Jennifer Mathes, Ph.D  serves as the Chief Executive Officer at the Online Learning Consortium.  In this role, she provides the strategic direction for the organization and supports the development of key projects and programs to support OLC members. Dr. Mathes has 25 years of experience in both public and private education where she has continuously supported digital learning initiatives. In addition, Dr. Mathes is the author of the ICDE Report Global Quality in Online, Open, Flexible and Technology Enhanced Education: An Analysis of Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (2019) and co-editor of the OLC Quality Scorecard Handbook: Criteria for Excellence in Blended Learning Programs (2017). She continues to write and present on key topics in online, blended and digital learning.

In her career, she has been instrumental in working with start-up initiatives as well as leading growth in institutions with an existing technology enhanced program.  She has also served as a consultant, providing recommendations to institutions on steps to take to implement best practices in online education. Her recent work has involved collaborating with higher education associations and institutions internationally to support the global adoption of best practices in online learning.

Dr. Mathes holds a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Educational Psychology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She also has earned a Master of Science degree in Business Education and a Bachelor of Science degree in Mass Communications from Illinois State University.

Roberta Vigliani is the Online Learning Consortium's Chief Financial Officer. She comes to us with 16 years of educational learning experience from Pearson Education as a Finance Director in Higher Education. She worked closely with the CFO to guarantee financial and operational requirements which were communicated and addressed by the Business groups she was responsible for. Roberta has managed cross-functional teams within Pearson including the President of Longman and the executive team leaders in Editorial, Marketing, Production and Media, who were located in both Boston and New York City. Working in the Pearson Tutor Center assisting the integration and utilization of a large international tutoring firm into the North America service was an example of her contribution to academia. She also has financial experience from her years at MITRE Corporation. Roberta holds a BS in General Management from University of Massachusetts and an MBA in Finance from Southern New Hampshire University.

Angela is responsible for gathering, curating, and leveraging the intellectual capital created by and disseminated through OLC. Her over fifteen-year career as a designer for higher education informs her leadership and design practices, where she leverages her expertise in instructional design, andragogy, web design, usability, visual communication, programming, and standards-based online learning.

Christine Hinkley has worked in sales and marketing for over 25 years. She currently serves as the Online Learning Consortium's Senior Director, Conferences & Events. In this capacity, Christine, in conjunction with the Director, Conferences and the Conference Services Manager, provides direction and leadership toward the planning and implementation of OLC's two annual conferences, plus other major events. Formerly, Christine assisted with OLC's conferences as part of her duties as Business Development Manager at The University of Central Florida's Division of Continuing Education. Christine's sales, marketing, and business development skills were honed through the years in the transportation and medical fields, where she served in various sales and product management roles for Roche Molecular Diagnostics, Baxter Scientific Products, REMEL Microbiology, and CF AirFreight. Christine is a graduate of the University of Iowa with a B.B.A. Business Administration - Marketing.

Robert Pope oversees technical operations at the OLC.  He directs the development of all OLC web properties, mobile apps and systems integrations. He has a degree in computer and electronic engineering technologies CEET.

Jennifer Rafferty provides leadership in researching, scoping, managing, and evaluating a full range of professional development solutions for multiple audiences within the OLC Institute. She has worked for over 15 years supporting online learning initiatives in higher education and in the adult basic education system. Jennifer assumed this role at OLC after working for over seven years as an instructional designer at Quinnipiac University Online in Hamden, Connecticut. During her time at Quinnipiac University, Jennifer was also responsible for spearheading the development of the first online Spanish course at the University. She continues to teach this specialized curriculum for the School of Nursing and presents both nationally and internationally on the topic of online foreign language instruction. Prior to working in higher education, Jennifer was the project manager for the Massachusetts Adult Basic Education Distance Learning Project. In this role, she collaborated with the Massachusetts Department of Education and Project IDEAL to research and identify best practices for distance learning programs serving adult GED and ESL students. Jennifer holds a Masters of Education in Instructional Design from UMASS Boston, a Masters of Arts in Spanish from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and an undergraduate degree in Romance Languages from Mount Holyoke College.

Brenda Weiss-Pesta is the Director, Membership and Sponsorship for the Online Learning Consortium. She is responsible for the relationships with new and existing sponsorship partners and building opportunities to share their products and services with valued OLC members and the OLC online learning community.

Prior to joining OLC, Brenda was a sales manager in the educational technology industry working with both higher education institutions and K-12 districts in the northeast. She has been active in her central Minnesota community as a chairperson and a volunteer on youth related projects and is a member of her local planning and zoning commission. Brenda has a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration from Northwestern College.

