Open Learning ExchangeUniversal Basic Education 2015

John M. Cook

Retired Chairman and Chief Executive Officer PRG- Schultz International, Inc. John has been the primary benefactor of the Human Development Foundation of Bangkok (Thailand), which supports Mercy Centre, Bangkok’s first AIDS hospice that focuses on children and mothers with the disease. Seeking to alleviate the suffering of children in Klong Toey, Bangkok’s largest slum community, Mercy Centre also operates an orphanage and a series of schools which help over 5,000 children a year to qualify for public education. Cook founded and serves as Chairman of the Board of the South Asia Children’s Fund, which supports innovative educational programs for disadvantaged children, primarily in Nepal and India. Read more…

Michael Crawford

Michael Crawford is a Senior Education Specialist with the World Bank’s Education Department in the Latin America
and Caribbean Vice Presidency, where he leads work on tertiary education and science, technology, and innovation (STI). Michael develops and manages investment projects and analytic studies in university reform, improvement of research and innovation capacity, access to tertiary education, quality assurance and related issues in Chile, Peru, and Brazil. He recently co-led the joint World Bank/OECD review on Tertiary Education in Chile. Previously, he designed and implemented the World Bank’s first loan for the promotion of science, technology, and innovation capacity in Sub Saharan Africa and the 2004 Uganda Millennium Science Initiative project. He has also developed World Bank policy for STI capacity building. He holds a Master’s degree in Economics and Development from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), and a Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy and Mathematics from St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland.

Cecilia d’Oliveira

Cecilia d’Oliveira is the Executive Director of OpenCourseWare at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Ms. d’Oliveira leads the team that works with MIT faculty to publish MIT’s course materials openly and with organizations around the world who are implementing their own opencourseware programs as institutional initiatives or national education policy. From 2002 to 2008 she served as MIT OpenCourseWare’s Technology Director with responsibility for building the technical infrastructure for the program. Over 25 years she has worked in a variety of information technology positions, focused on technology innovation in support of MIT education, research and business initiatives. Ms. d’Oliveira received a Master’s degree from M.I.T.’s Sloan School of Management and a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from MIT.

William F. Foote

William Foote is the president and founder of Root Capital (formerly EcoLogic Finance), a social investment fund that provides affordable credit, financial education and market access to environmentally sustainable, grassroots enterprises in the developing world. Mr. Foote has an extensive background in cross-border investment and economic development in Latin America and Africa. Mr. Foote is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and currently serves on the Sustainability Committee of the Specialty Coffee Association of America. Since 2005, Root Capital has received the Fast Company/ Monitor Group Social Capitalist Award; the International Chamber of Commerce/ UNDP/ Prince of Wales International Business Leaders Forum World Business Award in support of the Millennium Development Goals; and the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship. Read more…

Richard Rowe

Dr. Richard Rowe is a Chief Executive Officer of the Open Learning Exchange, Inc. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in clinical psychology in 1963. In the1970′s served as Associate Dean of the Harvard’s Graduate School of Education and as Director of the university’s interfaculty Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology and Public Practice. He has conducted research concerning assessment of social interventions and has been an advocate for early childhood education. He has served as Chair of the Massachusetts Statewide Advisory Committee for the Office for Children, as a member of the Massachusetts State Board of Education where he served both as Chair of the Selection committee for the Commissioner of Education and of the Education Reform Review Committee. He has served as Chair of the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education. Dr. Rowe has focused on domestic and global policy issues related to education and services for children, families and strong communities as well as on public policy and technical issues concerning intellectual property. Read more…

Kitt Sawitsky

Kitt Sawitsky is and attorney with Goulston & Storrs, Councilors at Law in Boston, where he served for several years as the firms’ Co-Managing Director. He practices general, corporate, and business law and has a reputation as a deal maker. He represents entities and individuals in connection with asset and stock sales, debt and equity financings, mergers, acquisitions, entity structuring, and shareholder and partnership agreements. He also has extensive workout and other general business experience, with a particular emphasis on retail and consumer businesses in their domestic and cross-border operations and strategic transactions. Kitt serves as OLE’s legal counsel.

