ITHAKA - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Vice President
- Vice President, ITHAKA Ventures and JSTOR Labs
Alex Humphreys is vice president, ITHAKA Ventures and JSTOR Labs. The JSTOR Labs team works with partner libraries, publishers and scholars to shape the future of research and teaching by creating tools for researchers, teachers, and students that are immediately useful - and a little bit magical. Two of Alex's favorite projects have been The JSTOR Understanding Series, which links every passage in literary and historical texts to articles and chapters quoting that passage, and the award-winning Text Analyzer, which lets you search for articles and chapters by uploading any document. Before starting the Labs team, Alex spearheaded the effort to replace JSTOR's platform with a cloud-hosted, services-oriented, open-source-based architecture.
Prior to his time at ITHAKA, Alex worked at Oxford University Press, Inc., where he built an award-winning publishing platform for OUP's subscription-based websites.
Alex graduated from Hamilton College and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Hunter College. He is the coach of ITHAKA's mighty softball team, the Ithakapokalypse.
Job Titles:
- Director, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Angela leads our work to build and sustain a diverse, equitable, and inclusive (DEI) workplace. She works closely with senior leadership, our DEI committee, and individuals throughout our organization to foster a culture that results in positive and inclusive experiences for everyone who interacts with ITHAKA and with our products and services. A thoughtful, passionate leader, she excels at incentivizing leaders and employees to enhance belonging in their daily interactions while bench-marking and progressing DEI efforts across the organization.
Angela is a Navy and Army veteran and certified Lean Six Sigma Black Belt Coach. She has served as a trusted advisor to business leaders, including as President and CEO of OD Synergistics Consulting LLC, where she helped them assess organizational issues, reshape structures and processes, and build depth of management capability. In her career, she has worked for many well-known companies, including GlaxoSmithKline and McCormick and Company, in roles such as Operations Leader, Human Resources Generalist, Training Manager, and Environmental Health and Safety Manager.
Angela's work in DEI has included collaborating with leaders to develop and monitor DEI metrics; providing oversight for DEI programs and policies, including the DEI committee initiatives in accordance with local, state, and federal EEOC/AA regulations; and facilitating a wide range of DEI training, including disability, LGBTQ identities, race, gender, working with veterans, building and managing diverse teams, psychological safety, unconscious bias, and preventing and responding to bias in the workplace.
Angela holds an associate in human services, bachelor's in organizational management, master's in business administration, master's in occupational safety and health, master's in psychology, and Ph.D. in organizational psychology. She is currently the President of the Board of Directors for The Food Pantries for the Capital District, serves as a member of Equinox, Inc's Development and Domestic Violence Committees in Albany, NY, VP of Programming for SEVA ATD Chapter, and is a dedicated SHRM/USAA Veteran Ambassador.
Job Titles:
- Senior Quality Software Engineer
Aparna: "I have a journalism degree! That's my background. To see how far I've come, from new-hire-without-a-computer-science-degree to senior-level engineer, is pretty crazy when you think about it."
Job Titles:
- Analyst
- Analyst at Ithaka S R
Bethany Lewis is an analyst at Ithaka S+R on the Educational Transformation team. She is experienced in both qualitative and quantitative research methods, and her past research has broadly centered on STEM education, school belonging, and pathways to and through college. During her graduate studies at Rice University, Bethany was involved with the Houston Education Research Consortium, conducting research in partnership with Houston Independent School District to help guide school policy. Before attending Rice, Bethany worked at the non-profit College Forward in Austin, Texas as a college access coach. She holds a bachelor's degree in sociology from Southwestern University and a master's degree in sociology from Rice University.
Job Titles:
- Program Manager
- Program Manager at Ithaka S R
Brittany Pearce is a program manager at Ithaka S+R on the Educational Transformation team. Her current work focuses on stranded credits and implementation of the Ohio College Comeback Compact. She spent more than a decade working on college campuses with a focus on creating equitable systems, policies, and processes for students seeking higher education. Brittany holds a Bachelor of Arts from Union University and a Master of Liberal Arts from Winthrop University, where her master's thesis focused on academic fresh start programs for student veterans.
