smart enough to be useful.

Diving Deeper into the World of AI

Having a front-row seat to technology’s evolution prompted Keaney to dive deeper into the balance between AI, privacy and trust. “Innovation without trust is just a science experiment,” he says. “In my early days at EMC, ‘trust’ meant the hard drive didn’t fail. Today, with generative AI, it means the model doesn’t hallucinate, leak your personal data or steal intellectual property. The technology has changed, but the human need for safety hasn’t.”

It’s these kinds of dilemmas that brought Keaney back to Bentley for a third degree. “I reached a point in my career where I knew what was happening in the industry, but I wanted to understand the deeper why,” he says. “I wanted to move from just executing strategy to contributing to the global body of knowledge. When I heard Bentley was launching an Executive PhD focused on business, it felt like it was designed for me.”

Keaney, who is already using his PhD research “every single week” on the job, is confident in the return-on-investment. “What draws me back to Bentley is the community and the relevance: Everything here is grounded in reality. It allows me to keep my finger on the pulse at Google while applying academic rigor to the problems I see every day.”