Marshall Smith

Dr. Marshall Smith has held a variety of academic and governmental roles over the course of his career. He currently serves as Program Director for Education at The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

Marshall earned a PhD in Measurement and Statistics from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and went on to hold the posts of Associate Professor at Harvard and Professor at both the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Stanford University. From 1986 to 1992, he was Dean of the Stanford School of Education. He has published on a broad range of educational topics and participated with numerous commissions and committees of the National Research Council.

In the public sector, Marshall served as Acting Deputy Secretary and Under Secretary for Education. He was also Chief of Staff to the Secretary for Education and Assistant Commissioner for Policy Studies in the Office of Education. He was on the Council on Education Standards and is former Chairman of the Board of the American Institutes of Research. Additionally, over the years he has operated as a consultant to many foundations, nonprofit organizations, and government agencies, including the Education Testing Service. He is currently a member of the National Academy of Education.

Paul Smyke

Paul Symke is the Senior Advisor to the Chairman, World Economic Forum.  He has worked with the forum for 22 years and, among other responsibilities, facilitates relationships between the Forum and key leaders in North America.

Araceli Camacho, Director of Operations

Araceli is the Director of Operations at Open Learning Exchange. She has seventeen years of experience in organizational development, change management, and strategy, with expertise in lean performance management. Over her career, Araceli has been highly successful in leading teams as well as in creating innovative processes and managing new projects in situations of change. She received her qualifications as an Industrial Engineer with a specialty in Operational Research from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC) and also holds an executive education from IESE Business School in Barcelona, Spain.

Areceli has worked for Contenemar Holding, a large freight company in Spain, where she managed the traffic and sales departments in order to ensure the timely delivery of workload shipments. Between 1996 and 2011, she held a variety of management roles at the Spanish division of Danone, a French multinational food company with 75,000 employees and an operating profit of over €12 billion. At Danone, she maintained leadership in organizing planning production and improving the flow of materials. She also led training and organization development. Her achievements included implementing a global lean management plan and building a variety of high performance teams, which she engaged, coached, and audited to achieve quality and efficiency improvements.

Araceli is an innovative leader with strong skills in operations, organizational work, and management. Her specialties include change management, strategy, lean management, training, and processes. Araceli’s work at Open Learning Exchange involves her expertise in coordinating the team, developing robust processes to implement Open Educational Resources (OER), and achieving exceptional results. Araceli brings to OLE her passion for creating wonderful projects and the dream of making a difference for millions of children around the world.

Christy Danelle Di Frances – Senior Writer

Christy earned an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Adelaide in South Australia and recently completed her PhD in English Literature from the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, where her research was funded by a scholarship from the College of Arts and Social Sciences and aided by the university’s close association with the Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies (RIISS).

In addition to possessing teaching and curriculum development experience at the high school level, Christy has also taught undergraduates in the School of Language and Literature at the University of Aberdeen. Her doctoral research focused on Edinburgh-born author Robert Louis Stevenson’s re-imagination of a modern aesthetics of adventure. Her literary passions have gradually expanded to encompass all things Scottish, including transnational re-evaluations of the Scottish diasporic experience in various colonial and postcolonial contexts.

Besides co-editing On Edge, an anthology of writing for Wakefield Press Australia (in association with the University of Adelaide), Christy has published work in academic journals, literary anthologies, and creative writing magazines in the United States, Great Britain, and Australia. Notwithstanding her substantial research interests, she still considers herself a storyteller first and foremost. Her current vision is to communicate the exciting stories of the many children who are now receiving a quality education thanks to successful learning processes implemented by local OLE centers around the world.

Bobbie Dressel, Director of Communications

Bobbie is Director of Communications at Open Learning Exchange. She has a B.A. in International Relations from Syracuse University and an M.B.A from Babson College. For twenty years, Bobbie has worked to further the impact of education and health NGOs both internationally and domestically. In 1992, as a VISTA volunteer, Bobbie worked for a grassroots, community-based and volunteer-run adult basic education program. Her main role was to train volunteers to teach adult basic education and ESL, but she was soon charged with expanding the organization’s literacy programming to include job readiness training and multi-generational literacy initiatives. The New Mexico State Department of Education praised these well-designed literacy programs and provided funding, the first time a community-based organization in New Mexico had ever received such funding.  Since that time, Bobbie has managed teams, both internationally and domestically, charged with developing new programs, securing new funding, and implementing high impact programs.

