Board of Directors

Curtiss Barnes has over 30 years of experience in the education industry and expertise in a broad range of enterprise and instructional systems supporting education's core missions. He has held roles at universities, technology start-ups, large enterprise businesses, and courseware and publishing companies.

Curtiss holds an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a bachelor’s degree in economics from Clark University.

Thomas Cavanagh, Ph.D. is Vice Provost for Digital Learning at the University of Central Florida. In this role, he oversees the distance learning strategy, policies, and practices of one of the nation’s largest universities. In his career, Tom has administered e-learning development for both academic (public and private) and industrial (Fortune 500, government/military) audiences. He has been recognized with numerous awards from organizations such as the Online Learning Consortium, the United States Distance Learning Association, the IMS Global Learning Consortium, and the WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technology. He is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and often consults with other institutions regarding academic innovation. He is active in the higher education community and serves on a number of national advisory boards. Tom’s research interests include e-learning, technical communication, and the societal influence of technology on education, training, culture, and commerce and he has published extensively in both peer-reviewed and popular outlets. He is also an award-winning author of several mystery novels.

Annie Chechitelli has spent the past two decades innovating with educators to expand access to education, meet the quickly changing needs of learners, and empower students to do their best, original work. As the Chief Product Officer at Turnitin, Annie oversees the Turnitin suite of applications which include academic integrity, grading and feedback, and assessment capabilities.

Prior to joining Turnitin, Annie spent over five years at Amazon where she led Kindle Content for School, Work, and Government and launched the AWS EdTech Growth Advisory team, advising education technology companies on how to grow their product and go-to-market strategies with AWS.

Annie began her career in EdTech at Wimba, where she launched a live collaboration platform for education which Blackboard ultimately acquired in 2010. At Blackboard, she led platform management, focused on transitioning Blackboard Learn to the cloud.

Annie holds a B.S. from Columbia University and an M.B.A. and M.S. from Claremont Graduate University. She lives in Seattle, Washington with her husband and three children and is an avid tennis player.

Jim Chilton currently serves as Cengage Group Chief Technology Officer (CTO). As of May 2022, Jim also assumed the role of acting General Manager for Infosec, part of the Cengage Work business.

Jim is a seasoned technology and business executive with an extensive background and deep expertise in technology optimization from technical product engineering to business systems management, process management, cybersecurity, and customer support. Prior to joining Cengage Group, Jim held executive leadership positions at a broad range of companies in the enterprise software, high-tech, and education industries, including Dassault Systèmes and SolidWorks.

Jim enthusiastically embraces the importance of ‘giving back’ and leverages his experience and network to influence the industry and community. Jim is an active Advisor and Board Member to numerous Boston area efforts and startup companies, including Apprenti, MassHire, and Evanta, among others.

Jim holds an MBA from New Hampshire College (now part of Southern New Hampshire University) and a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Franklin Pierce University. Jim received the 2020 Inspire CIO of the Year/Boston ORBIE award and was a finalist for the prestigious National InspireCIO of the Year ORBIE Award for 2021. Jim is based in Boston, Massachusetts, and lives in Hollis, New Hampshire.

Ed Clark, Ed.D., is a technology leader with decades of experience in higher education practices and has overseen institutional digital transformation initiatives ranging from online learning and course delivery to academic research computing, student recruitment, and retention.

Ed is currently the CIO for the California State University (CSU), the largest university system in the United States, comprising 23 campuses, over 50,000 staff, and more than 470,000 students. Ed’s role is to serve as a strategic partner for the Chancellor’s Executive Team and collaborate with university campus presidents and their chief information officers to catalyze strategic and innovative administrative and academic technology initiatives to advance the mission of the CSU.

In 2019, Ed was selected as Minnesota’s non-profit CIO of the year. He was appointed by Governor Walz to serve on the State of Minnesota’s Blue Ribbon/Technology Advisory Council, and currently serves on numerous boards, committees, and interest groups to advance the cause of higher education while promoting better student outcomes for all.

Dr. Chris Davis serves as Vice President of Academic Services and Quality at the University of Maryland Global Campus. In over two decades in higher education, he has served in a variety of leadership and faculty roles at multiple universities in both the non-profit and for-profit sectors. Dr. Davis did his undergraduate work in sociology and Ph.D. in urban, technological, and environmental planning at the University of Michigan. He has also earned a Master's of Science in Higher Education Leadership from Capella University, a Master's of Science in Psychology from Walden University, and a Master's of Business Administration in IT Management and Accounting from Western International University. He and his wife Tena have ten children ages 6 - 21.

