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Higher Ed Advisory Council

About

About the Higher Education Advisory Council

The Higher Education Advisory Council is a community-led group of Salesforce users from schools across North America. The council is supported and recognized by Salesforce and serves the community through volunteerism and initiatives focused on collaboration, connection, and community to support the Salesforce experience at colleges and universities.


Mission Statement

The Higher Education Advisory Council is a customer-led, volunteer body who works with Salesforce.org and the community to recognize and set common standards for the delivery of platform solutions to support education. We fulfill this mission by:

  • Leveraging our collective higher ed, IT, and Salesforce expertise to make a difference on our campuses
  • Maintaining a collaborative community that shares code, best practices, and documentation
  • Identifying needs and advocating for solutions
  • Connecting with new and prospective Salesforce.org higher ed customers
  • Participating in outreach efforts through webinars, blogs, Higher Ed Summit presentations, etc.
  • Recognizing the diversity of functionalities and needs of higher ed institutions

 

 

The Nominations Process

Membership in the advisory council is via an annual nominations process. Nominations will be accepted through an online form each fall. Complete this form to receive a reminder when nominations open. Terms begin January 1 annually. Nominees are expected to be current Salesforce customers at a higher education institution and exhibit some or all of the following attributes:

  • Senior-level higher ed subject matter expert (administration, IT, teaching) using Salesforce
  • Active in Trailblazer Community
  • Frequent reference for prospective Higher Ed clients
  • Resource for best practices
  • Presenter/speaker at Salesforce.org events and webinars
  • Presenter/speaker at higher ed conferences
  • Leader of notable Salesforce initiatives on their campus
  • Willingness/motivation to actively volunteer and participate
  • Thought leader willing to give feedback on customer experience, product and roadmap
  • Volunteer participant in council initiatives

 

Note: Membership is person-oriented, not school-oriented. Schools can have only one voting member on the council during any term (excluding Emeriti members).

Initiatives

Initiatives

As higher ed leaders, the Higher Education Advisory Council leads initiatives to benefit their entire community.

These include:

  • Office Hours: The Higher Education Advisory Council hosts Higher Ed Office Hours regularly (Free Trailhead login required). Prospective Salesforce users, newbies and schools currently using Salesforce have a chance to interact with and ask questions of veteran users during this monthly call-in session.
  • User Group: The Higher Education User Group, started as an initiative of the Higher Education Advisory Council and maintained by Salesforce, which manages all user groups. Presentations are given by various higher education institutions and vendors to showcase solutions.
  • The PodCACHE: The PodCACHE is a podcast about the use of Salesforce in higher education. Each episode is centered around institutions with stories to tell. While we have planned segments, each interview is completely unique and collaborative with our guests and their experience.

Officers and Members

Officers and Members


Officers – 2023

Frank Montoya, Chair – Arizona State University

Frank Montoya

Frank Montoya has over 15 years of experience in higher education and technology.

In his current role, Frank serves as the Enterprise Salesforce Senior Product Manager for Enterprise Technology at Arizona State University. He also co-leads the Enterprise Technology Product Manager Center of Excellence. This experience includes managing the Enterprise Salesforce CRM and Marketing Cloud innovations, solutions, and stakeholder priorities. By facilitating the CRM and Marketing Cloud Center of Excellence and Enterprise CRM steering committee, Frank works with leadership to support a university-wide Salesforce CRM and Marketing Cloud strategy.

In his previous roles, Frank led Business Analyst and Salesforce implementation team where he contributed to establishing the CRM enterprise data models, change management policies and procedures, and data governance. Frank contributed to the implementation of the university’s Enterprise Master Data Management which has enabled complex enterprise data integrations.

Frank supports the higher ed community as the co-hosts of the PodCACHE podcast and is a co-founder of Higher Ed Dreamin’.

 

 

Haley Gould, Vice Chair – Smith College

Haley Gould, Michigan State UniversityAt Smith College, Haley serves as the Program Manager, Architect, and Operations/Adoption Coordinator. She manages the CRM and Engagement Services Team, leads projects and implementations, coordinates the campus roadmap and adoption requests from campus partners, and works with other teams across campus to ensure best practices and resources are leveraged. She is also the lead administrator, working with campus partners to meet strategic needs for CRM, events/scheduling, and marketing.

