How can universities create a seamless, safe, and connected experience that meets the soaring expectations of today's students? In this episode of Edtech Connect, host Jeff Dillon sits down with Rasheed Behrooznia, Executive Vice President and General Manager at Transact+ CBORD, who leads a $250 million business serving over 1,500 institutions.
Drawing from his unique background in defense systems engineering and transportation tech, Rasheed explains why the modern campus is like a "smart city" and how mission-critical technology—from mobile credentials in digital wallets to AI-powered dining—is the key to navigating it. They dive into the explosive 90% adoption rate of mobile student IDs, how his team balances massive scale with rapid innovation, and why the convergence of FinTech and EdTech is creating powerful new insights.
For any leader looking to reduce friction and build a truly integrated campus ecosystem, this conversation is a masterclass in leveraging technology to put the student experience first.
Key Takeaways
- The Campus is a "Smart City": Modern campuses are complex ecosystems where students navigate numerous daily use cases—from residential access and dining to parcel pickup and makerspaces. The goal is to integrate these into one seamless, safe, and efficient experience, much like a smart city, rather than treating them as disjointed, one-off tasks.
- Mobile Credentials are Now Table Stakes: The digital student ID, housed in the secure element of a phone or watch, has moved from a novelty to an expectation. With a 90% adoption rate at deployed institutions, it's the foundational layer for a frictionless campus experience, and the innovation now focuses on what can be built on top of this platform.
- Balance Innovation and Scale with a Portfolio Mindset: Managing a vast product portfolio requires strategic prioritization. The key is to assess where each solution is in its lifecycle—heavy innovation, growth, or maturity—and use continuous client feedback and data to weigh the "hundreds of good ideas" against mission-critical reliability and security needs.
- AI is an Operational Streamliner and Future Disruptor: In the short term, AI is being applied to solve immediate operational pains, such as using machine learning to predict food order ready-times or natural language interfaces for system queries. Long-term, AI is expected to be a disruptive force that will fundamentally change campus operations.
- The Rate of Innovation Must Match Student Expectations: Student expectations evolve as fast as technology does. What was once a cutting-edge feature quickly becomes a baseline requirement. To keep pace, EdTech providers must continuously increase their own rate of innovation, leveraging cloud architectures to deliver updates to all clients simultaneously.
- Success is a Team Sport: In an era of accelerated change and pressure to do more with less, impactful transformation cannot happen in silos. Rasheed's central message to university leaders is to "work as a team," leaning on trusted partners and fostering collaboration to navigate the future successfully and safely.
Find Rasheed Behrooznia:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rbehrooznia/
Transact + CBORD
https://www.transactcampus.com/home
And find EdTech Connect here:
Web: https://edtechconnect.com/
Chapters
- (00:00:00) - The pace of innovation in the United States
- (00:00:42) - Interview
- (00:01:59) - How My College Experience Shaped My Career
- (00:05:14) - Transact Seaboard
- (00:07:25) - Six Rules for a Connected Campus
- (00:10:30) - What innovations in Mobile Credentials are most exciting to students?
- (00:13:30) - How System Engineering Helped Me Lead the EdTech Team
- (00:15:51) - How Do You Balance Innovation and Safety?
- (00:19:53) - WSJDLive: How Close Do You Stay to Your Clients
- (00:21:20) - Transact Seaboard: Student Experience and Fintech
- (00:25:26) - Immersive: AI's Role on Campus
- (00:27:20) - Teamwork for the Next Decade
- (00:28:45) - EdTech Connect
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Burden
The Burden is a documentary series that takes listeners into the hidden places where justice is done (and undone). It dives deep into the lives of heroes and villains. And it focuses a spotlight on those who triumph even when the odds are against them. Season 5 - The Burden: Death & Deceit in Alliance On April Fools Day 1999, 26-year-old Yvonne Layne was found murdered in her Alliance, Ohio home. David Thorne, her ex-boyfriend and father of one of her children, was instantly a suspect. Another young man admitted to the murder, and David breathed a sigh of relief, until the confessed murderer fingered David; “He paid me to do it.” David was sentenced to life without parole. Two decades later, Pulitzer winner and podcast host, Maggie Freleng (Bone Valley Season 3: Graves County, Wrongful Conviction, Suave) launched a “live” investigation into David's conviction alongside Jason Baldwin (himself wrongfully convicted as a member of the West Memphis Three). Maggie had come to believe that the entire investigation of David was botched by the tiny local police department, or worse, covered up the real killer. Was Maggie correct? Was David’s claim of innocence credible? In Death and Deceit in Alliance, Maggie recounts the case that launched her career, and ultimately, “broke” her.” The results will shock the listener and reduce Maggie to tears and self-doubt. This is not your typical wrongful conviction story. In fact, it turns the genre on its head. It asks the question: What if our champions are foolish? Season 4 - The Burden: Get the Money and Run “Trying to murder my father, this was the thing that put me on the path.” That’s Joe Loya and that path was bank robbery. Bank, bank, bank, bank, bank. In season 4 of The Burden: Get the Money and Run, we hear from Joe who was once the most prolific bank robber in Southern California, and beyond. He used disguises, body doubles, proxies. He leaped over counters, grabbed the money and ran. Even as the FBI was closing in. It was a showdown between a daring bank robber, and a patient FBI agent. Joe was no ordinary bank robber. He was bright, articulate, charismatic, and driven by a dark rage that he summoned up at will. In seven episodes, Joe tells all: the what, the how… and the why. Including why he tried to murder his father. Season 3 - The Burden: Avenger Miriam Lewin is one of Argentina’s leading journalists today. At 19 years old, she was kidnapped off the streets of Buenos Aires for her political activism and thrown into a concentration camp. Thousands of her fellow inmates were executed, tossed alive from a cargo plane into the ocean. Miriam, along with a handful of others, will survive the camp. Then as a journalist, she will wage a decades long campaign to bring her tormentors to justice. Avenger is about one woman’s triumphant battle against unbelievable odds to survive torture, claim justice for the crimes done against her and others like her, and change the future of her country. Season 2 - The Burden: Empire on Blood Empire on Blood is set in the Bronx, NY, in the early 90s, when two young drug dealers ruled an intersection known as “The Corner on Blood.” The boss, Calvin Buari, lived large. He and a protege swore they would build an empire on blood. Then the relationship frayed and the protege accused Calvin of a double homicide which he claimed he didn’t do. But did he? Award-winning journalist Steve Fishman spent seven years to answer that question. This is the story of one man’s last chance to overturn his life sentence. He may prevail, but someone’s gotta pay. The Burden: Empire on Blood is the director’s cut of the true crime classic which reached #1 on the charts when it was first released half a dozen years ago. Season 1 - The Burden In the 1990s, Detective Louis N. Scarcella was legendary. In a city overrun by violent crime, he cracked the toughest cases and put away the worst criminals. “The Hulk” was his nickname. Then the story changed. Scarcella ran into a group of convicted murderers who all say they are innocent. They turned themselves into jailhouse-lawyers and in prison founded a lway firm. When they realized Scarcella helped put many of them away, they set their sights on taking him down. And with the help of a NY Times reporter they have a chance. For years, Scarcella insisted he did nothing wrong. But that’s all he’d say. Until we tracked Scarcella to a sauna in a Russian bathhouse, where he started to talk..and talk and talk. “The guilty have gone free,” he whispered. And then agreed to take us into the belly of the beast. Welcome to The Burden.