Sheryl Abshire, Ph.D.
Chief Technology Officer
Calcasieu Parish Public Schools (LA)

Dr. Sheryl Abshire is the Chief Technology Officer in the Calcasieu Parish School System in Lake Charles, Louisiana. As a leader in technology integration, she has served as the catalyst to initiate the integration of technology into all curriculum areas throughout her school district, the state, and internationally. Sheryl has a B.S. in Early Childhood Education, a M.Ed. in Elementary Education, an Educational Specialist in School Administration and Supervision, and a Ph.D. from the University of New Orleans in Educational Leadership and Administration. She is an accomplished grant writer and regularly conducts institutes to fund innovative technology programs throughout the nation. During her career, Dr. Abshire has served as grant coordinator or project director for local, state and federal grants in access of $15 million. A thirty-nine year veteran educator, she has worked as a school principal, K-5 teacher, a library/media specialist, a classroom teacher, and as an adjunct professor at McNeese State University, Louisiana Tech University. She is an assistant professor at Lamar University teaching master’s and doctoral candidates in the online graduate program.

She has been involved in diverse staff development programs throughout the nation and in Great Britain involving restructuring schools through the infusion of technology and curriculum enhancements. As a 1991 NEA/NFIE Christa McAuliffe Fellow, 1990 Louisiana Technology Teacher of the Year, 1992 National Teacher Hall of Fame Inductee, 1998 Louisiana Computer Using Educator of the Year, 1999 McNeese State University Distinguished Alumnus, 2008 University of New Orleans Outstanding Doctoral Student in Educational Leadership, and the 2002 National Christa McAuliffe Award winner, Sheryl is a nationally recognized consultant/speaker. She serves on numerous national, state, and district committees focusing on the role of technology and curriculum integration in changing educational practice. As a member of the ISTE NETS Writing Team and the Technology for School Administrators Writing Team she is deeply involved in infusing technology into standards based instruction. Additionally, she is a member of the ISTE Standards and Accreditation Committee working on the National Educational Technology Standards (NETS) Refresh Project.

Dr. Abshire is the past co-chair of the NEA Membership Advisory Committee, currently serving on the NEA Legislative Committee, and is the past chair of the Louisiana Association of Educators Instruction and Professional Development Committee. Sheryl has served as a member of the national K-12 advisory councils for Compaq Computer, and Knowledge Adventure. Presently, she serves on the national advisory boards for Promethean, Dell, Blackboard, eSchool News, Pearson Digital Learning and Scholastic Administrator. She is the Chairman of the Louisiana Department of Education Committee to Advance Technology Standards and since 1997 has served as Chairman of the Louisiana Technology Advisory Commission with the responsibility to oversee and approve proposals for the expenditure of over $200 million in technological advancements in the Louisiana schools. In 2003 she was named a national semi-finalist for national Ed Tech Leader of the Year. In May of 2009, ISTE awarded Dr. Abshire the first Public Policy Advocate of the Year Award for her decades of work promoting educational technology.

Sheryl is the past Chair of the Teacher’s Retirement System of Louisiana Board of Trustees and presently as Chair of the Investment Committee, she oversees the placement of over 15 billion dollars in retirement funds. She is the past Board Chair for the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) in Washington, D.C., is on the Executive Committee and also chairs their Public Policy Committee. As a nationally recognized speaker she has shared her expertise with audiences at the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, Consortium for School Networking Conference, National Education Computing Conference, ISTE National Conference, National School Board Association, National Association of Elementary School Principals, and National Education Association professional development conferences and institutes, eSchool News Grants and Funding Conference and at numerous local, regional and state conferences.

Stephen Coller
Senior Program Officer
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Stephen Coller is a Senior Program officer in the Next Generation Models team [for The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation]. In this role Stephen sponsors current and emerging technologies and platforms that help children to attain college readiness and enable system transformation in the process. 

Stephen joined the Foundation in July 2010 from Microsoft, where he worked as a Senior Director of Technology Policy and Strategy. In this role Stephen helped develop Microsoft’s vision for the connection between technology and core societal issues and convert that vision into a set of policy recommendations for senior government leaders and regulatory bodies around the world. In the U.S., Stephen served on Secretary Duncan’s National Education Technology Plan working group. Earlier in his career at Microsoft, he worked on virtual server, cloud platform, and application products and technologies. Stephen began his time at Microsoft as the Chief of Staff to the CFO and before that worked in financial services and consulting, including tours of duty at Goldman Sachs, Peregrine Partners, and Marakon Associates. 

Over the course of his career Stephen has seen the migration from Vax superminis to iPhones, from floppies to flash, and from NTTP and FTP to TCP/IP.  Now that we find ourselves edging toward a semantic web and the prospect it holds out for a huge leap forward in our species’ collective learning capability, he is extremely excited to bring these experiences and technologies to bear in the service of a better learning experience for every child.