Job Titles:
- Senior VP, Open Collections & Infrastructure
With more than thirty years in the higher education and library communities, Bruce leads our strategy and teams working with libraries around the world to make their collections openly accessible on JSTOR and to use our platform as an increasingly important component of their infrastructure to support teaching and research.
Prior to this role, Bruce oversaw library outreach and access services on a global basis for JSTOR and Portico. Under his leadership, JSTOR participation grew to more than 11,000 academic libraries, secondary schools, research organizations and NGOs, and public libraries in 170 countries, including in almost 70 where JSTOR access is free. Leading outreach for Portico since its inception, more than 1,000 libraries now support our critical work to preserve digital content at scale.
Bruce was an application developer at Virginia Tech before joining VTLS in 1988. Bruce held senior management positions at The Faxon Company and Blackwells, and prior to joining JSTOR in 1999 was executive director of SunGard SCT's higher education consulting practice.
Bruce has written and presented extensively on information management issues, and is active in the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI). He previously served on the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) board, serving as Chair, the Board of Trustees for the Barrington (RI) Public Library, as well as the UKSG Editorial Committee. He currently serves on the Dean's Advisory Committee for the libraries at Virginia Tech.
He holds a bachelor of science in management from Virginia Tech, and a master of business administration from the Pamplin School at Virginia Tech.
Cameron Childress is a senior analyst on Ithaka S+R's Educational Transformation team. He contributes to Ithaka S+R's work on federal and state higher education policy. Prior to joining Ithaka S+R, Cameron worked as nonpartisan staff for the Kentucky legislature's Appropriations and Revenue committees. His master's thesis focused on using quantitative methods to determine the varying effects of statewide higher education policy on postsecondary attainment rates across racial and ethnic groups. Cameron holds a master's degree in public policy and a bachelor's degree in history and economics, both from the University of Kentucky.
Job Titles:
- Managing Director
- Managing Director, Ithaka S R
As managing director, Catharine ("Cappy") Bond Hill leads Ithaka S+R's research and consulting initiatives to broaden access to higher education, reduce costs, and improve student outcomes.
A noted economist whose work focuses on higher education affordability and access, as well as on economic development and reform in Africa, Cappy joined Ithaka S+R in September, 2016. She oversees Ithaka S+R's two program areas, working to help the higher education, library, scholarly communication, and museum communities adapt to the technological and economic context of the 21st century.
Job Titles:
- Senior Analyst
- Senior Analyst at Ithaka S R
Chau-Fang Lin is a senior analyst at Ithaka S+R in the Educational Transformation program. Her work focuses on program evaluation and mixed methods research on teaching and learning and student success strategies. Prior to joining Ithaka S+R, Chau-Fang supported institutional planning and decision-making as an institutional researcher at Hamilton College. She holds an EdD in leadership and learning in organizations from Peabody College, Vanderbilt University, a master's degree in higher education administration and policy from Northwestern University, and a master's of public administration and bachelor's degree in economics from Cornell University.
Christy McDaniel is a researcher on Ithaka S+R's Educational Transformation team. Her research experience spans K-12 and higher education, and includes both quantitative and qualitative methods. She has participated in projects investigating the implementation and design of educational programs, including educational technology, as well as undergraduate student outcomes and faculty experiences during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Before pursuing her graduate studies, Christy taught elementary school language arts in Jacksonville, Florida. She holds a master's degree in sociology and education from Columbia University's Teachers College and a bachelor's degree in psychology from Duke University.
Job Titles:
- Director of Strategy and Operations
- Director of Strategy and Operations at Ithaka S R
Colette Johnson is the director of strategy and operations at Ithaka S+R. She provides leadership and support for mission-critical strategic projects.
Colette received her PhD in 2018 from Princeton University, where she conducted original interdisciplinary research examining the rise of child psychology in the 20th-century. Her research studied the flow of ideas from clinical and academic research into public policy and broader societal norms, including how theories about children were translated into programs and treatments that impact children through educational policy, health policy, and international affairs.
