One of the most respected brands in American television, the Public Broadcasting Service in Alexandria, Va., broadcasts to some 100 million people every week through its 349 member stations. Its sweeping schedule of shows includes the likes of Masterpiece Theater, Nova and Sesame Street.

Yet if the venerable $350 million non-profit media enterprise sounds like it might be a rather high-brow, sedate place to work, think again. During the past five years, PBS has been roiled by rapid technological change, budget and staff cutbacks, and political upheaval with the pending departure later this year of CEO Pat Mitchell. Also under way are several far-reaching IT-centric initiatives that will deeply affect every aspect of PBS' end-to-end content distribution workflow. Those include the introduction of a standardized, remotely managed broadcast system; the rollout of an ERP system for all broadcast operations; and a move later this year to a consolidated network operations center.

Managing these changes are Chief Technology Integration Officer Andre Mendes and Gwen Wood, vice president of Distribution Services & Operations Management. The two peers are business partners in a relentless push to bring PBS technologies and services into the fully digitized 21st century of broadcasting.