Leadership
Apereo Staff
Ian Dolphin
Ian has led organizational and technology projects to improve post-secondary education in the United Kingdom, and played a leading role in collaboration with Australia, New Zealand and the United States.
Apereo Board
David Ackerman
Dr. David Ackerman currently serves New York University in a dual appointment as Chief Digital Officer and Associate Vice President. As Chief Digital Officer in NYU Libraries and Associate Vice President for Research Technology in NYU IT, David is responsible for the overall global NYU research technology strategy and services. This includes high performance computing, 3D additive fabrication, data services, digital humanities and scholarship support, the Libraries digital strategy, and digital library technology services and preservation. During his more than 26 years at NYU, David was responsible for the invention and implementation of NYU Home (the enterprise portal); NYU CWIS (campus-wide information system for dissemination of information in electronic form); NYU Web as the first NYU Webmaster (replacing NYU CWIS); the first non-text email system and the migration of it to Google; the first modern day HPC machine to make the top 500 list; the first NYU Abu Dhabi supercomputer; one of the top higher education 3D printing programs in the world; the design and rollout of the NYU Co-op (a next generation computer lab); and establishing and developing the now Peta-scale NYU Digital Library. While at NYU, he has also served as technology consultant to the Soros Foundations, Expert on Mission to the United Nations, and the Founding Chairman of the Board of the New York chapter of the Internet Society (ISOC-NY). He was the dissolving Chairman of the Board of the Sakai Foundation and currently serves as Chairman of the Board of the Apereo Foundation.
Lucy Appert
Lucy Appert is the Director of Educational Technology for New York University's Arts & Science division, where she provides leadership and planning for the effective and strategic use of emerging technologies for the division's three schools. Her areas of special interest include digital literacy, digital humanities, and project-based learning.
Prior to returning to NYU in 2018, Lucy spent almost five years as Associate Director for Instructional Design at Columbia University’s Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL, formerly CCNMTL) where she led the CTL's innovative project partnerships with faculty using its Design Research methodology. Previously at NYU, she served as Director of Educational Technology for the Liberal Studies Program (LSP), where she led the team providing instructional technology solutions for LSP faculty and students in New York and at NYU’s Global Sites. She was also a faculty member in the program and has more than 20 years of teaching experience, having taught at Tulane, Vanderbilt, and Yale, in addition to NYU. Lucy holds a Ph.D. in 17th & 18th c. British literature from Tulane University and a B.A. in Classics and English from UNC-Chapel Hill.
An active member of the larger educational technology community, she has fostered a number of IT/academic collaborations within both university and open source communities, including chairing the User Reference Group for the original Sakai Open Academic Environment project and coordinating the Apereo newsletter.
Cheryl Brown
Dr Cheryl Brown is currently an Associate Professor of e-learning and co-Director of the e-Learning Lab in the School of Education Studies and Leadership at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. Previously she worked in the Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching at the University of Cape Town where she has managed e-learning projects on digital education leadership, personal mobile devices in learning and teaching and developing e-learning professionals in Africa. A previous “Teaching with Sakai” Award winner, she also co-chaired the Apereo Teaching and Learning Awards (ATLAS) between 2015 & 2017. Her research interests are centred around access to ICTs and how they facilitate or inhibit students’ participation in learning. In the past few years she has looked more closely at the role technological devices (for example cell phones and tablets) play in students learning in a developing context and the development of students' digital literacy practices.
Francois Campbell
I am the Teaching, Learning and Portal lead for OpenCollab. As such, Apereo has played a large role in my life. I have been using and supporting Sakai since Sakai 2.7.
My experience has involved institutions of all sizes and shapes. We support higher education in Africa generally and South Africa in particular.
During this time I have been involved with initiatives in the South African sphere of Sakai. Developing tools for Offline Mobile Learning using Sakai for Unisa (Unipoole ) and NWU (eFundi Move).
My role is focused on the hands-on support, maintenance and rejuvenation of Sakai instances for Universities and other centres of Learning. Providing today's digital learner with the best experience possible, while addressing pressing concerns and limitations.
I am excited about the direction Apereo has taken in the last few years. Specifically expanding its outlook and supporting worth while projects which aid the digital learner in these fluid times. My goal is to expand Apereo's footprint in Africa.