Previous to Smith College, she was at Michigan State University as the CRM Manager and Architect (Jan 2018 – February 2020) and at University of Michigan (May 2010 – Jan 2018) in a variety of roles, including the Enterprise CRM Solution Architect.

She is a 4-term member of the Higher Education Advisory Council (HEAC) and a member of the Leadership Team. She also recently won the 2020 Community Champion award at the Salesforce.org Higher Ed Summit. She also co-hosts the PodCACHE (thepodcache.com), which is a podcast exploring Salesforce and Higher Education. Haley is a certified Administrator, Education Cloud Consultant, and Pardot Specialist/Consultant.

 

 

Brian Karcinski, Leadership Team – University of Florida

Brian Karcinski

Brian Karcinski is a Salesforce Solution Architect at the University of Florida where he leads the Salesforce initiative of creating a connected campus with the University of Florida’s enterprise Salesforce solution within UFIT. With a primary focus on student success and customer service Brian has helped build solutions that have resulted in an increase from 100 to 950 users since 2017. In 2019 Brian was recognized as a Salesforce MVP. The Salesforce MVP program recognizes the top 1% of contributors to the Salesforce ecosystem who help other customers thrive by sharing their knowledge, leadership, and creativity within the Salesforce community.

Prior to joining UFIT, he spent five years at UF’s College of Pharmacy working to consolidate twelve siloed academic programs into Salesforce. As the director of enrollment services, Brian supervised the College of Pharmacy’s enrollment management unit which was the first attempt by a college at the University of Florida to run all of their academic programs (Master, Ph.D., Pharm.D.) under a cohesive unit. By leveraging the Marketing Cloud and Service Cloud, the College of Pharmacy is not only improving the student experience, but also streamlining business processes on the backend by eliminating competing technologies.

Prior to working in higher education Brian worked at Fidelity Investments on defined benefit and defined contribution plan administration. He received his undergraduate degree in Business Administration from the University of Florida. Brian is a Salesforce Certified Administrator, Advanced Administrator, Platform App Builder, Service Cloud Consultant, Education Cloud Consultant, Sharing and Visibility Architect and 4x Trailhead Ranger.

 

 

Lori Dembowitz, Leadership Team – UMass Lowell

Lori Dembowitz, Associate CIO, UMass Lowell

Lori Dembowitz is an Associate CIO at UMass Lowell and is responsible for strategy and leadership for a portfolio of IT functions including enterprise applications and IT program management. Leading the university’s ‘connected campus’ strategic initiative is a core part of Lori’s role. The UMass Lowell team was excited to win the “Excellence in Student Success” award at the 2018 Salesforce Higher Ed Summit.

Lori has over 20 years of experience delivering enterprise systems, infrastructure and technology services in higher education and corporate settings. Lori received her BA and MBA from Clark University.

 

 

Carrie Otto, Immediate Past Chair – University of Minnesota

Carrie OttoCarrie Otto is the Business Owner of Enterprise Salesforce Constituent Relationship Management at the University of Minnesota. Her role is responsible for creating and fostering institutional strategy, prioritizing projects and roadmaps, leading governance, reporting on ROI, and education across campus for Salesforce products. Prior to this position, Carrie led the business side of the UMN One Stop Student Services implementation of Salesforce for many years. She has served on the council since 2016 and is currently the Chair. Carrie has a master’s degree in Organizational Leadership and Program Development and has worked in higher education for 20 years.

 

 


Members – 2023

 

Meredith AronsonMeredith Aronson, University of Arizona

Meredith Aronson is the Director of CRM and Digital Experience Services at the University of Arizona.  Her team delivers lifecycle leadership for a portfolio of products including Salesforce, a native mobile application, and custom enterprise-scale applications that enhance student and staff digital experiences.  The team is committed to user-centered design principles for our products and services from product conception through onboarding and support. The University of Arizona Salesforce org is called Trellis, a multi-constituent platform working to organize university engagement with K-12, students, alumni, donors, families, and external partners starting with scheduling, case management, events management, and communications. Meredith has worked in startups, corporate research, politics, and higher education for a number of years – with higher education efforts ranging from a University of Arizona engineering design program to regional economic development at Penn State, regional talent networks in Advanced Manufacturing at New Jersey Institute of Technology, and most recently IT leadership at the University of Arizona.

