About me

Coming from the last generation that remembers classrooms without computers, I was introduced to the power of educational computing at the age of 12. My passion for educational technology began in 1982 when I attended a summer computer camp run by the University of Florida. This experience left me fascinated with the idea of utilizing technology to foster creativity in learning. Upon completion of my undergraduate degree in education, I became a K-12 classroom teacher and developed my own teacher website in 2001. Parents and students could easily access my complete scope and sequence, the weekly breakdown of the topics that we would be studying and all homework sheets were available as PDFs. After 4 years in this capacity I was recruited out of the classroom in order to assist other educators in the school district with their adoption of technology and help them improve teaching and learning.

More recently, I’ve spent the last 12 years in higher education, specifically in distance education and technology enhanced learning. I began as an instructional designer and learning management systems (LMS) trainer for SunGard Higher Education (later named Ellucian) where I traveled throughout the US to demonstrate ways in which educators could leverage technology to power teaching and learning online. These efforts involved creating and maintaining expertise in all major learning management systems such as WebCT, Blackboard, Moodle, D2L, and Angel. I later managed large LMS migration efforts and client engagements where selection of an LMS was a key issue. In 2009, my family and I moved to Las Vegas where I became Director of Academic Technology Services at the College of Southern Nevada (CSN.) In this role, I was responsible for the online campus. This included support of student and faculty online learning, media services, and all classroom technology integration. Under my direction the online campus grew to be larger than any of CSN’s on ground campuses in the Las Vegas valley and served more than 46,000 students and 2,000 faculty members engaged in 30 fully online degree programs. In 2011, our family relocated to North Texas and I went to work for Academic Partnerships as Vice President of Learning Technologies and later VP of Academic Services. These roles provided me with opportunities to lead academic program developments across the United States, Latin America, Spain, the United Kingdom, China, the Philippines, and Australia.

Due to the privilege of assuming such roles in higher education, I have been able to assist institutions as they work to increase global access to high quality teaching and learning and transition traditional face-to-face programs into interactive online formats. Currently, I am the Chief Academic Officer at iDesign and have the honor of leading a top-notch team of learning designers who are committed to the creation of high quality online educational experiences for learners at our partner institutions.