She has experience in higher education administration, serving on Princeton University committees that provided consultative insights to the president and board of trustees on public relations, the operating budget, and stewardship of Princeton's endowment. At present, she is a member of Princeton's alumni council executive committee and chairs a committee on career and professional development for Princeton alumni. She has an MA in English from Princeton University, and BA degrees in art history and English from the University of California Irvine.
Colette also serves on the curatorial committee for the Mellon-funded Million Book Project.
Job Titles:
- Co - Chief Technology Officer
Dale Myers, co-chief technology officer, leads ITHAKA's technology and content production teams. Working with co-CTO Michelle Lee, he is responsible for creating the organization's long-term technology vision for being a technology-enabled product organization. He is also responsible for technology architecture, software engineering, technology infrastructure and operations, support services and the company's Scrum/Agile practice. Dale is passionate about building scalable technology and high performing Agile teams that add true value through technology for ITHAKA's participants.
Prior to joining ITHAKA Dale served in technology consulting and leadership roles as a cooperation partner at Mercedes Benz Technology, chief technology officer of two successful start-ups, and vice president of technology and architecture at Borders Group. Dale has extensive experience in leading teams building service oriented architectures and high availability web sites. He holds both ITIL and Scrum certifications.
Dale earned a master of sciences in information from the University of Michigan's School of Information and holds a bachelor of arts degree in English.
Daniel Braun is a senior analyst on Ithaka S+R's Strategy and Operations team. His work supports the design, implementation, and management of Ithaka S+R's foundation and partnerships strategy.
Prior to joining Ithaka S+R, Daniel served as a visiting distinguished scholar in the English department of Guangzhou University, where he co-led the development of the university's first MOOC, An Introduction to Modern Poetry. He is also author, with Dr. Li Zhimin, of China Leading and Being Led: A Literary History (under contract: Palgrave).
Daniel holds a PhD in English from Princeton University, and a BA in English from the University of Michigan.
Job Titles:
- Senior Researcher
- Senior Researcher at Ithaka S R
Daniel Rossman is a senior researcher at Ithaka S+R in the Educational Transformation program, where he focuses on developing and implementing data collection and analysis processes for a wide range of projects, including large-scale multi-institution collaborations. He also employs mixed research methods to evaluate strategies and services aimed at increasing access and success for underserved students.
Prior to joining Ithaka S+R, Daniel worked for a New York State Assemblyman, and as a graduate student in Washington, D.C., he interned on Capitol Hill and for the Alliance to Save Energy. He holds a bachelor's in philosophy, politics, and law from Binghamton University, and a master's in public policy from Georgetown University. His master's thesis examined the relationship between racial segregation and educational achievement in New York City public high schools.
Job Titles:
- Director
- Director, Libraries, Scholarly Communication, and Museums
Danielle Cooper is the director for libraries, scholarly communication, and museums at Ithaka S+R, where she oversees a team exploring how information practices are evolving in higher education and cultural organizations. Her team specializes in creating large-scale cohort-based projects and working with underrepresented and under-resourced academic communities, including Indigenous Studies scholars, community colleges, and currently incarcerated learners. She is a passionate applied researcher and has trained hundreds of librarians to collaborate on Ithaka S+R projects.
Prior to joining Ithaka S+R Danielle worked as a librarian at Ryerson University and George Brown College while pursuing her doctoral studies at York University. Her dissertation is entitled "Personal Touches, Public Legacies: An Ethnography of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Libraries and Archives."
Job Titles:
- Vice President of Work Life & Culture
Debbie Barrett is our Vice President of Work Life & Culture. She leads a team of talented professionals who are responsible for building and maintaining a vibrant and positive organizational culture for all of the people who work here. In addition, the team provides all human resources functions, including recruitment, benefits, employee relations, compensation, organizational development, and staff effectiveness.
Prior to joining ITHAKA, Debbie worked in human resources for over 15 years with diversified experience in organizations of varied sizes and industries.
Debbie is committed to nurturing an environment of continuous learning, personally and professionally. She holds a bachelor of science in management, business administration from Montclair State University and a master in business administration, human resources management from Fairleigh Dickinson University.
