Board of Directors
A majority of the IMS Directors are elected by the Contributing Members. They serve to represent the membership as a whole and its diverse interests.
Rob Abel, Ed.D., Chief Executive Officer of IMS
Jeremy Auger, Chief Operating Officer, Desire2Learn
Curtiss Barnes, Vice President, Industry Product Strategy, Education & Research, Oracle Corp
Jim Behnke, Chief Learning Officer, Pearson
Fabrizio Cardinali, Chief Executive Officer of Giunti Labs
Jason Carlson, General Manager, Education Product Group, Microsoft
Christopher Cassirer, President, Capella University
David Ernst, Chairman of the Board, Associate Vice President and CIO,
University of California, Office of the President
William Graves, Ph.D., Sr. V.P. for Academic Strategy, SunGard Higher Education, Professor Emeritus, UNC-Chapel Hill
Joel Greenberg, Ph.D., Open University's Director of Media, Learning and Teaching Solutions
John T. Harwood, Ph.D., Senior Director, Teaching and Learning with Technology, Penn State
Ray Henderson, President,
Blackboard Learn,
Blackboard Inc
Garth Jordan, Vice President for Operations, EDUCAUSE
Michael King,Vice President,
Global Education Industry, IBM
William D. Rieders, Executive Vice President - Global New Media, Cengage Learning
Mark Stiles, Head of Learning Development and Innovation, Staffordshire University
Rob Abel, Ed.D.
Dr. Rob Abel, Ed.D. is the Chief Executive Officer of IMS Global Learning Consortium, the world's leading nonprofit member consortium developing, supporting, and advocating learning technology standards and best practices. Under Rob's leadership IMS Global has introduced the Learning Impact program, which is setting new benchmarks for high impact applications of technology in support of learning worldwide. Rob is a recognized expert on the use of information and communication technology (ICT) for learning, as well as an education industry researcher focused on the impact of education in society. As Senior Vice President at Collegis (now SunGard Higher Education), the leading provider of ICT services to U.S. higher education, he was responsible for online and academic services provided to over 60 U.S. institutions. As Senior Director at Oracle Education he was a leader and innovator in the development of online learning architectures and related standards, including the Reusable Content Object (RCO) strategy. Rob is a member of the IEEE, ACM, ASTD, ISTE, and American Educational Research Association. Rob holds a Doctorate in Educational Leadership and Change from Fielding Graduate University, a Masters degree in Management from Stanford, a Masters degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Southern California, and a Baccalaureate degree in Computational Physics from Carnegie Mellon University. His articles, commentary, and research have been featured by Educause Review, Educause Quarterly, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Greentree Gazette, Campus Technology, The League for Innovation, University Business, and eSchoolNews.
Jeremy Auger, Chief Operating Officer (COO) is responsible for day-to-day operations at Desire2Learn which includes executive oversight of Product Development, Organizational Development, IT, and Professional Services, with also heavy involvement in product steering and corporate strategy development.
Jeremy comes from a strong technical and business background having worked for numerous high-tech companies throughout North America and has been actively involved with e-Learning and web-based technology companies since the very early days.
With a strong commitment to customer service, and a desire to advance the state-of-the-art, Jeremy has been part of the Desire2Learn team since its inception, and continues taking a leading role in accomplishing success within the online education industry.
Curtiss Barnes leads Oracle's industry strategy team for Higher Education, Not-for-Profit Research Institutions and K-12 Education. In this role, Curtiss brings more than 20 years experience in the education industry. He is responsible for establishing product strategy and development investment priorities across all of Oracle's product groups, as well as identifying new market opportunities across the globe for Education-specific applications. Curtiss also serves as a liaison to Oracle's Education & Research Strategy Council (ERSC) and the Higher Education User Group (HEUG) - the world's largest user group in the Higher Education industry.
Prior to Oracle, Curtiss was director of industry marketing strategy for Education at PeopleSoft in Pleasanton, CA. He has also held roles in strategy and business development at SCT in Malvern, PA and directed the product management group at Campus Pipeline, Inc. in Salt Lake City, UT. Prior to joining the corporate world, Curtiss held positions in alumni and corporate relations, development and admissions at a number of higher education institutions.