Jay Diskey
Executive Director
Association of American Publishers, School Division

Jay Diskey was named Executive Director of the Association of American Publishers’ School Division in June 2006. In that role he directs and coordinates all of the division’s activities including public policy development, advocacy, and communications. Prior to joining AAP, Diskey headed Diskey & Associates, a public relations and public affairs consultancy specializing in education and workforce development.

Diskey has served as Communications Director for the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Education and the Workforce, and as Vice President of the education practice at Hager Sharp Inc., a Washington-based public relations firm. In the early 1990s, he was special assistant and press aide to U.S. Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander, having been Alexander’s communications officer when he was President of the University of Tennessee. Diskey also worked as a journalist at The Knoxville News-Sentinel and The Evansville Press. A native of Fort Wayne, IN, Diskey holds a B.A. in philosophy and a master’s degree in journalism from Indiana University. Diskey is headquartered in AAP’s Washington office.

Michael Jay
President
Educational Systemics

A long time educator, Michael taught Science in California where he also worked in developing the first set of Technology in the Curriculum materials for the State of California. In 1986 he joined Apple Computer's Classroom of Tomorrow (ACOT) research and development project and later served as Apple’s Education Competitive Analyst and lead major curriculum related marketing initiatives. He remained a contributor to science education through many projects including being one of the authors of California's ground breaking Science Framework of 1990.

Michael left Apple Computer to pursue the development of a technology of his design that dynamically indicates the relationship between curriculum, curriculum standards, and instructional resources for which he received patents in 1998. As founder of Mediaseek Technologies, Inc. he laid the groundwork for many of the innovations in standards implementation and instructional resource integration that followed. He continued the development of tools for children and educators as Director of Education Business Development at N2H2 and VP and GM of Brainium Technologies in the following years where he worked on challenges associated with sustainable 1:1 computing in schools.

Lou Pugliese
Chairman and CEO
Moodlerooms

Over the past twenty years Pugliese has developed a strong track record managing growth stage businesses and acquiring and developing a number of education organizations. Lou Pugliese is currently Chairman and CEO of Moodlerooms, the largest global provider of open source software and services for eLearning for the K to Workforce markets. Moodlerooms leverages the largest global open source eLearning platform, Moodle, an d has created value added software applications and services for enterprise scale deployment of Moodle.

Prior to Moodlerooms, Pugliese was president of Learning Diagnostics Inc., an education a consulting organization that provides assistance in corporate growth to Fortune 500 organizations and private equity organizations involved in global e-learning initiatives.

He was recently vice president of corporate development and company director at Educational Testing Service (ETS).In this capacity, Pugliese led corporate strategy and growth and strategic alliances for the secondary, post secondary, workforce and international education markets. Prior to his appointment in corporate development, Pugliese served as the vice president of market development, which included marketing, sales, market research, and business development. Prior to this post, he was the CEO of ETS Pulliam, LLC, an ETS K-12 subsidiary, and vice president of elementary and secondary education products and services where he led ETS's elementary and secondary education product development and customer-facing activities. These included professional development, technology products and services and assessments.

Prior to ETS, Pugliese was an entrepreneur in residence at Novak Biddle Venture Partners, an equity-financing firm established in 1997 to provide assistance to the management of young, information technology businesses. There he shaped the strategy for private equity investments in early stage educational technology companies.

While working with Novak Biddle, Pugliese was named CEO of AnswerLogic, a software company that delivers online question-answering solutions for business through its innovative natural language processing technology. Pugliese’s affiliation with Novak Biddle began with the firm’s early stage lead position in Blackboard, Inc., where he was founding CEO. Under Pugliese's leadership, Blackboard experienced 500-percent annual revenue growth rates, international customer expansion to more than three million individuals teaching and learning on Blackboard, the roll-out of multiple products and services and attainment over $50 million in private financing.

Pugliese served as vice president and chief operating officer of ETC, a subsidiary of Denver-based Telecommunications Inc. (TCI). Prior to joining ETC, he was director of marketing and sales with Scholastic New Media in New York, and vice president of Turner Educational Services in Atlanta where he successfully launched CNN Newsroom and a variety of other educational ventures.

Pugliese is active in the Washington, DC regional and national technology communities and serves on the numerous local and regional boards in education- and software-related businesses. Pugliese also served on George W. Bush’s Presidential IT Steering Committee and the Commission on Technology and Adult Learning.

Pugliese is a noted international speaker on educational technology and has addressed a wide range of issues in education and education policy. He and his family reside in Oak Hill, Virginia.