Deirdre Harkins is an analyst on our Libraries, Scholarly Communication, and Museums team. Deirdre previously worked alongside the LSCM team as the inaugural research and data fellow for the Black Trustees Alliance for Art Museums (BTA), focusing on the Art Museum Trustee Survey, and other museum-related projects. Her overall research interests revolve primarily around race/ethnicity, identity, and DEI initiatives. She is passionate about analyzing the representation of marginalized groups throughout history.
Deirdre is currently working towards a Master of Arts in museum studies from the CUNY School of Professional Studies. She holds a bachelor's degree in anthropology and linguistics, and a master's degree in world history, both from NYU, where her MA thesis focused on the silencing of marginalized communities in Argentina and the creation of a national identity.
Job Titles:
- President / Kingsborough Community College
Job Titles:
- Program Manager, the Research Enterprise
Job Titles:
- Director, Educational Transformation
Job Titles:
- Application Support Specialist
Esther: I love learning new things and challenging myself. When I started I was kind of intimidated! Everyone here is so smart. So, I thought, "I have to up my game here!" But everyone is also very encouraging. I appreciate open communication, and that's what you get here. Lots of support and clear communication.
Job Titles:
- Chief Financial Officer
- Treasurer
Gerard Aurigemma has 30 years of experience in the academic and not-for-profit financial field. He is currently the treasurer and the chief financial officer for ITHAKA. Prior to joining ITHAKA, Gerard joined JSTOR in 1997 as its controller, then becoming director of finance and administration. Gerard currently oversees the treasury operations, finance, budget, and financial analysis at ITHAKA. Prior to coming to JSTOR/ITHAKA, Gerard worked for nine years as a senior manager in the Controller and Treasurer department of New York University.
Gerard graduated from New York University, Stern School of Business in 1986 with a bachelor of science in accounting, management, and international business. In 1997, he earned a master of public administration in finance from New York University, Robert F. Wagner School for Public Administration.
Job Titles:
- Vice President of Marketing
Harmony is vice president of marketing for ITHAKA, where she leads our efforts to tell our story, develop and market our products and services, and build lasting relationships with those we serve. A compassionate people leader and marketing strategist, she inspires our team to deliver creative, impactful campaigns that further ITHAKA's mission to improve access to knowledge and education.
Prior to joining ITHAKA, Harmony served as VP, Marketing and Communications for Gale, part of the Cengage Group. During this time, she led a global brand relaunch, established technology-driven lead generation processes, integrated marketing campaign strategies and real-time analytics, and cultivated one of Cengage Group's most engaged teams. As a senior leader in the organization, she also championed company-wide initiatives, seeking opportunities to be a force for positive change. She believes strongly in mentoring and allyship, and especially valued having the opportunity to serve as executive sponsor for Gale's efforts to create a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive company and culture.
Throughout her career, Harmony has been committed to being a part of mission-driven organizations that focus on improving lives through learning. She has worked with libraries to deliver exceptional research and teaching experiences in academic, secondary, and public library settings and is known to evangelize the awesomeness of libraries to unsuspecting strangers and friends. One of her proudest professional accomplishments was launching Career Online High School, a workforce development and high school completion program that graduated over 4,000 adults across the United States through their public libraries. Currently, she is a board member of EveryLibrary, an organization that helps public, school, and college libraries win bonding, tax, and advisory referendum, ensuring stable funding and access to libraries for generations to come.
Harmony lives in Plymouth, Michigan, with her husband, children, and dogs.
Job Titles:
- Vice President of Communications
Heidi McGregor is vice president of Communications at ITHAKA, where she is responsible for nurturing people's understanding of and connection with the organization. Her focus is both internal and external, working to develop a passionate legion of employees, alumni, and institutional partners, as well as awareness of ITHAKA and it's mission in its local communities and among the public.