Curtiss holds a bachelors degree in economics from Clark University and an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He lives in Lexington, MA with his wife Julie and daughters Emily, Julia and Caroline.
Jim Behnke is Chief Learning Officer for Pearson. His responsibilities with Pearson extend across the company's U.S. K16 business to international higher education. He is responsible for managing Pearson's online learning strategy and the technologies that underlie it, including a suite of formative assessment programs that are groundbreaking in their ability to improve student outcomes and institutional productivity. These programs, known as the MyLabs, were used by 4.3 million students around the world in 2008.
Behnke has extensive experience as an educational publisher, entrepreneur, general manager and a developer of educational software. Over the past decade, his work has focused primarily on the development of new product models and programs that harness the unique capabilities of the Web as a medium for teaching and learning.
Fabrizio Cardinali is the CEO of Giunti Labs (www.giuntilabs.com), Europe's leading online and mobile learning content management solutions (LCMS) provider. Giunti Labs' learn eXact LCMS suite now also includes the Hive Digital Repository product line, recently acquired by Giunti Labs from the Australian Company, HarvestRoad.
Fabrizio is one of Europe's leading e-learning experts and author of numerous papers in international journals and conference proceedings. In addition, he serves as Chair of the European eLearning Industry Group (ELIG), a group which encompasses all major EU stakeholders in the learning industry innovation cycle (www.elig.org). He is also Global Strategy Advisor to MIT's Open Knowledge Initiative; a Member of the European Commission Experts Group on eContent, and a Member of several EU Study Groups on the future of learning resources' digital marketplaces. He has given invited speeches at the Italian, Polish and Hungarian Ministries of Education and to the Russian State Duma Group on eLearning.
Jason Carlson is the GM of the Education Product Group which is responsible for developing technology solutions for the education industry (primary, secondary and higher education) with a goal to help students, educators and institutions to be more productive and successful through technology. Before joining Education Jason was the Product Unit Manager for SQL Server Reporting Services and has worked in SQL Server and BI for 11+ years. He joined Microsoft in 1996 as a Program Manager working on an Object Oriented Database. Jason joined SQL Server in 1998 and started building the Reporting Services business and product in 2001. Reporting Services shipped version 1 in 2004 and every subsequent release of SQL Server and Visual Studio. Before joining Microsoft Jason owned and operated an independent software development company developing solutions in the healthcare and telecom industries. He holds a Bachelors degree in Computer Science from the University of Washington. When not with his family and friends Jason spends time reminding himself just how imperfect he is by playing golf.
Christopher Cassirer joined Capella in 2005 and currently serves as president of Capella University, a position he assumed in May 2008. He was also elected to Capella University's Board of Directors in October 2008. He joined Capella University's School of Human Services as a faculty director in 2005 and was appointed dean of the school in 2006. Previously, Cassirer was an associate professor and director in the Department of Health Services Management and Leadership at The George Washington University from 2003 to 2005; chair of executive studies and associate professor of healthcare management at the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management from 1999 to 2003; co-founder and CEO of the Partnership for Patient Safety in Chicago from 1999 to 2000; and assistant vice president for knowledge services with MMI Companies Inc. from 1998 to 1999. Cassirer earned his Doctor of Science in Health Policy and Management and completed his post-doctoral training at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He earned a Master of Public Health in Health Policy from the Yale University School of Medicine and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Rutgers University.
David Ernst is Associate Vice President and CIO at the University of California, Office of the President. Previously he was Chief Information Officer and Assistant Vice Chancellor, Information Technology Services at California State University (CSU) where he directed academic-administrative- and communications-technology activities across a 23-campus system. Previously he worked to develop and implement a system-wide strategic plan that integrated academic and administrative technology. David also worked at the University of California-San Francisco as Assistant Vice-Chancellor, Information Technology & Services. He also served as director of administrative information systems at Stanford. Earlier in his career he built an independent consulting practice geared to higher education in the areas of strategic information technology planning and organizational restructuring. David earned both a B.A. and J.D. at the University of California-Davis.
Joel Greenberg is the Director of Media, Learning and Teaching Solutions at the Open University in the UK. He has a BSc in Mathematics from the University of Manitoba, an MSc in Control Engineering and a PhD in Numerical Mathematics from the University of Manchester. He joined the Open University in 1978, initially as a Software Designer developing educational software applications.