 

 

Douglas Bennett, Harvard University Division of Continuing Education

Doug Bennett currently serves as the Senior Salesforce Platform Manager at the Harvard University Division of Continuing EducationDoug Bennett currently serves as the Senior Salesforce Platform Manager at the Harvard University Division of Continuing Education. He has 8 years of experience in the Salesforce platform and 25 years of service in Higher Education. By combining his technical background with his experience as a former Director of Admissions, he balances adoption of high-level Salesforce best practices with user-centric business solutions. Doug leads a team devoted to the design, delivery and operations of Salesforce products, including the Student Advisor Link, EDA and TargetX managed packages, Marketing Cloud, Knowledge Base and 6 Salesforce Communities. He has presented at the Salesforce Higher Education summit, Dreamforce and the Boston World Tour. Salesforce certifications include Platform Developer, Advanced Administrator, Administrator, and Platform App Builder. He has an M.B.A. from Fairfield University.

 

 

Jacqueline DiMareJacqueline DiMare, University of Southern California

Jacqueline DiMare is the Director of CRM and User Experience at the University of Southern California where she is responsible for the strategy and administration of the systems used by Advancement and Alumni Relations. Since joining USC in 2014, Jackie has designed and built innovative solutions using Sales Cloud, Marketing Cloud, and Experience Cloud, and has trained over 1,000 users on these platforms.

Prior to her work at USC, Jackie improved system architecture and processes at the Boston Foundation and Eaton Vance Investment Council.

Jackie is a 3-star Trailhead Ranger who holds five Salesforce certifications: System Administrator, Platform App Builder, Marketing Cloud Specialist, Business Analyst, and Strategy Designer.

 

 


Dean Ernzen, University of Notre Dame

Dean Ernzen

Dean Ernzen is the Enterprise CRM Program Director at the University of Notre Dame providing hands-on support as well as strategic direction for the enterprise deployment of CRM technologies. Notre Dame’s use cases are primarily focused on outward-facing relationships including Advancement, Athletics, and Marketing Automation.

Dean has been a member of the Higher Education Advisory Council since 2020 and holds Salesforce Administrator, Sales Cloud Consultant, and Platform App Developer certifications. He has worked in higher education for eight years and also spent 22 years with aerospace and defense companies working on aircraft wheels/brakes and military trucks. Dean holds an MBA from Indiana University and a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Purdue University.

 

 


Quinten Eyman, Santa Fe College

Quinten Eyman

Quinten Eyman serves as the Director of Student Recruitment, along with other strategic enrollment management and orientation initiatives at Santa Fe College in North Central Florida. He brought Salesforce to the college nine years ago, where it has grown from a silo in Admissions and Recruitment to a connected campus that unites data across the institution to serve current and prospective students. Over that time, he’s made presentations at Dreamforce or the Education Summit six times to share insight on how his team leverages digital platforms through an in-house approach with limited staff and resources. He’s a five-time finalist for the Salesforce Summit Award, and won the award in 2019. An award-winning television news reporter in another life, he works to identify new opportunities and solutions to deliver relevant and resonant connections to the higher education audience: students, parents, peers and other constituents.

 

 


Kyla Farroll, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Kyla Farroll

Kyla Farroll is the Associate Director of Enterprise CRM and Engagement Solutions, responsible for implementing Salesforce across the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus and supporting the university’s enterprise marketing automation service. She has nearly 30 years of higher education experience in both student-facing and technology implementation roles. Kyla spent over a year with a global Salesforce partner as a Senior Digital Transformation and Strategy consultant prior to joining UW in 2020. She has been a co-leader of the Upper Midwest Higher Education user group since 2021 in the Trailblazer community and certified as a Salesforce Administrator, Service Cloud Consultant and Education Cloud Consultant. Kyla earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from Eastern Illinois University and a Master of Arts degree in Media Communications from Webster University.