Heidi has worked at ITHAKA in various roles since 1998. She's served as JSTOR's director of strategy and director of publisher relations, and most recently as the leader of ITHAKA's marketing and communications teams. During this time, she has built productive teams of professionals to help the organization and its services thrive, as well as spearheading major strategic initiatives. She has been a passionate champion of ITHAKA's efforts to share knowledge in new ways beyond traditional educational institutions, including launching JSTOR's free reading and individual access plans and its online magazine, JSTOR Daily. Before coming to ITHAKA, Heidi got her feet wet in the publishing industry, spending four years at Simon & Schuster. Heidi has served as a board member of the Society for Scholarly Publishing and an advisor to the online resources BioOne and Project AMEEL.
Heidi graduated with a BA in political science and philosophy from Lafayette College (go Pards!) and was a member of the first graduating class in the Media Management Certificate Program at the New School University. She is also a dedicated parent of three, who has served several years on the executive board at her local co-operative nursery school and as class parent in their Dual Language Program.
Job Titles:
- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer / Capricorn Holdings, Inc.
Job Titles:
- Vice President, Content Management
Jabin White oversees all content management at ITHAKA, including the loading and maintenance of all content in JSTOR and Portico.
With a heavy background in XML theory and practice, Jabin has spent most of his career promoting the benefits of markup languages and related technologies, including content management, workflow enhancements, and authoring tools.
Prior to joining ITHAKA, Jabin served as director of strategic content at Wolters Kluwer Health's Professional & Education (P&E) Division, vice president, STM Sales for Scope eKnowledge Center, and VP of Product Development at Silverchair. He also spent five years as executive director of Electronic Production at Elsevier, serving the Health Sciences Division.
He is a graduate of Wake Forest University with a bachelor of arts in history and has a master of business administration from Pennsylvania State University.
"Through my internship, I was able to refine and expand my knowledge base about the bigger picture of higher education and all of its stakeholders and publics."
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder & Partner / the Raine Group, LLC
Job Titles:
- Vice President, Published Content
As vice president of published content, John collaborates with publishers and libraries to develop products and programs that support their organizational needs and missions. He works with the more than 2,000 publishers partnered with ITHAKA to make their content available on the JSTOR platform. He also works closely with libraries to develop growth strategies for the journals and books programs to ensure we meet their research, teaching, and preservation needs.
Prior to this role, John led our global Outreach team working with libraries and consortia in 170 countries. He also played a pivotal role in launching and growing both library and publisher participation in the Books at JSTOR program. John has over 20 years of experience in the library community. He worked with SoftLine Information to bring ethnic newspapers online and spent ten years at ProQuest in a variety of roles collaborating with publishers and the library communities.
John was an instructor at Moorpark College for over 12 years and established the first online course at the college, introducing electronic resources into the classroom to expand student learning. He holds a master's degree in academic research from Humboldt State University and a master of business administration from the Merrick School of Business at the University of Baltimore.
Job Titles:
- Associate
- Marketing Manager
Job Titles:
- Managing Director of Portico
Kate Wittenberg is the managing director of Portico. She oversees execution of a strategic vision for Portico that is deeply informed by the role of scholarly publishers and academic libraries and responds to demonstrated preservation needs of the international higher education community.
Working with the Portico team, she develops Portico strategy as shifts in scholarly publishing, higher education, or other sectors present new needs, opportunities, and challenges for publishers, libraries, college and university administrators, and government agencies in preserving scholarship.
ITHAKA president Kevin Guthrie at Tech Talk 2019 on the impact of technology on education
Kevin M. Guthrie is an executive and entrepreneur with expertise in high technology and not-for-profit management. Kevin was the founding president of JSTOR (1995) and Ithaka (2004); the organizations merged in 2009, becoming known as ITHAKA and continuing under his leadership. Today, Kevin leads the ITHAKA staff of more than 300 people across four locations, empowering a diverse set of teams from technologists and designers to content experts and researchers.
Previously Kevin co-founded a software development company serving the needs of college and professional football teams, and later served as a research associate at The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, where he authored The New-York Historical Society: Lessons from One Nonprofit's Long Struggle for Survival (Jossey Bass). In 2017 Kevin edited Ever the Leader: Selected Writings (1995 - 2016) William G. Bowen (Princeton University Press). His diverse background also includes experience as a professional football player, a sports broadcaster and producer, and a consultant for the Oscar-winning motion picture Rain Man (1988).
