Contact Us

Gerard L. Hanley Ph.D. is the Executive Director of MERLOT (Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching at www.merlot.org) and Senior Director for Academic Technology Services for the California State University, Office of the Chancellor. At MERLOT, he directs the development and sustainability of MERLOT's consortium of higher education systems and institutions, professional societies, corporations, and other digital libraries. At the CSU, Gerry oversees the development and implementation of systemwide academic technology initiatives and integrated electronic library resources supporting CSU's 23 campuses. Previously held positions in the CSU include Professor of Psychology, Director of Faculty Development and Director of Strategic Planning.

Jack Gunther is a Special Consultant with the California State University where he assists the Office of the Chancellor with academic technologies. He is a member of the development team for the Digital Marketplace. In 2006, Mr. Gunther retired from IBM as the Market Development Executive for the Higher Education market, worldwide. He was responsible for building an ecosystem of partners to better serve the information technology needs of higher education. Prior, Mr. Gunther was the Global Marketing Executive for the Publishing Industry. He positioned IBM products and services for that industry. Before that, Mr. Gunther was the IBM Consulting North American practice leader for information and technology strategy offerings to telecommunication and media clients. Mr. Gunther has a Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics from Occidental College.

Jeff Kahn is an education industry consultant, specializing in digital repositories and interoperability strategies. He has more than 25 years experience in commercial and custom software design and implementation, technology professional services, training, strategic alliances, and business development. Jeff provides strategy, system design, software development, and documentation services and has been an invited technical speaker at a variety of industry events.

Jeff has been involved with several open source projects including the MIT Open Knowledge Initiative (O.K.I.), Tufts University's Visual Understanding Environment (VUE), Sakai, Pachyderm, MERLOT, and others. Jeff has also been a consultant to universities, application and LMS vendors, libraries, museums, and commercial publishers. Jeff consultants to the IMS Global Learning Consortium as an evangelist for adoption of Common Cartridge.

Jeff lives near Atlanta, Georgia and has a B.A. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison and a M.S. from the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

Mark Norton is an independent consultant in the field of technology based learning in higher education environments. He has participated as an architect and developer in the Sakai project since its inception participating and contributing to a variety of Sakai related projects. Mark served as the Chairman of the Sakai Requirements Working Group in 2007 and served as Technical Liaison to the Sakai Educational Partnership Program in the early days of Saki. He has been a contributor to the Open Knowledge Initiative providing technical feedback and guidance to the Open Service Interface Definitions (OSIDs). Mr. Norton was the Director of Specification Development at the IMS Global Learning Consortium and coordinated the development of several key industry standards including Simple Sequencing, Learning Design, and Digital Repositories. As chairman of the IMS Accessibility Group, he led the development of several specifications on support for accessibility in educational technology. He was a founding architect at TechOnLine (custom internet architectures), and Avid Technology (digital video editing systems). Mr. Norton has an MSCS from Boston University.

Steve Paxhia is the President of Beacon Digital Strategies, a consulting practice focused upon the strategies and technologies employed by commercial and enterprise publishing professionals. He assists publishing technology companies in turning their ideas into profitable businesses and helps publishing companies in assessing their strategy and current performance and helping to accelerate their growth. In the past ten years, Steve has worked with more than 30 companies by helping refine their strategic plans, raise capital, devise go-to-market plans, and make and integrate acquisitions. Steve also mentors a number of CEOs and offers training on board meeting preparation. He has authored comprehensive studies covering Digital Book Publishing strategies, Digital Magazines and Newspapers, and on Collaboration and Social Computing.

Jim Nye is Senior Partner at NEW Publishing Solutions. He has an extensive record of successfully assessing, building, revitalizing and driving complex organizations in the education environment. Jim works with a number of clients as they develop new business models for their content in digital form. He has successfully shifted and redirected the professional direction of teams of people and he has recruited and trained many who are successful in the industry. From executive editorial, sales and marketing positions at WB Saunders, John Wiley and Harcourt College, CEO positions at small and successful start-ups such as Carnegie Learning, ExploreLearning and MediVisuals, and an executive position at Ingram Digital Ventures, he has adapted to and embraced the changing nature of content in the educational marketplace.

Sandy Ehrhorn is a retired campus bookstore director with experience at California State University campuses and at Fullerton College, a California Community College. She has compiled proposal requests for and implemented the installation of inventory management/point-of-sale systems and ecommerce as well as for other products and services. She has also authored a series of basic bookstore procedures for all aspects of the course materials and customer service functions. Sandy has a BA in European History from Cal State Long Beach.

Ilse Wolfe is a partner at NEW Publishing Solutions, a consulting firm that helps educational content companies develop and execute winning strategies to grow their businesses. Ilse brings over 20 years of sales, marketing and management experience within the education marketplace. As a consultant, she provides marketing and business development expertise, from developing new strategies to tactical implementation. Her clients include content providers (both print and electronic), software and hardware companies. Before founding her own consulting practice, Ilse held marketing and management positions at John Wiley & Sons, Pearson Education, and Harcourt College Publishers. Ilse has a B.A. in Speech Communications from Miami University (Ohio).

With many years of experience in web and graphic design, Kristin develops and implements websites for the Center for Distrubuted Learning. Her interests include information and interface design, usability and accessibility.

Kristin has a B.A. in Anthropology and Art from UC Davis, and a Master's Degree in Library and Information Science with a concentration in Web Design and Technology from San Jose State University.