Bill Sick is chairman and CEO of BRI, a private firm in Winnetka, Illinois, specializing in early-stage growth companies. Since 1989, he has been chairman, founder or active director of 11 early-stage companies including MetaSolv (telecom service provider software, IPO 1999) and VIRxSYS (genetically-engineered treatment for HIV/AIDS).

In the 1980’s, Bill was CEO of American National Can where he successfully combined two companies through an LBO to create world’s largest packaging company. Prior to that time, he was Executive VP and a director of Texas Instruments, where he was president of the Semiconductor Business, the company’s primary business.

He is a trustee of the Santa Fe Institute and was a trustee of Rice University, where he received his engineering education. Bill also was chairman of the Fairhill School for learning-different children. In Chicago, he is a trustee and former chairman of the Shedd Aquarium and a founder and a director of Millennium Park.

Stephan M. Schwanauer attended Yale University (‘81, ‘86 Ph.D.), after which he entered the banking profession. As a banker, he held positions of increasing responsibility at Salomon Brothers, Inc. and The Sumitomo Bank, Limited. He is a Senior Managing Director and an Independent Partner of Finacity Corporation, a company founded in 2001 through the collective efforts and investment capital of Bank of America, Euler Hermes and Amroc Investments.

In addition to making the highest-quality educational materials available to all learners, his research interests include machine learning and digital media tools and environments. Known for his book "Machine Models of Music" (MIT Press, 1993), he has taught the HCI course "Digital Multimedia Tools & Environments" intermittently in the Computer Science Department at Stanford University since 1994. He is currently an Adjunct Professor in ECE at Rice.

A Rice University graduate and longtime Connexions team member, Daniel now manages the day-to-day operations of OpenStax College using his extensive experience in academic e-publishing to guide content development, technology integration, and overall project coordination. He has overseen the creation, editing, and maintenance of a database of nearly 2000 open educational resources accounting for a total online viewership of over 3 million.

C. Sidney Burrus received his PhD degree from Stanford University in 1965 after which he joined the faculty at Rice University where he is now Research Professor in ECE, Senior Strategist for Connexions, the Maxfield and Oshman Professor Emeritus of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Dean Emeritus of the George R. Brown School of Engineering. Prof. Burrus has been interested in the use of technology to teach and facilitate learning. He and five colleagues at other universities have published a book of exercises using Matlab to teach DSP. He has been part of the Connexions Project since its founding in 1999 and is now its Senior Strategist.

JP Slavinsky leads OpenStax College's web development team. After graduating from Rice and Berkeley, JP worked in Silicon Valley for six years on defense-related projects. With a career that has combined signal processing research and development with software architecture and design, JP enjoys transitioning forward-thinking ideas into real-world applications. In addition to leading the development of the OpenStax College web site, JP also leads the development of Quadbase, an open online homework question bank, and OpenStax Tutor, a tool aiming to improve student learning by automating and individualizing the interactions between students and open educational resources.

Kathi Fletcher is a Shuttleworth Foundation Fellow focusing on how to foster an ecosystem of innovative tools and services around an education highway (metaphorically) made of open education resources (OER). Currently OER is available in incompatible formats in many individual projects. Kathi’s goal is to accelerate both the production of high-quality, reusable OER, and the development of innovative learning environments that build upon OER.

Prior to accepting this fellowship, Kathi spent four years directing the technical development and managing the development team at Connexions. She views Connexions as one of the premier examples of a repository that supports remixable OER and a key player in fostering low-cost, high quality textbooks and learning materials. She is continuing to work closely with the Connexions team, Connexions consortium, and Connexions partners like Open Stax College to strengthen the OER ecosystem utilizing Connexions.

Before joining Connexions, she helped run a small business focused on middleware software, taught computer engineering courses at Rice University in Houston, Texas, and conducted grant-supported research in K12 science education. She has a Master’s Degree in Computer Science.

After leaving Kings College, London with a degree in Computer Science, Paul worked with Liberty, (the UK's equivalent to the ACLU) on numerous technology and Internet related campaigns.

Moving into industry Paul joined Demon Internet, one of the UKs first and most successful ISPs, and there lead the rollout of first ADSL trials in conjunction with BT. (Purely by coincidence, one of the first houses in the UK to get DSL was his own).

After a period working for the likes of NEC, he subsequently spent four years as CTO for PIRC, the City's leading shareholder activism and CG research firm.

Paul then left to setup as an independent contractor and works remotely with the Connexions team from a UK office close to his young family.

Stacey Yates focuses on the creation and development of CCAP textbooks. Before joining Connexions, she worked as a UI Designer and Engineer for many e-commerce and entertainment properties in the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, and Nashville, including Lucasfilm, Lucas Online, Industrial Light and Magic and Louis Vuitton North America.