Kevin serves on several nonprofit advisory committees and boards including Princeton University's Keller Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, LYRASIS, Media Source, Inc., and Educational Testing Service (ETS).
Kevin holds a BSE in Civil Engineering from Princeton University and a Masters in Business Administration from Columbia University.
Job Titles:
- Director, Publications, Communications, and Marketing
Job Titles:
- Senior Program Manager, Justice Initiatives
Job Titles:
- Account Development Manager
Lenny: Trust. It feels good knowing there are multiple teams across the organization who are experts in their own fields, in their own departments, in their own kinds of specialties, who are just a call away.
Job Titles:
- Associate Director for Libraries, Scholarly Communications, and Museums
Job Titles:
- President / Cornell University
Job Titles:
- Vice President
- Vice President, Educational Transformation
- Vice President, Educational Transformation, Ithaka S R
Martin Kurzweil is vice president, educational transformation, at Ithaka S+R. The Educational Transformation Program studies and supports the implementation of practices, policies, and innovations that improve equitable postsecondary access and success. Since launching the program in 2015, Martin and his team have conducted research, coordinated cross-institutional initiatives, and advised education leaders and policymakers on topics such as student debt, transfer, state and federal policy, and the use of technology in teaching and advising. Among other signature projects, Martin helped launch and serves on the steering committee of the American Talent Initiative, a 128-member initiative to significantly increase the number of lower-income students enrolled and graduating from high-graduation-rate colleges and universities.
A graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, Martin has spent most of his career in education research and policy. He was previously an academic fellow at Columbia Law School, where his research and teaching focused on administrative law, federalism, and organizational governance in the context of K-12 and higher education. Prior to joining Columbia, Martin was senior executive director for research, accountability, and data at the New York City Department of Education, where he oversaw school evaluation and internal and external research for the 1.1-million-student district. As a researcher at the Mellon Foundation, Martin studied higher education equity, finance, and sports, among other topics. As a practicing lawyer, Martin clerked for Judge Pierre Leval of the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and worked as a litigator at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen, and Katz.
Martin has published dozens of reports, articles, commentaries, and book chapters, on a wide range of education-related topics, in both academic and popular venues. He is the co-author of Equity and Excellence in American Higher Education, which received the 2006 American Educational Research Association Outstanding Book Award.
Job Titles:
- Vice President of Product and Design
Matt MacQueen is vice president of product and design at ITHAKA. He leads a growing team of product managers and designers on a mission to deliver a platform and product suite that improves and advances research and learning. The team is committed to designing a holistic customer experience, where every touchpoint across brand, marketing, deep product interactions, and outreach are seamlessly conceived and beautifully designed. Matt's philosophy and ITHAKA's approach focuses on deeply understanding our users and constituents and developing solutions that delight and further their work in meaningful ways.
Before coming to ITHAKA in 2018, Matt joined the startup Coursera, the largest platform for online university courses, as their first director of product design, completing a tight triad with engineering and product management. Coursera grew from a Stanford spin-out startup to over 100M users. During a 3 year span of rapid growth phase, Matt built Coursera's product design, UX research and content strategy practice from Series B through Series D maturity. He was interviewed regarding change in higher education in the film Design Disruptors which screened globally in 2016.
Previously, Matt was a design director at Motorola, first in Chicago and ultimately in Silicon Valley, during their rebirth as an all-Android smartphone company. Following an acquisition by Google, Matt directed design of mobile software + service experiences on the Moto X smartphone 2012 with voice recognition, contextual awareness, and a gesture-based camera that set new benchmarks for speed and ease of use.
Matt is a lifelong learner with a deep passion for education and mentorship. He has spoken at design and professional mentoring organizations for under-represented communities in technology. Matt has taught digital product design at the University of Michigan's Center for Entrepreneurship, and seeks to unite the challenges of educational opportunity with digital technologies.
Job Titles:
- Co - Chief Technology Officer
Michelle Lee leads ITHAKA's technology and content production teams. Working with co-CTO Dale Myers, she is responsible for creating and implementing the organization's long-term technology vision while overseeing the organization's engineering, architecture, infrastructure, and technical operations.