Kate Lee-McCarthy is the Director of Grants at the Online Learning Consortium and manages the OLC partnership with Every Learner Everywhere. Before joining OLC, she worked as the global sustainability manager for a large educational publishing company aligning the UN SDGs with the creation of a sustainability strategy. Through this work, she became interested in more directly impacting student learners and joined the Online Learning Consortium to shift her focus from applying corporate initiatives from afar to working more closely with institutions, their leaders, and organizations with a focus on improving student outcomes. Kate holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration in Finance and Marketing from Boston University and a Master of Liberal Arts in Sustainability from Harvard University.

Katie Fife Schuster is the Director, Conferences & Events for OLC. In conjunction with the Senior Director, Conferences & Events and the Conference Service Manager, Katie provides direction and leadership toward the achievement of OLC's annual conferences. Prior to her current role, she held the position of Director of Online Learning for OLC and managed the planning, development, and production activities of the workshop program. She has also been OLC's Director of Publications. She has experience from her years in the publishing industry prior to joining OLC and holds a BA from Tufts University in anthropology and Spanish.

Lynette provides leadership for the OLC Research Center for Digital Learning and Leadership. Prior, she was the Director, Learning Enhancement for the Center for Learning Experimentation, Application, and Research at the University of North Texas. Lynette’s experience spans the educational pipeline from K-12 to public universities and community colleges, and in addition to her digital learning and leadership roles, she has served in a number of positions in Academic Affairs, Enrollment Management, and Educational Partnerships. She has worked extensively with public, private, corporate, and philanthropic organizations, was involved in two State of Texas Star-Award winning initiatives, and led the statewide Texas Reverse Transfer Initiative, resulting in more than 7,000 degrees awarded within the first year of the program and policy mandate.

Lynette also teaches Quantitative Methods and Research Methods courses for the University of North Texas, and has a Ph.D. in Higher Education Administration, an M.S. in Educational Psychology, and a B.A. in Psychology. In her spare time, Lynette practices yoga, reads everything from YA to historical non-fiction, and is involved in her community in Denton, TX.

Pronouns: she, her, hers
Twitter: @MaddieShellgren

As the Director of Online Engagement, Madeline (Maddie) Shellgren serves as the lead innovator, designer, and project manager of the OLC's portfolio of online engagement opportunities. Known for her love of storytelling, play, and all things gameful, Maddie thrives on facilitating and designing meaningful ways for people to connect, learn, and grow together. Within the OLC, she has served on steering and operations committees for several of the organization’s conferences (including as Technology Test Kitchen and Innovation Studio lead, as well as Engagement Co-Chair) and has had the distinct honor of being the mastermind behind the OLC Escape Rooms. She looks forward to continuing supporting OLC community building efforts, is committed to sustainable, equitable, and anti-oppressive ecologies within education, and is genuinely excited to leverage her interdisciplinary scholarly and professional backgrounds as she helps lead the OLC towards truly innovative and transformative models for what’s possible for online and digital engagement. Maddie joins the OLC from Michigan State University (MSU), where she has served as the lead on numerous student success initiatives related to instructional design and technology, accessibility, and equity and inclusion. Over the past eleven years, Maddie has dedicated her professional life to teaching and learning related initiatives and has strategically sought out opportunities that give her a multi-dimensional perspective on teaching and learning, including working as a Standardized Patient training medical students, serving as Program Director for Teaching Assistant development, taking lead on a number of cross-institutional educator onboarding and professional development projects, and teaching across online and face-to-face contexts. She most recently worked as an Assistant Rowing Coach for the MSU Varsity Women’s Rowing Program. There she was given the opportunity to help redesign a community from the bottom up, story the team's new journey together in fun and multimodal ways, lead in the co-construction of community expectations and norms, help ensure alignment across a variety of stakeholders and initiatives, and develop and operationalize strategic structures for long-term sustainability (such as entirely new social media, marketing, communications, and content management strategies). She had the privilege of seeing the impact of her human-centered and equity-oriented approach each and every day as the team reimagined what it meant to be a Spartan on the MSU Rowing Team. With her move to the OLC, she will continue on as a volunteer coach, still supporting these efforts and the team, and is excited to get back on the water.

Laurie provides expert guidance and assistance to OLC members to ensure the successful utilization of their membership benefits and ease in the process of renewal. Laurie brings her many years of experience in sponsor and conference attendee relationship support and works closely with the OLC membership team to ensure continuous high-quality membership offerings and communications. Laurie graduated from Colorado State University with a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration.

Denise Musto joined Online Learning Consortium in March of 2015. As the Executive Assistant to the Chief Executive Officer, Denise’s primary responsibility is to support OLC's Chief Executive Officer, as well as the Executive Team. Denise contributes to other areas of the organization when necessary, including customer service and conferences. She comes to us with a solid background in the education arena, including work experience of 15 years in the New Hampshire public school system.

