Archives: People
Rolando Méndez is the Director of Education of Teach Access. Previously, he was the Interim Associate Vice President of Online Learning at Inter American University of Puerto Rico. He is a bilingual learning experience designer, manager, and facilitator with more than 14 years of experience in higher education. Throughout his career, he has worked on creating sustainable, scalable, inclusive, and user-centered initiatives to leverage knowledge and learning, especially in online education. He is an advocate for accessibility, equity, and inclusion in education.
Kate Sonka is the Executive Director of Teach Access. Previously, she was the Assistant Director of Inclusion and Academic Technology at the College of Arts & Letters at Michigan State University. She holds a M.Ed. in Bilingual/Bicultural Education from DePaul University and has more than 12 years of experience in higher education. She has worked to improve teaching and learning with technology through course design and support, experiential learning, and training and mentorship for faculty members and students.
Genevieve Berry is the project manager for the Mountain Plains Mental Health Technology Transfer Center (MP-MHTTC), a WICHE project that operates in partnership with the University of North Dakota. Prior to joining the WICHE Behavioral Health Program team, Genevieve worked for the state of Colorado on the Multi-Use Network Project (MNT) and The Next Mile project, where she developed communications strategies and served as the liaison to rural communities, presenting each of the projects to various rural communities and learning firsthand about the unique obstacles rural communities encounter when trying to implement and use broadband. She previously worked for the Coleman Institute for Cognitive Disabilities at the University of Colorado, working to develop accessible content and products for people with cognitive disabilities and the communities who serve them.
Katy is an impact-driven CEO who has spent 25 years creating solutions that extend access to high-quality education for every student. She is the co-founder and CEO of InScribe, an innovative collaboration platform that improves student engagement and outcomes with a focus on supporting non-traditional and underserved student populations. Leveraging her experience and strategic abilities, Katy specializes in ed-tech innovations, student success, and communities of belonging.
Katy’s work has received multiple CODiE Awards and was recognized in Fast Company’s list of Top 10 Most Innovative Education Companies. Katy graduated from Brown University and has an MBA from the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California.
Marina Aminy is a leader, speaker, and strategist in higher education, with a passion for online learning and instructional technology. Marina currently serves as the executive director of the California Virtual Campus (CVC), a state-wide initiative of the California Community College system that helps students accelerate completion of their educational goals through access to high-quality online courses and programs. The CVC includes a statewide online learning technology ecosystem, course exchange, faculty professional development, and an overall focus on increasing equitable outcomes for students. Marina has over 20 years of experience in higher education and holds a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley.
Marianne has held a number of positions at Reed College and has contributed to a wide variety of IT activities, including academic initiatives to foster quantitative skills and support undergraduate research, IT policy, security and compliance, finance and procurement, strategic planning, web support services. In her role as co-chair of NWHeat, Marianne helps lead a collaboration between the Orbis Cascade Alliance of academic libraries and the Northwest Academic Computing Consortium to advance their common goal of ensuring that services, systems, and curricular and scholarly resources are accessible to users.