Michelle has a track record of building high-performing cross-functional technical teams with a user-centric approach to design and implementation. She takes a holistic approach to technology leadership, combining her strong technical background with an in-depth understanding of business requirements and strategic implications.
Before joining ITHAKA, Michelle was VP of Engineering at Bloomberg Industry Group, where she led a team of over 300 engineers. Previously, she held technology leadership roles at The College Board, GeoEye (now Digital Globe), and SAIC. She holds an MBA from Georgetown University and a PhD in information technology from George Mason University, and serves on the organizing board of the DC CTO Club.
Nancy Kopans - Chief Legal Officer, VP
Job Titles:
- General Counsel
- Secretary
- Vice President
Nancy Kopans is vice president, general counsel and secretary of ITHAKA, and oversees the organization's legal, compliance, and governance needs. She has served on many copyright and tax-exempt organization committees as well as on boards of directors.
Nancy holds a bachelor of arts in earth sciences from Dartmouth College, a master of arts and master of philosophy in English from Columbia University, and a juris doctor from Georgetown University.
As ITHAKA's Chief Operating Officer, Nathalie Udo oversees our Finance, Legal, and Work Life and Culture units and leads the Operational Excellence team. Under her direction, the team encourages an impact-oriented mindset, improves the work and workflows needed to support our initiatives, and leverages people's skills and passions to nurture deep engagement with our work. Her diverse background is a powerful asset in this role, contributing to her unique ability to create supportive environments that help organizations learn to recognize and build on their best qualities and behaviors while they consider new ideas and perspectives.
Before joining ITHAKA in 2019, Nathalie managed a major capital program to build our new technology platform in 2014, and she recently partnered with senior leadership to implement OKRs to guide and align our work. Through her business consultancy-InDepth Strategies, LLC-she has helped companies like Royal Dutch Airlines, New England Journal of Medicine, and Alcatel-Lucent with strategic planning, executive coaching, agile mindset, program management, cross-cultural communication, and leadership.
Nathalie has a masters degree in economics and business administration from University of Maastricht, Netherlands, and is a Certified Professional Co-Active Coach (CPCC®), a certified Project Management Professional (PMP®), and a Certified Scrum Master (CSM®). She presents at international conferences on a variety of topics. In addition, she is coauthor of Organizational Survival: Profitable Strategies for a Sustainable Future (McGraw-Hill, 2013) and contributed a chapter to Scrappy Women in Business: Living Proof that Bending the Rules Isn't Breaking the Law (Happy About, 2010). Driven by her passion for the oceans and the planet, Nathalie volunteers for several organizations; currently, she serves as vice chair of the Marine Conservation Institute Board and strategic advisor to Heirs To Our Oceans. She lives in San Francisco and is an active scuba diver, motorcyclist, and skier.
Job Titles:
- Vice President, Institutional Participation and Strategic Partnerships
Rebecca joined ITHAKA in 2019 and is responsible for developing our global outreach strategy and leading our team of 40 professionals dedicated to growing and managing our network of more than 11,000 library partners in 170 countries.
Rebecca has worked with libraries throughout her 30 year publishing career. From 2000-2019, she worked for Oxford University Press in various roles, most recently as Senior Director, Institutional Sales, for North and South America. During her tenure there, she focused on product development, sales and marketing of ebooks, databases and journals, and building relationships with the library community. She was part of the teams that developed University Press Scholarship Online, Oxford Reference Online, and Oxford Scholarly Editions Online.
Prior to joining OUP, she held positions at McGraw-Hill , Elsevier, and HarperCollins. She is a past chair of the AAP/ALCTS Joint Publisher/Librarian Committee and speaks often at industry events, including the Charleston Conference, American Library Association, ACRL, NFAIS, ER&L, and the Association of American Publishers/PSP Division seminars.