He has previously directed a number of new initiatives as part of the University's growing use of its new virtual learning environment as a primary delivery medium. Projects have include the development of a new learning content management system for the Open University's learning and teaching materials, a virtual learning environment built on open interoperability standards, a production and delivery systems for open education resources and the development of several prototypes of a social networking space, tuned for learning. He has written and published extensively about computer animation, multimedia developments, new learning and teaching models at the Open University and open social learning. He has been invited to keynote at a number of international conferences and meetings.
He is currently directing the work of a large team of media specialists on a number of projects which continually reassess the design, development and delivery of learning media products. He is responsible for the University’s core media creation and production, working in partnership with its Faculties and Schools.
Dr. William H. Graves, as senior vice president for academic strategy, is a member of the executive leadership team at SunGard Higher Education. He is also a member of the board of governors of Antioch University and a professor emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) where, after earning a mathematics Ph.D. from Indiana University, he served as dean for general education, interim vice chancellor for academic affairs, senior information technology officer, and founder and director of the Institute for Academic Technology (a UNC/IBM alliance).
First at UNC and now at SunGard Higher Education, Graves has helped pioneer technology-enabled strategies for measurably improving upon and accounting for institutional performance in tertiary education, especially academic performance. On this theme, he has published 80+ articles and books, given hundreds of invited presentations, and advised hundreds of institutions.
Graves is currently a co-founding board member of the National Center for Academic Transformation, the IMS Global Learning Consortium, and the Alliance for Higher Education Competitiveness. He formerly served on the boards of EDUCAUSE, the Coalition for Networked Information, and CAUSE. He helped launch Internet2 and EDUCAUSE’s National Learning Infrastructure Initiative (now the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative) and chaired the latter's planning committee from 1994-2004. He also served on the Tenth Anniversary Commission of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation and has participated recently in other national advisory groups convened by, for example, the U.S. Department of Education, the Lumina Foundation, and Innovate-Educate New Mexico.
While on leave from UNC in 1998-2000, Graves founded and directed the nonprofit Collegis Research Institute. He then retired from UNC in 2000 to found (and chair the board of) Eduprise, an academic technology services firm which subsequently merged with Collegis. The resulting privately held company was acquired in 2004 by publicly traded SunGard Data Systems and is now part of privately held SunGard Higher Education, the world’s largest technology-related business focused solely on tertiary education and technology-enabled strategies for improving its efficacy and efficiency.
John T. Harwood, Ph.D.
John Harwood Senior Director, Teaching and Learning with Technology, Penn State. John is responsible for the development of courseware, training, and support programs for faculty and teaching assistants who seek to integrate technology and teaching. At University Park, he is responsible for helping faculty use technology in teaching; university-wide IT training; and computer labs, technology classrooms, and the support services required to support teaching and learning in those spaces, including instructional design and multimedia services. John is Penn State's representative to the CIC, the academic consortium of the Big 10.
Ray Henderson
Ray Henderson is the President of Blackboard Learn, the elearning products division of Blackboard Inc, the worlds leading provider of online learning technology and services. His mission there is simple: to increase the impact of education by transforming the experience of education. Previously, Ray was Chief Products Officer at ANGEL Learning, which Blackboard acquired in May 2009. He also served as President of the Digital Media Group for Pearson Education where he was responsible for creating digital products for learning delivery. He was a founder of the Safari Books Online joint initiative with O’Reilly, and managed platforms for several high profile blended learning product lines such as Course Compass and My Math Lab. His most significant contribution to the IMS Global was his early stewardship of the Common Cartridge project, now a key standards initiative within IMS. Ray’s vantage as both a content distributor and software platform provider led him to suggest this new initiative in 2005 and help shepherd it into existence till now. .
Garth Jordan
Garth Jordan is Vice President for Operations at EDUCAUSE. In that role he has general oversight of information technology services, conferences, marketing, and other operational areas of the association. Garth is responsible for enhancing the experiences that both the Association’s members and other organizations or individuals in higher education have with EDUCAUSE’s products and services.