Sarah DeMark serves as vice provost of Workforce Intelligence & Credential Integrity at Western Governors University, where she has worked since 2014. She is a strong advocate for creating skills-based credentials that benefit and align both individuals and employers to improve workforce development. She helps keep WGU at the forefront of competency-based education by leading the university’s credential integrity strategy and ensuring all program offerings align with in-demand and workforce-relevant skills. While at WGU, Sarah has also served as the vice president of program development and the vice president of General Education innovation.

Sarah also currently serves as the interim Executive Director of the Open Skills Network, a 1700-member coalition dedicated to advancing an open skills-based education and hiring ecosystem. Additionally, she sits on UPCEA’s Council for Credential Innovation and the Credentials Future Coalition.

Prior to WGU, DeMark spent more than 15 years at leading IT companies, serving in various leadership roles where she oversaw the strategy and execution of the design, development, and deployment of innovative, large-scale curriculum and assessment portfolios. As part of this work, she also developed the strategy for leveraging skills-based assessments for internal employee professional development, retention, and workforce management. Previously, she was an independent consultant working with state and local school districts and worked with The College Board on SAT and AP program evaluation. DeMark also served on the American National Standards Institute’s Personnel Certification Accreditation Committee, which serves to validate whether certification programs adhere to standards.

Sarah earned a Ph.D. and an M.S. in Educational Psychology (Measurement, Statistics, & Methodological Studies) from Arizona State University. Sarah earned B.S. degrees in both Elementary Education and Psychology from Vanderbilt University. Sarah has been published in numerous journals and books and is a sought-after speaker.

Debbie Durrence, Ed.D. currently serves in the Department of Data Governance for Gwinnett County Public Schools. The school district is in metro Atlanta and serves a very diverse population of over 180,000 students. She oversees the teams in student data management, data integration, data governance, state and federal reporting, data privacy, as well as SIS reporting. Prior to that role she served as the school district’s Executive Director of Accountability and Assessment in which she led the team that developed and administered a district assessment program, provided staff development regarding assessment literacy, and supervised the administration of all standardized assessments. In addition to previously serving as a member of the board of directors for the National Council on Measurement in Education, she has served on several advisory panels for the state of Georgia Department of Education and various other organizations.

Nicole Engelbert is vice president of higher education development at Oracle. She is responsible for engaging the industry ecosystem to develop thought leadership and best practice with cloud technology and to use those insights to guide the development of Oracle’s higher education solutions including its Student Cloud product suite.

Prior to Oracle, Nicole served as the Director of Research & Analysis at Ovum where she spent the last decade advising institutions globally on critical areas such as cloud migration, legacy modernization, emerging technologies, and student experience.

A sought after presenter on the higher education technology conference circuit, Nicole is also regularly quoted in publications such as the NY Times, University Business, Campus Technology, and the Wall Street Journal. Nicole holds a BA in classics from Union College and an MEd in educational administration & policy analysis from Teachers College, Columbia University.

Linda Feng is currently Vice President of Architecture at D2L (Desire2Learn), a leading learning platform company at the heart of the largest transformation to modernize education and the Future of Work. At D2L, Linda serves in a senior leadership role, reporting directly to the chief technology officer and being accountable for strategic planning for technology alignment, innovation leadership, strategic partnerships, data strategy, scalability, and more.

Ms. Feng comes to D2L from Unicon, where she focused on providing strategic consulting to leading institutions, major publishers, and edtech companies related to integrations and learning analytics. She has helped design infrastructure and data processes for large-scale learning analytics implementation and provided subject matter expertise for major publishers and edtech companies related to implementations involving 1EdTech (formerly IMS Global) standards, such as Learning Information Services, OneRoster, LTI, and Caliper. Most recently, she has helped several educational institutions to design and build an analytics pipeline using AWS as well as Google Cloud Platform with Canvas Data and Canvas Live Events.

While at Unicon, she also served as Chief Privacy Officer, where she was instrumental in establishing privacy policies, overseeing privacy audits and assessments, and developing a privacy strategic plan aligned with the company’s mission, vision, and long-term goals.

Ms. Feng has authored articles as well as spoken at numerous education technology conferences, such as EDUCAUSE, ELI (Educause Learning Institution), 1EdTech's Learning Impact, and OpenApereo, on topics ranging from student data integration and data privacy initiatives to data pipelines and key innovations in learning analytics infrastructure.

Ms. Feng was formerly a senior product manager with Instructure, focusing on platform strategy and standards. Prior to Instructure, Ms. Feng had over 20 years of experience in database server and applications product development at Oracle, most recently serving as Software Architect in Oracle's Student Products Division. During that time, she served as co-chair of the IMS Global Learning Initiative Learning Information Services Working Group, helping to bring a new Enterprise interoperability standard to market. Ms. Feng has also guided numerous application development projects ranging from Oracle Public Sector Financials to Oracle Student Systems. Early in her career at Oracle, she successfully managed the development of Oracle's Spatial Data Option technology, integrating it into the Oracle 7 server architecture. Her work with this project earned her a patent for multidimensional indexing techniques present in Oracle's Spatial Cartridge today.