Zeren Eder, along with producing workshops for OLC, teaches online classes at University of Phoenix and in seat courses at the Orlando branch of Colombia College. She completed her education in Turkey where is originally from. She has an AA degree in Tourism Hotel management, BA in Education with emphasis on English, MA in Linguistics and holds ABD status in English Literature.

Elisabeth Stucklen has worked in online higher education and instructional design for over 12 years. Prior to joining OLC, she worked as the senior instructional designer at Mount Washington College in Manchester, NH, where she was responsible for creating new online courses, providing training and support for faculty, and assisting the director in monitoring the course development process. Before MWC, she worked at Lesley University providing professional development and course design assistance to faculty.

In addition to her role with the OLC, Elisabeth also teaches online for Brandeis University in their Masters in Online Instructional Design program.

Elisabeth holds a Masters of Science in Instructional Design and Technology from Emporia State University, and a Bachelors of Science in Visual Communication Technology from Lesley University.

Kaitlin Garrett is an instructional designer with OLC and she is responsible for supporting the Advanced Online Teaching Certificate program. She has worked in higher education for 7 years with a focus on learning management systems and distance education.

Prior to joining OLC, Kaitlin was a module coordinator at the University of Central Florida’s College of Medicine. She assisted first-year module directors and faculty teams with the planning, design, implementation, and evaluation of instructional materials used in both synchronous and asynchronous environments.

Kaitlin holds a MA in Educational Leadership (Higher Education/Student Personnel), a graduate certificate in Instructional Design and Technology (e-Learning), and a BS in Psychology from the University of Central Florida.

Suzie Reed joined Online Learning Consortium in a part-time bookkeeping capacity and eventually became a full-time member of the Finance team as a Financial Analyst. Her responsibilities include day-to-day bookkeeping, payroll, reporting, and analysis. Suzie has a Bachelor of Science Degree in Finance from Salem State University.

Clarise began working with the Online Learning Consortium in the fall of 2016.  You’ll find her in many places where customers connect with OLC, most notably in the chat room, adding a personal touch to virtual communications.  Clarise is always happy to help, whether guiding customers through a registration process, answering questions, or resolving concerns quickly. 

Previously Clarise spent 20 years in customer-facing roles in the hospitality industry, working for an airline company in reservations and in their private club.  She’s also served as an assistant librarian and an office manager.  Clarise has a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration from Emmanuel College.

As Partnership Manager, Bill works to promote OLC's products and services, helping our existing members get the most use from their membership and work with potential members to highlight how OLC can benefit their organization and professional advancement. 

Prior to joining OLC, Bill held numerous leadership roles within higher education institutions (private, non-profit & proprietary) with a focus on strategic partnerships, talent development, as well as customer and employee experience and engagement. He is passionate about partnering with organizations, leaders & individuals in developing, empowering & unleashing potential.

Bill holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration: Marketing & Management from Penn State and a Graduate Certificate in Business Administration from Keller Graduate School of Management with additional graduate course work in human resources and talent development.

You will often find Bill engaged in conversation surrounding coaching, employee experience, higher education, human capital, leadership & mental health in the workplace on LinkedIn. He welcomes your connection! (http://www.linkedin.com/in/wmathiasjr)

Before joining OLC, Ridvan worked as Systems Administrator and Data Analyst. Ridvan is skilled in Salesforce technologies, systems engineering, and databases. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Technology from Anadolu University and a Master of Science degree in Computer Science from Kennesaw State University.

In his free time, he likes gardening and his favorite pastime is playing soccer with his two sons. Ridvan is very excited to be part of the OLC team and working to contribute to the organization's IT excellence.

As Partnership Manager, Mary works to promote OLC's resources and services, helping our members get the most use from their membership and working with potential members to highlight how OLC can benefit their organization and professional advancement.

Prior to joining OLC, Mary has over 25 years in strategic sales and account management partnering with higher education and K-12 institutions with a focus on exceeding customer experience and engagement. She is passionate about making a difference. Her goal is to empower everyone to reach their full potential. Mary looks forward to working as an extension of your team to support your efforts in reaching your online learning goals. Mary attended her local technical college and was focused on Industrial Technology, learning valuable skills she was able utilize with her employer at that time Cray Research Inc.

After hours, Mary can be found enjoying the great Wisconsin outdoors. She is obsessed with the sport of volleyball and has coached and currently officiates. Her family owns and operates apple orchards, so if you are looking for a good apple pie recipe she can help. The last couple years, she has been blessed with 3 grandchildren and is always looking for the opportunity to spend more time with them.