Laura Gekeler
Laura has been at the University of Notre Dame since 1998. In 2004 she became Notre Dame’s first LMS Administrator at a time when the service was supported by a single person. She led the original team which implemented Blackboard Vista (WebCT) and integrated it to Banner’s Luminis portal. Later she provided leadership to the design of the evaluation process used to select Sakai. Her knowledge of learning management software extends through its entire lifecyle , especially as related to the changing needs of those who use it. Her responsibilities have included providing leadership to a Blackboard user group, leading faculty workshops, building sustainable documentation and support practices, and marketing and branding the Notre Dame learning management system. She has been a syndicated blogger on LMS administration, governance, support and staffing topics. Laura holds an M.A. in Applied Linguistics. She is a concurrent instructor for the Mendoza College of Business. In her spare time, she’s a Startup Weekend organizer passionate about innovation and entrepreneurship in education technology. She’s a firm believer in scholarly research informing teaching which informs innovation. In addition to her staff position at Notre Dame, she served on the Board of her sons’ K-8 school (2009-2011) where education initiatives such as Indiana Choice, Common Core assessment and preparation mingled with curricular concerns for the next generation’s preparation for 21st century employment.
Mathilde Guérin
Mathilde Guérin has been working at the University of La Rochelle since 2010 where she was responsible for the development and deployment of innovative IT projects (mobile solutions, web portal, etc.). The missions entrusted to her eventually led her to become involved in the ESUP-Portail Consortium, a French organization promoting and developing open-source solutions for higher education. Throughout the years, while coordinating the ESUP-Mobile Working Group, she kept on working on various projects supported or developed by the Consortium which allowed her to have a global view of the Consortium's strategy and activities. At the end of 2014, she was appointed as Technical Director for ESUP-Portail: one of her objectives is to contribute in strengthening the partnership between the Consortium and the Apereo Foundation.
Jim Helwig
Jim Helwig has worked for the University of Wisconsin-Madison since 2001, leading technical teams in the areas of portal infrastructure, custom enterprise academic applications and shared development tools. Jim has also played a leadership role within the Apereo (and previously Jasig) community, serving on the board of directors, chairing the uPortal Steering Committee and leading the planning committees for a number of Jasig conferences and events. Jim is a frequent speaker at Apereo and EDUCAUSE conferences. Prior to joining the University, Jim worked in private industry on distributed Internet applications. Jim holds a M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Jim continues to be passionate about the benefits institutions of higher education can achieve through collaboratively working on innovative open source solutions addressing common campus needs.
Doug Johnson
Doug Johnson has worked for the University of Florida since 2000. He was initially hired as an instructional designer with ancillary responsibility for UF's initial experiments with course management systems. Rapid growth of the CMS from a few hundred users to tens of thousands of users required a transition to system administration, user support and training, as well as hiring and managing a CMS support team. Continued growth of the CMS and related online systems and services, plus the increased complexity of mission critical, enterprise level systems, required Doug to develop skills in project management and coordination of multi-unit teams to provide seamless support for a growing portfolio of online teaching and learning technologies. Doug is now leading UF’s learning analytics efforts and is deeply involved in strategic planning, Agile project management, adaptive organizational change, and all aspects of community engagement related to online teaching and learning at the University of Florida.
Shoji Kajita
Shoji Kajita is currently a Professor of Kyoto University in Japan with two appointments, one in the IT Planning Office, a part of the Institute of Information Management and Communication, and the other in the Academic Center for Computing and Media Studies. Professor Kajita received his bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in Information Engineering from Nagoya University in Japan in 1990, 1992, and 1998 respectively. At Nagoya University, he served as a Research Associate in the Graduate School of Engineering from 1995 to 1997 and an Assistant Professor in the Center for Information Media Studies (CIMS) from 1998 to 2001. During his work at CIMS, he localized WebCT into Japanese and took the role of WebCT evangelist in Japan as a means of promoting the use of ICT for teaching and learning. From 2002 to 2008, he was an Associate Professor at the Nagoya University Information Technology Center, where he developed the Nagoya University Portal and a next-generation Course Management System for Japanese universities. These works were contributed to the Jasig and Sakai communities for use with uPortal, CAS and the Sakai CLE. His contributions to Jasig and Sakai reflected on the participation in annual (formally semi-annual) Jasig Conferences since 2002 and Sakai Conferences since 2004. Before joining Kyoto University in 2011, his most recent position at Nagoya University was that of an Associate Professor in the Information Strategy Office, a part of the university's Information and Communications Headquarters.
Charles Leonhardt
Charlie has primary responsibility for Georgetown's R&D activities in Federated Authentication and Authorization. This includes serving as the Campus Executive for InCommon, and providing leadership and support for the Common Identity and Trust (CommIT) Collaborative and the core Shibboleth development team. Charlie lead the successful completion of middleware development and implementation for Project Sentinel, a major bioinformatics project sponsored by the National Library of Medicine.
In prior roles at Georgetown, Charlie created a flexible group to build and enhance Scholarly Information Services that directly support teaching, learning, and research. The Scholarly Systems Group integrates course management, interactive media, synchronous collaboration, lecture capture, academic software, and administrative functions into a rich and dynamic online platform for faculty and students.