While working for Ancillary Care Management (ACM), Bobbie led ACM’s proposal team to successfully secure a contract with the Massachusetts Department of Medical Assistance and managed the initial implementation of the ACM’s web-based health management program.  After this success, she joined the Business and Resource Development (BRD) team at Management Sciences for Health, an international NGO that works to improve health management systems around the world. As Senior Manager in BRD, Bobbie led proposal teams with staff and partners located around the world.  At any given time she would be managing a team based in India while also managing teams in Bolivia and Senegal. She worked tirelessly to promote MSH projects to multiple government and non-governmental funders.

After working for several years in international development, Bobbie returned to focus on domestic issues at Providers’ Council in Boston. As Project Manager for the Boston-based human service association, she led an aggressive initiative to expand an on-line, human services credentialing program from one to eight courses in five months. She was charged with managing curriculum developers, hiring and managing web-based content developers, marketing the upcoming new curriculum to local human service agencies, and running the pilot projects of new curriculum at various agencies.

Bobbie was drawn to OLE’s business plan because it starts with sustainability at the local level by developing partnerships with local staff and organizations. An ongoing criticism of international development projects is that most of the funding goes to international NGOs who, despite working hard for the five-year funding cycle, ultimately leave, taking their skills and work back with them to their home countries.  Bobbie thus welcomes the opportunity to work towards supporting the development of long-term, locally-based education programs in developing countries throughout the world.

Kari Mruz, TeacherMate Project Director

Kari joined the OLE Consortium as the Administrative Officer working directly with the Chair and CEO on all aspects of the work of the Cambridge office. She then took on the role of Project Director for OLE Rwanda where she is currently leading a project piloting the use of TeacherMates for improving the English literacy of primary level students in Kigali. Kari holds a Bachelor and Masters degree from Clark University, both in International Development and Social Change. Her research at Clark focused on development in conflict and post-conflict settings.

Kari has also worked as a research assistant for a feature length documentary film that examined the role of economic development in Afghanistan. In addition to working at OLE Kari works with the African Community Education program for African refugee students in Worcester, MA. She also has experience working in Namibia with Forum for the Future, a local non-governmental organization that focuses on democracy, human rights, and economic justice.

Chris Rowe, Technical Director

In December of 2007 Chris received his Masters in Educational technology with a focus on the use of System Dynamics and virtual worlds to help people understand complexities related to sustainable development. Chris worked for the Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems beginning 2002 on a wide range of projects combining his skills and interest in sustainable design, computer modeling, technology strategy, learning systems design, and project management.

At Hampshire College Chris studied education, software design and sustainable business with a thesis project on the use of technology to increase community participation in community planning. At OLE he has consulted on educational technology strategy, Fundraising, and organizational technology solutions. He is currently focusing on our toolkit development plan.

Richard Rowe, Chief Executive Officer

Dr. Richard Rowe is a Chief Executive Officer of the Open Learning Exchange, Inc. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in clinical psychology in 1963. In the1970′s served as Associate Dean of the Harvard’s Graduate School of Education and as Director of the university’s interfaculty Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology and Public Practice. He has conducted research concerning assessment of social interventions and has been an advocate for early childhood education. He has served as Chair of the Massachusetts Statewide Advisory Committee for the Office for Children, as a member of the Massachusetts State Board of Education where he served both as Chair of the Selection committee for the Commissioner of Education and of the Education Reform Review Committee. He has served as Chair of the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education. Dr. Rowe has focused on domestic and global policy issues related to education and services for children, families and strong communities as well as on public policy and technical issues concerning intellectual property. Read more…

Kitt Sawitsky, Goulston & Storrs, Councilors at Law

Kitt Sawitsky is and attorney with Goulston & Storrs, Councilors at Law in Boston, where he served for several years as the firms’ Co-Managing Director. He practices general, corporate, and business law and has a reputation as a deal maker. He represents entities and individuals in connection with asset and stock sales, debt and equity financings, mergers, acquisitions, entity structuring, and shareholder and partnership agreements. He also has extensive workout and other general business experience, with a particular emphasis on retail and consumer businesses in their domestic and cross-border operations and strategic transactions. Kitt serves as OLE’s legal counsel.