Prior to joining EDUCAUSE in the summer of 2009, Garth served as Vice President of Member Services, Marketing and Sales for the Association of Perioperative Registered Nurses. During his tenure, the association grew from 38,000 to 43,000 individual professional members. Garth was instrumental in improving the association’s suite of professional development offerings. His efforts included leading the organization in its first development efforts for ebooks and an online bookstore; acquiring a Learning Management System and creating a 60 hour online course for training operating room nurses; running a Top 200 trade show and professional conference; and partnering with a variety of corporations to develop new products or enhance the delivery of existing professional development services of the association.
Michael King
Michael King, Vice President, Global Education Industry, has been with IBM for over 20 years in various executive and management positions. He is currently the worldwide leader for the IBM Education Industry. In this role, he leads IBM's strategy, marketing and sales across schools and higher education. His prior responsibilities include Director, Market Development, Education Industry, focused on solutions and innovation projects, and Director, Alliances for IBM Learning Solutions, where he led a team in developing partnerships across the learning marketplace, including corporate education. He served as the lead market manager for learning in IBM, launching important corporate solution initiatives in Europe and globally. Prior positions include the Global Segment Executive for the IBM Education industry, leading the strategy for delivering solutions and products to higher education and primary school institutions around the world, and also the worldwide marketing manager for higher education. IBM's broad portfolio of offerings in Education Industry includes hardware and software products, business and IT services, and specific industry initiatives, such as open source software, grid computing, and other leading technologies.
Mr. King has also served as the client executive with responsibility for research universities in California, including the University of California system. In that position, he worked with leading universities in developing creative technology solutions for administrative and academic applications.
Mr. King holds Bachelor's of Science degrees in Physics and Engineering from Kansas State University and an MBA from the University of California, Los Angeles. He is a member of the California P16 Education Advisory Council.
William D. Rieders
William Rieders is Executive Vice President of Global New Media for Cengage Learning. In this role, Mr. Rieders is focused on accelerating growth and using digital media and technology to create new opportunities. He also plays a significant role in defining and leading other strategic initiatives for Cengage Learning, including efforts to capitalize on synergies between Gale and the Academic and Professional Group. Mr. Rieders is a member of the Cengage Learning Executive Committee.
Mr. Rieders was most recently a Partner of The Parthenon Group, a leading global strategy consulting firm. While at Parthenon, Mr. Rieders advised numerous clients across industries, including information publishing, education, and private equity. His work at Parthenon focused on corporate strategy, profit improvement, growth and innovation, and mergers & acquisitions.
While at Parthenon, Mr. Rieders was an advisor to Thomson Learning (now Cengage Learning). In this role, Mr. Rieders served a significant role in improving the overall growth and profitability of the business, including successfully integrating the acquisition of Harcourt, restructuring the sales force, driving changes to pricing, recommending profit improvement strategies, and prioritizing future growth opportunities. Mr. Rieders also brings a deep understanding of the education space where he has advised some of the most successful for-profit education players in the market.
In addition, Mr. Rieders has played integral roles in transforming a variety of information businesses, including healthcare, scientific, intellectual property, legal, and tax. In this capacity, Mr. Rieders successfully developed new electronic business models, identified adjacent markets, built strategies, and supported implementation efforts.
Prior to The Parthenon Group, Mr. Rieders was a manager with the Analysis Group (Integral), a management consulting firm focused on developing innovative growth strategies. Mr. Rieders holds a BA from Connecticut College, and an MBA/MSIA from Carnegie Mellon University.
Mark Stiles
Mark Stiles, Head of Learning Development and Innovation at Staffordshire University, has been involved with the use of technology to support learning for more than 20 years, and has led research and development work in strategy, policy, systems development and interoperability, and pedagogy. Mark also led the development of one of the first UK virtual learning environments, COSE, and has been involved in projects making use of IMS specifications since JISC first became involved in the consortium's work. Mark, Deputy Chair of the JISC Learning and Teaching committee, is also Chair of the JISC-CETIS Board. Mark's current work focuses on the support of work-based learning, and the tensions between issues of control and innovation within organisations deploying learning technologies. At Staffordshire, Mark holds a Professorial Chair in Technology Supported Learning.