 

 

Farrah FriedrichFarrah Friedrich, University of St. Thomas

Farrah Friedrich is the Interim CRM Director at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota. She has worked in higher education for 14 years, and information technology for over 20 years. She started her Salesforce journey in 2014 when she led the enterprise implementation supporting recruitment and admissions. Farrah and the University of St. Thomas Salesforce team launched Graduate Admissions in 2016, Undergraduate Admissions, Non-Degree Enrollment, Current Student Retention & Support in 2017, University Event Management in 2018, and University Advancement in 2019. They began working with the Salesforce.org Open Source Community in 2019 to bring their university event solution, Summit Events, to the Open Source Commons. In 2021, they kicked off a large scale migration project to consolidate environments, bringing the full student lifecycle into a shared Salesforce EDA org.

Farrah is a Certified Salesforce Administrator, a Certified Education Cloud Consultant, and is working on her Master of Science degree in Information Technology. She is a Salesforce evangelist, driving adoption on the St. Thomas campus, as well as helping support the greater Salesforce community by actively participating and co-leading the Upper Midwest Higher Education User Group since 2016.

 

Kristina Garza, University of Texas at San AntonioKristina Garza, University of Texas at San Antonio

Kristina Garza is the Associate Vice Provost for Enrollment Marketing, Communications, and Systems at The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA). She has over 14 years of experience in higher education and provides leadership, strategy, and direction in marketing and communications to support enrollment growth and student success. Kristina led the creation of a new Enrollment Marketing and Communications department and has added CRM to her portfolio when she spearheaded the enterprise implementation of Salesforce (Service Cloud and Marketing Cloud) that focuses on recruitment, student engagement, and communications. During this time, Kristina has grown her team from three to twenty professionals and continues to support digital transformations at UTSA. She is a certified Salesforce Administrator and holds an MBA from UTSA and a BS from the Rochester Institute of Technology.

 

 

Nina Gomez-Fernandini is a Systems Administrator at the University of MiamiNina Gomez-Fernandini, University of Miami

Nina Gomez-Fernandini is a Solutions Architect at the University of Miami where she is responsible for daily operations, leading and managing a student intern team, project planning, architecture and development, and anything else her team might need. She herself started as a student intern on the Salesforce team at UM over 9 years ago and was immediately taken in by the Salesforce platform as well as its incredible community of fellow administrators and developers. Nina is extremely passionate about collaborating closely with her stakeholders across campus to provide the best customer service experience, whether it be for operational or project work, and taking them along for the ride in the Agile methodology. She has worked with on-campus teams on solutions for recruitment and admissions, marketing and official communications, student success (‘Canes Central one-stop shop for Financial Aid, Registrar and Student Accounts), student career advisement (Toppel Career Center), hemispheric and global affairs, and more.

Besides her Salesforce work for UM, Nina has participated in multiple Open Source Community Sprints and is a constant advocate on the power of Salesforce for a vast array of use cases. She is an active member of the Power of Us Hub where she was selected as a Hub Hero and is a manager of the open source group: Interactions for Student Recruitment (a comprehensive solution that offers an innovative and flexible approach to recruitment and admissions processes in Salesforce, including implementation and best practice documentation).

In her free time, Nina loves to read, take care of her animal menagerie (we have one chihuahua, one blind cat, two freshwater fish tanks and six tortoises), and go exploring all the beautiful nature Florida has to offer.

 

 

Carrie MarcinkevageCarrie Marcinkevage, Penn State University

Carrie Marcinkevage, Ph.D., is Penn State’s Enterprise CRM Program and Strategy Director. Following a career in management consulting, she was the managing director for Penn State’s residential MBA and graduate programs. Seeing a need for deeper stakeholder engagement in those programs, she became an early CRM adopter in 2005 and moved to Salesforce in 2010. This led to a Ph.D. focused on critical success factors for higher education CRM strategy and adoption. She now leads Penn State’s CRM strategy for aligning people, processes, and technology to optimize our “return on relationship” for our simultaneous and lifelong university constituent relationships.