Charlie played a key role in expanding the University's "directory-driven" computing strategy. He created and managed the Information Access (IA) group. IA delivered new customer-enabling services including the Enterprise Data Warehouse, Access+ and MyAccess (personalized web-based access to Georgetown's core business systems), an enterprise identity management system (NetID), and an e-commerce infrastructure.
Charlie is Georgetown's primary liaison to technology organizations. He serves as a member of the Board of Directors of the P20W Education Standards Council (PESC) and co-chairs its Enterprise Authentication and Authorization (EA2) Working Group. Charlie is Treasurer of the Apereo Foundation, a vibrant community of educators collaborating to create open software that advances teaching, learning, and research. He is immediate past Coordinator of the Common Solutions Group (CSG) and a member of the CSG Steering Committee. He actively participates in the activities and meetings of CSG, PESC, Apereo, Educause, Internet2, InCommon, the IMS Global Learning Consortium, Gartner Group, the ShareStream Product Advisory Board, the Chinese-American Networking Symposium (CANS), the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities Conference on IT Management (AJCU-CITM). He served as a member of the Mellon Foundation planning grant team that validated the need for and proposed the development of the Kuali Student Services System.
Charlie received the Distinguished Service Award from PESC in 2011 and the Award for Exemplary Practices in Information Technology Solutions from Educause in 2000.
Charlie earned a Master of Science in Information Systems from American University and a Bachelors in Economics and Philosophy from Georgetown. He currently teaches as an Adjunct Professor in the Masters of Technology Management Program at Georgetown.
Boeta Pretorius
Boeta Pretorius is the Chief Director of IT at the North-West University. NWU is the second largest University in South Africa and has a mix of campus and distance students. NWU has been a very active and loyal community member of the Sakai-, and now Apereo foundation. Although Sakai, (branded as eFundi at the NWU) is a flagship product at the NWU, other Apereo products like CAS and Matterhorn are also used. NWU is an active member of the Apereo-SA community, and will host the annual Apereo-SA conference in 2018.
I have changed the mission of IT to focus more on the core activities at the University, namely Teaching and Learning, and Research. The Apereo product range forms an integral part of our solutions portfolio to fulfil this mission. I have a long history with the community, and built very good relations and partnerships.
I am also a director of the Association of South African Directors of IT (ASAUDIT) and lead some of the interest groups. As a loyal community member, I am sure I will be able to make a positive difference on the Apereo board.
Jeremy Rosenberg
Jeremy has managed the Identity and Access Management program at UC Berkeley since 2014. Before that he held a similar position at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia. Jeremy learned to program in 2004 and has contributed to a number of open source projects over the years. As a developer at Simon Fraser University he helped modernize the identity management system and improve the usability of identity services for staff, faculty and students alike. Jeremy has an MBA in Management of Technology from the Segal School of Business in Vancouver and loves using his skills to help advance the mission of higher education. He is passionate about the role of open source software and seeks to enable open source solutions to continue to compete with commercial offerings for the attention of higher ed technologists. Jeremy is especially interested in championing the CAS Central Authentication Service as a core component of a modern identity and access solution.
Anne-Marie Scott
Anne-Marie Scott is the Deputy Director of the Learning, Teaching and Web Services Directorate at the University of Edinburgh. She has been at the University of Edinburgh since 2002 and was responsible for the selection and development of uPortal as the University enterprise portal platform in 2004. She is an expert in enterprise systems – in addition to implementing uPortal, she led a multi-year project to replace the University Identity Management system, moving operations to a real-time SOA based architecture. The solution delivered was a blend of open source solutions (Grouper, OpenLDAP) and bespoke development.
Since 2011 she has been focused on the University’s learning technology provision, developing strategy and leading large institutional change projects that enhance the student learning experience. She is responsible for the provision of all the centrally provided VLE, eAssessment, ePortfolio and media services in the institution. She has a keen interest in learning analytics, developing policy, undertaking some of the early analysis of data from MOOC platforms, and more recently supporting the inclusion of OnTask into the Apereo Incubation process. Current projects include the rollout of lecture recording into 400 teaching spaces; the adoption of WordPress as an institutional blogging platform, including a Domain of One’s Own service; and a pilot of Jupyter Notebooks to support computational learning.
She is passionate about student co-creation of educational technology services through high value internship opportunities. She has a commitment to open source and open practices more generally – including championing the adoption of open source solutions, open licenses and working closely with the University Wikimedian in Residence.
She holds and MA in English and Scottish Literature and a PG Dip in e-Learning, both from Edinburgh. She volunteers for Girl Geek Scotland as part of the leadership team, supporting women in tech roles within the Scottish IT sector, and has more than a decade of board experience as a Trustee of a building preservation trust.