Rick Johnson, one of the founders of VitalSource Technologies, directs their product strategy, accessibility and standards work, VitalSource is the maker of Bookshelf®, the most widely used platform for delivery of electronic learning materials in the world.

Rick's career has been focused on bringing together his three passions: technology, publishing, and education. He is a frequent speaker on electronic textbooks, their integration into an institutional environment, and how the accessibility needs of individual students can best be accommodated in their delivery. He has served on multiple committees addressing the needs around delivering accessible content to students, was a member of the working groups responsible for version 2 and version 3 of the EPUB standard, and is the co-inventor of 3 domestic and international patents dealing with electronic books and their distribution.

Prior to VitalSource, Rick spent more than 12 years with Apple Computer, Inc. As a Senior National Consulting Engineer for them he was instrumental in the implementation of complex solutions for many higher education and corporate customers, and received numerous national and international awards.

A graduate of the communication and business departments of Biola University in 1984, Rick has lived in the Phoenix area with his family since they moved from Southern California in 1991. Married to his wife Susie for more than 35 years, together they have raised two children, have two grandchildren, and are very active in their church and community. Rick also serves on the board of directors for several non-profit ministries.

As the Chief Academic Officer at Instructure, Melissa Loble will build out the global academic strategy function to ensure the educator experience remains core to everything the company does. At Instructure, she has held executive leadership positions for over nine years in roles overseeing support, client success, services, community, partnerships and platform. She’s a champion for crucial customer-focused topics like data usage and privacy—her mission is to drive innovation in our customer experience and enable customers to leverage our solutions in engaging and effective learning environments. Melissa has spent 20 years in educational technology working for a number of technology suppliers and educational institutions, as well as teaching leadership courses on managing technology for educational change. She has a master’s degree in educational policy from Teachers College, Columbia University, and an MBA from Columbia Business School.

Within Microsoft Education product development, Mike is responsible for growth through EdTech product integrations and partnerships. As a passionate advocate for EdTech interoperability, Mike has helped Microsoft Education expand its compatibility with third-party technologies and strengthen its commitment to 1EdTech standards.

Mike has three decades of experience in product development and has spent more than half of his career focused on education technology. Before he came to Microsoft, Mike served in various leadership positions at Blackboard, impacting a range of products that reached over 100 million educators and learners. He also worked in engineering, product management, and product strategy roles at Oracle, focused on ERP and CRM platform technology. Mike has a BS in Computer Science from the University of Michigan.

Jeff McCoy currently serves as the Associate Superintendent of Academics for Greenville County Schools. Greenville County Schools is the largest district in South Carolina and the 44th largest in the nation, with over 77,000 students in attendance. Jeff oversees the Offices of Academic Support, Academic Innovation and Technology, Virtual Learning, Accountability and Quality Assurance, Career and Technical Education, Special Education, Special Programs, and Early Childhood Education. Before assuming the Associate Superintendent role, Jeff held various district leadership positions and is proud to be starting his 21st year with Greenville County Schools. Over the last five years, Greenville County Schools has increased student achievement and closed achievement gaps, moving them into the top 15 out of 81 school districts when ranking student achievement scores and accountability metrics. Jeff is proud to lead the Academic Division in a district known for innovation in technology and curriculum initiatives and continuously transforming learning practices to improve student outcomes.

Jeff holds a Bachelor's Degree in Elementary Education and a Master's Degree in Education Technology with a focus on leadership. He is active both state and nationally on multiple advisory boards, including the National School Transformation Conference Advisory Board and the National Chief Academic Officers Working Group. He serves as Board Chair for The Children’s Museum of the Upstate Board of Directors. He has also served on the South Carolina Ed Tech Conference Board and the Education Research and Development Institute Advisory Board. Jeff has taught at both the graduate and undergraduate levels in the areas of technology integration and technology leadership. He and three national colleagues recently published a series, "Blueprints on Personalized Learning, Cybersecurity, The Marriage of Information Technology and Academics and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion." He is a regular contributor to books, webinars, and national publications.

LaTanya D. McDade currently serves as the Superintendent for Prince William County. Previously, she was the Chief Education Officer of the Chicago Public Schools (CPS). LaTanya oversaw all academic offices within the CPS Central Office and supported all principals and Network Chiefs in their leadership roles. In this capacity, Mrs. McDade was responsible for improving and supporting all aspects of teaching and learning district-wide. Her commitment to over 340,000+ students across 638 schools (district and charter) is to ensure equity in access to high-quality educational opportunities. This was a natural transition from her previous role as Chief Officer of the Office of Teaching and Learning (T & L), where she managed all core academic departments and oversaw the design, implementation, and evaluation of instructional programs and services for CPS teachers and administrators.