 

 

Vicky MikulaVicky Mikula, Cornell University

Vicky Mikula is Assistant Director of Enterprise Applications at Cornell University including service owner and architect for the enterprise deployment of Salesforce. She has spent 30 years in the enterprise IT application space and 19 of those years in higher education. In her current role, Vicky is responsible for leading a diverse portfolio of teams, applications, and ERP systems. She co-led the architecture and deployment of Cornell’s first enterprise Salesforce implementation in 2018. She also led the vision for the first master data management solution, giving the university much needed access to university constituent data. Vicky enjoys solving complex business and data challenges using the Salesforce platform and data integrations. She replaced complex, legacy integration software and deployed modern technology and approaches for Salesforce integrations. This has resulted in a more streamlined, consistent approach for data integrations and the creation of more than 50 integrations directly from source systems.

More recently, Vicky participated in the design and launch of Marketing Cloud leveraging the multi-org connector. She is currently working on a project to launch a new Salesforce org for corporate relations.

In her free time, Vicky enjoys spending time with her family and friends at their home on Cayuga Lake and traveling… as much as possible!

 

 

Rebecca OvallRebecca Ovall, Western Governors University

Rebecca is a Staff Software Engineer at Western Governors University. She serves on the Salesforce Platform Team, which provides leadership and governance for six orgs. Her team drives operational excellence across several teams of Salesforce engineers. In her capacity as a Salesforce leader at the enterprise level, Rebecca champions learning and mentorship in her community. She helps organize training and mentorship opportunities for a wide array of business and technical Salesforce users. Prior to becoming a staff level engineer, Rebecca worked as a Senior Software Engineer on the Faculty Support Team, a Salesforce Engineer and Tech Lead on the Enrollment Team at Western Governors University, and a Salesforce Admin/Developer at Multnomah University.

Rebecca’s background combines higher education, business, and technical experience. She began her Salesforce journey as a business user in an Admissions and Marketing implementation, became an accidental admin, and quickly fell in love with Salesforce as a platform. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in History from Multnomah University and a Master of Business Administration from Western Governors University. Her Salesforce certifications include Administrator, Platform Developer I, and Pardot Specialist. Rebecca has over 8 years of experience in Higher Education. Outside of work, Rebecca volunteers as a coach for RAD Women, a nonprofit organization providing free training in Apex development to administrators. She also participates in Salesforce.org community sprints. She has two children, three golden retrievers, and lives with her spouse in the Portland metro area.

 

 

Chris TompkinsChris Tompkins, Indiana University

Chris Tompkins is the Director of the IU CRM at Indiana University working with the enterprise constituent relationship management platform since fall of 2013. He has been responsible for managing the architecture, implementation, and sustainability of the single university-wide CRM eco-system across the Institution’s eight campuses encompassing all internal and external constituent populations that includes both people and organizations. He has served on the Salesforce Higher Ed Advisory Council, provided sessions at multiple technology related conferences, and has assisted in establishing and strengthening the Higher-Ed CRM community. Prior to this position, Chris managed the enterprise Electronic Research Administration Program at Purdue University for ten years.

 

 

Carrie TrenthamCarrie Trentham, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Carrie Trentham serves as the Senior Director of Student Information and Systems Design at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). In this role she oversees UNLV’s Salesforce portfolio, provides functional leadership and support for the student information system (Oracle Campus Solutions/Peoplesoft) while also providing leadership for operational reporting/data analytics and data integration support and strategy.

At UNLV, the enterprise Salesforce portfolio includes two Salesforce orgs (Sales/Service/Experience clouds and Platform), two Marketing Cloud instances, Mulesoft, and multiple AppExchange partners. UNLV is also leveraging the Education Cloud including the Education Data Architecture and is currently implementing Student Success Hub.

Carrie has 17+ years of experience in higher education. Prior to joining IT, she spent a number years working in undergraduate admissions and recruitment. She has been using Salesforce for 10 years, is a new member of the council in 2022, and holds six Salesforce certifications (Administrator, Data Architect, Sharing and Visibility Architect, Email Specialist, Marketing Cloud Administrator, and Marketing Cloud Consultant).

 

 

Brandelle Unkrich, University of Iowa

Brandelle Unkrich is the Director of Salesforce CRM and Data Operations for the Tippie College of Business at the University of Iowa. While in a previous position, she co-led the first Salesforce implementation on campus – a solution for admissions, marketing, and recruiting for graduate business programs. A year later, she became the solo Salesforce admin for the college. Her first task was to lead another implementation, which involved moving out of a managed admissions package and transitioning to EDA, lightning, and a new marketing automation platform. Now that the value of Salesforce is known in the college (and she has another admin on her team!), she has led many other implementations, including alumni engagement, corporate connections, and faculty/staff development and contributions.