Job Titles:
- Board Member for the Center for Research Libraries
- Vice President of Organizational Strategy for ITHAKA and of Ithaka S R
- Vice President, Organizational Strategy and Libraries, Scholarly Communication, and Museums
Roger C. Schonfeld is the vice president of organizational strategy for ITHAKA and of Ithaka S+R's libraries, scholarly communication, and museums program.
Roger and the team of Ithaka S+R's methodological and subject matter experts that comprise the program conduct research and provide advisory services to drive evidence-based innovation and leadership to foster research, learning, and preservation. This has included extensive survey and qualitative research of faculty members and students, as well as leaders such as senior research officers, presidents and provosts, and the directors of libraries and museums. Additional leadership and policy projects have sought to bolster organizational strategy and leadership, diversity and community engagement, and collections management and preservation. The team provides strategic guidance and advisory services for software companies, publishers and other content providers, and academic libraries on the transformation of scholarly communications and the research workflow. Several additional areas of current emphasis include research data services, student basic needs, and higher education in prisons.
Roger currently serves as a board member for the Center for Research Libraries. Previously, he has served on the NSF Blue Ribbon Task Force for Sustainable Digital Preservation and Access and NISO's Open Discovery Initiative. Roger has testified before the US House of Representatives on government publishing, advocating for strong approaches to digital preservation.
In addition to authoring dozens of research reports, articles, and briefing papers, Roger blogs regularly at the Scholarly Kitchen and tweets at @rschon. With Deanna Marcum, he wrote Along Came Google: A History of Library Digitization (Princeton University Press, 2021), examining structural impediments to digital strategy and the role of an outside catalyst in fostering digitization among research libraries. He also wrote JSTOR: A History (Princeton, 2003), focusing on the development of a sustainable not-for-profit initiative for the digitization and preservation of scholarly texts.
Roger was previously a research associate at The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. There, he collaborated on The Game of Life: College Sports and Academic Values with James Shulman and William G. Bowen (Princeton, 2000). He was an Association of Research Libraries Leadership Fellow and received degrees in library and information science from Syracuse University and in English Literature from Yale University.
Job Titles:
- Vice President, Data Analytics
Seymour Douglas has more than 20 years of experience in machine learning, customer, predictive, and data analytics. As vice president of data and analytics, Seymour leads a growing team of data scientists, engineers, and architects who are creating a continuous data-driven learning environment and leveraging our extensive data and content to develop practical applications of data science and machine learning for use in research and teaching.
Seymour specializes in leading organizations in improving and maximizing the value they can derive from their data assets. This includes setting the analytics agenda and priorities, designing processes for gathering data from disparate sources, and merging the data to create and deploy high performance machine learning and predictive modeling systems that can support forecasting, recommender systems, high frequency forecasting, data enrichment, text mining, and revenue assurance. Before joining ITHAKA, Seymour served as vice president of machine learning and analytics at Expedia, where he led teams responsible for computer vision, natural language processing, customer valuation, and user behavior analytics. He has also held leadership roles at Walmart, Deloitte Financial Advisory Services, Cox Communications, and Accenture.
Seymour served on the faculty at Emory University and Rutgers, where he taught undergraduate and graduate courses in statistics, microeconomics, international finance, and economic development.
Job Titles:
- Vice President, Partner and User Services
- Vice President, Partner and User Services / Chief of Staff, Technology
Susan Sadowski champions strategic initiatives in multiple roles at ITHAKA. As the VP for Partner and User Services, Susan leads the team that focuses on providing the very best experience for JSTOR's more than 14,000 participants and partners, and on encouraging use of and engagement with our tools. In her role as Chief of Staff, she is developing a supportive, inclusive, value-driven culture in the Technology department. Together, these teams help drive transformative changes for our users, our partners, and ourselves.
Before joining ITHAKA, Susan held positions at Kellogg Company and Borders, leading large regional sales teams and company-wide technical support. Susan is passionate about delivering an exceptional customer experience and developing high-performing teams with cultures of trust and accountability. Susan holds a bachelor's degree in business management from Sullivan University.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Vice Provost for the Humanities & Director of the Center for Humanities
Job Titles:
- Analyst, Justice Initiatives
Job Titles:
- Program Manager, Collections and Infrastructure