Mrs. McDade worked to streamline and reduce waste by aligning the Office of Teaching and Learning programs to district priorities and advocating for the consistent, formal evaluation/ROI assessment of services and supports provided by central office departments. As a veteran educator, she challenged the efficacy of traditional education models and initiated the PK-12 Curriculum System Project to modernize instructional practices across the district.

A proud graduate of CPS, LaTanya was a student in Chicago from Kindergarten through 12th grade and dedicated her entire career to the children of Chicago. In her various roles, including teacher, assistant principal, principal, and Network Chief, she has prioritized instructional equity and excellence for every child.

A passionate believer in lifelong learning, she holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Elementary Education and an M.A. in Educational Leadership and Administration. Mrs. McDade was a member of the main advisory group for advancing teaching and learning through the Charlotte Danielson Teaching in Excellence Framework Pilot. She completed the Chicago Principals and Administrators Association Cohort “Leadership Initiative for Transformation (LIFT).” She is currently a member of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD), Illinois Principals Association (IPA), and Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated. LaTanya was named Future Chief in the 2019 Cohort of Chiefs for Change.

With more than 20 years of experience in Chicago Public Schools, Mrs. McDade deeply understands school communities and knows how to support their academic growth. She is dedicated to the field of education and passionate about improving the quality of life for all children through a lens of equity. Her mantra is, Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself. – John Dewey

Kimberly Moore, JD, is the Executive Director of Workforce, Professional and Community Education at Wichita State University. She is an innovative and entrepreneurial leader, focused on establishing collaborative business and industry partnerships, which lead to the development of skill-based learning and training initiatives, support employers and job seekers, and stimulate the state and local economy. Kimberly has more than 35 years of experience in developing and leading workforce and professional development initiatives in government, higher education, business, and industry. She was tasked nine years ago with developing and launching the first digital badge program in the state of Kansas. Since then, Kimberly has led the development of 100+ online, for-credit badges. Kimberly is a founding member of the 1EdTech TrustEd Microcredential Coalition. She is invested in employer/higher education partnerships and skill-based collaborations.

Marc Nelson is the Vice President of Platform Product Management for Savvas Learning Company. At Savvas, Marc leads a talented team committed to delivering innovative solutions for K-12 teachers, students, and administrators. Marc’s 25+ year career has been devoted to the thoughtful application of technology to inspire, engage, and personalize learning at scale. Savvas’s flagship learning management system, Savvas Realize, provides over 1100 standards-aligned core curriculum programs and powerful features built to improve teaching and learning. Savvas Realize reaches millions of teachers and students each day by offering plug-and-play interoperability with top classroom tools and industry-leading integrations.

Dr. Keith Osburn is the Chief Information Officer and Deputy Superintendent for Technology Services at the Georgia Department of Education. Spending the early days of his career as a Chemistry and Physics teacher, Dr. Osburn was introduced to the world of technology and soon found his passion in its value to improve education. With over three decades of service in education, he advocates for technology’s potential to revolutionize education. Now, as the CIO, Dr. Osburn has outlined an aggressive five-year comprehensive plan to modernize the agency’s technology infrastructure and data collection processes to help usher in 21st-century practices that will ensure the availability of modernized equipment to support teachers’ and students’ classroom and learning needs.

Under Dr. Osburn’s leadership, the agency has embraced technology standardization, especially 1EdTech’s interoperability standards, and has been the industry leader in leveraging CASE. These efforts earned the Georgia Department of Education the coveted Platinum Learning Impact award in 2018 for this work and the Silver Learning Impact award again in 2022.

He is a strong advocate for all of Georgia’s K-12 technology workforce, helping them grow to understand and embrace their critical and importance role as technology leaders. Setting this vision has helped Dr. Osburn usher in several new and innovative programs to support their growth, including a new Emerging Technology Leader mentor program, training over 200 digital literacy ambassadors, providing cybersecurity training to every public school district in Georgia, and creating the first-of-its-kind state-wide professional learning environment and online community to enable schools and district leaders a platform to collaborate and share ideas regardless of their location in Georgia.

Dr. Kathe Pelletier has spent the last 25 years in higher education innovation of some form or another. Kathe’s entry point into higher ed was in an adult-serving institution that was fully online, and most of her work since then has been oriented around combining evidence-based practice with innovative delivery models and the strategic application of technology and data. She has held roles in many different areas including advising, curriculum and instructional design, competency based education, and academic support. Kathe is currently the senior director of community programs at EDUCAUSE, a non-profit membership organization that serves higher ed IT professionals in service of the greater good in higher education.