Brandelle has worked at the Tippie College for more than a decade, both in graduate admissions and program management. She also earned her BBA and MBA from the college – go Hawks! When not immersed in the world of Salesforce, Brandelle spends her time with her husband and three young children.

 

 

Doug Wotherspoon, Northern Alberta Institute of TechnologyDoug Wotherspoon, Northern Alberta Institute of Technology

Doug Wotherspoon serves as the Director of Enterprise CRM at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT), where he is responsible for the adoption of Salesforce across the institution, ranging from Student Success through Continuing Education. Doug has been in higher education for 20 years, serving in a variety of roles from Director up to Vice President. Common to every role has been his use of the Salesforce platform. He has been at this so long that this is his second stint on the HEAC, having served as an inaugural member back during the group’s inception.

 

 

Kathy ZimmermanKathy Zimmerman, George Mason University

Kathy Zimmerman is a Salesforce Administrator at George Mason University who works in the Enrollment Management department to implement Salesforce initiatives across campus. She is responsible for day-to-day maintenance with the current Salesforce Orgs that support both Graduate and Undergraduate Admissions via the managed package TargetX. In 2019, the Enrollment team expanded the Undergraduate Org to support student engagement activities – Orientation, Student One Stop, Registrar, Financial Aid, and Student Accounts. After successful adoption and engagement on campus, Mason will be expanding Salesforce use on campus with a move to the Salesforce tools Student Success Hub and Admissions Connect.

 


Emeritus Members

 

Becky JoffreyRebecca Joffrey, Cornell University

Rebecca Joffrey is Technology Innovation Officer at Cornell University and is leading Cornell’s multi-year digital transformation program, creating shared technology, data, and analytics infrastructure that is allowing employees to keep pace with customer engagement needs that are critical to the core work of the university. She has spearheaded the Cornell Student Experience Initiative, the Enterprise Engagement Initiative and other CRM-based innovations including the implementation of Marketing Cloud. Prior to this role, she was Director of the Career Development Office at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth where she led one of the first university implementations of Salesforce for students. Of note: Becky hosted an early version of the Higher Education Summit while she was at Dartmouth. She is a founding officer of the Higher Education Advisory Council. She is also a Salesforce MVP.

 

 

Dr. Phil Knutel, Berklee College of Music

Dr. Phillip Knutel, Vice President and Chief Information Officer of Babson CollegePhillip Knutel, Ph.D., recently became Vice President and Chief Information Officer at Berklee in Boston, MA. Berklee Online has been the primary Salesforce user thus far, with plans to expand its use of Marketing Cloud and Salesforce across the institution. In his prior role as VP & CIO for seven years at Babson College, he oversaw the creation of a Salesforce team, Data Governance Council, and deployed and supported the platform in a variety of departments at Babson, including Graduate Admissions, Graduate Career Center, Graduate Experiential Learning, Alumni, the IT Service Center, Executive Education, the Conference Center, the President’s Office, and Babson’s campuses in Boston and Miami. He serves on the Salesforce CIO Innovation Council. Dr. Knutel received his Ph.D. in higher education from Michigan, an Ed.M. from Harvard, and a B.S. magna cum laude from Vanderbilt. He served as a faculty member at Bentley University (where he was also CIO), and at the German Graduate School of Management and Law.

 

 

Kathy LueckemanKathy Lueckeman, Olivet Nazarene University

Kathleen Lueckeman is the chief transformation officer at Unity Environmental University. She previously implemented Salesforce for Olivet Nazarene Univesity, Maryville University, and Wayne State University. Her implementations have included Education Cloud, Education Data Architecture, Service Cloud, Digital Experiences (Community Cloud), MC Account Engagement (Pardot), CRM Analytics, and Social Studio. At Maryville, she was the lead PI for a Salesforce.org Force for Change Grant, which funded the Enterprise Application Solution for Yield (EASY) open source solution, provided at no charge to the community. A pioneer in the higher education industry using Salesforce, Kathy founded and hosted the first Education Summit and founded the Salesforce Higher Education Advisory Council. More recently, Kathy founded the Education Trailblazers Association, a nonprofit professional organization that provides training and collaboration opportunities to schools that use Salesforce. She is the Higher Education User Group Leader, moderator of Higher Ed Office Hours, Salesforce MVP, and Golden Hoodie recipient.

 

 

Florence ParodiFlorence Parodi, University of Miami

Florence Parodi is currently a Rapid Application Development Director for Information Technology at the University of Miami. She leads the Salesforce enterprise strategy to implement a customer relationship management (CRM) and custom development applications for students, employees and other audiences. Prior to joining UMIT, she was associate Director of Marketing for the Division of Continuing and International Education, where she led the first deployment of Salesforce at the University of Miami in 2008.

Florence is an Emeriti member of the Higher Education Advisory Council since 2015 and has served on the leadership team. She is a Salesforce MVP and is Salesforce.com certified as a system administrator and platform app builder. Florence was the university liaison for the third annual Salesforce.org Higher Ed Summit hosted in 2015 at the University of Miami. She also positioned the University to be the first to go-live on the Salesforce.org Education Data Architecture (EDA) and was the lead principal investigator for Interactions, a project funded by Salesforce.

 

 

Colleen WhelanColleen Whelan, Southern New Hampshire University

Colleen Whelan is Assistant Vice President ITS Governance and Portfolio Management at Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU). She has been working in higher education for 19 years. Prior to her role at SNHU, she held several director level roles at Providence College and Yale University, including Director of Director of Advancement Services, Director of Client Engagement, and Director of SaaS-PaaS practices. Colleen collaborates with partners in central IT and departmental colleagues to achieve institutional goals by leveraging innovative technology. One of her first Salesforce projects over 12 years ago was leading a project to build a custom complex events management and registration app on the Force.com platform to support the Yale Alumni Association and their signature Yale College Reunions events.

Prior to working in academia, she worked at an interactive services firm and the Federal Reserve. She served on the Force for Change Grant committee that produced the open-source product, Unity, for the higher education community. Colleen is a founding officer of the Higher Education Advisory Council. Of note: Colleen hosted the first Salesforce Foundation CIO Summit at Yale University which was a pre-cursor to the Education Summit.

 

Alumni Members

Alumni Members

  • Stewart Anderson, University of Edinburgh
  • Amjad Ayoubi, Tulane University
  • * Stephanie Brooks, Richard Ivey College
  • Jace Bryan, Texas A&M University
  • * Laura Campbell, Algonquin College
  • Cheryl Cerny, Worcester Polytechnic Institute
  • Ryan Clemens, Arizona State University
  • * Chris Coppa, University of Southern California
  • Dave DeMichele, Yale University
  • Jeff Dixon, Queens University
  • Debbie Duran, University of Miami
  • * Renee Fawcett, University of Minnesota
  • Ling Ge, Imperial College of London
  • Joanna Iturbe, University of Colorado
  • * James Gilbert, George Mason University
  • Brian Gnatt, University of Maryland-University College
  • * Vadim Gorelik, University of Texas-Austin McCombs School of Business
  • Daman Grewal, San Mateo Community College
  • * John Henry, Oregon State University
  • Makeda Keegan, Northeastern University
  • Tom Kelleher, San Francisco State University
  • Melissa Kwilosz, Arizona State University
  • Zak Landrum, Westmont College
  • * Roger Lurie, Arizona State University
  • Yannick Lejeune, Ionis Education Group
  • Cameron McCoy, Lehigh University
  • * Brian Peddle, College for America at Southern New Hampshire University
  • * Dave Perry, Western Governors University
  • John Poyser, University of British Columbia
  • * Amanda Rosales, Wayne State University
  • * Terri Shafer, Arizona State University
  • Reed Sheard, Westmont University
  • Michael Slade, Western Governors University
  • * Erin Smith, Northeastern University
  • Corey Snow, Harvard University
  • Kalman Sweetwine, University of Colorado-Boulder
  • Amir Tejani, Lafayette College
  • Samuel Vinet, ESSEC Business School
  • * Nicholas Zinser, Northeastern University
  • Nash Zgonjanin, Algonquin College

     

 

* Indicates Inaugural Member of the Higher Education Advisory Council