executive moves

Aspen New York-headquartered education technology holding company Aspen has appointed Doug Kass and Mike Koehneman to its board, while Malcolm MacLean IV has resigned.

Kass will serve on the regulatory committee, and Koehneman will serve on the audit committee and corporate governance committee. Aspen’s total board membership is now eight, with six independent directors.

Kass is a board member of MVC Capital and is the founder and president of Seabreeze Partners Management, a privately-owned hedge fund sponsor. He has more than 45 years of experience with various investment firms. He began his career as an analyst at Kidder Peabody and spent nearly a decade at Putnam Management as an analyst and economist. He was a member of the board of directors of Empire Resources, a distributor of value-added, semi-finished metal products, from 2011 until 2017, when it was acquired by Ta Chen Stainless Pipe Co.

Koehneman was global advisory chief operating officer and human capital leader at PwC, where he led worldwide operations for the advisory business, overseeing 50,000 professionals. He was previously US advisory operations leader responsible for oversight of advisory’s services for PwC, including business unit performance, finance, investments, human resources, acquisitions, and administration. Previously at PwC, he was the lead engagement partner for financial statement audits and internal control and security reviews. Koehneman is a CPA.

Barnes & Noble Education Barnes & Noble Education, the provider of educational products and services for higher education and K12, has appointed Lowell W Robinson to its board as an independent director and as a member of the board’s audit committee.

Robinson has significant public company board experience, including in the education sector. He is an experienced digital, education, and turnaround and M&A executive. He has served as a member of the board of Medley Capital Corporation since 2018, where he sits on the audit committee and special committee of the board.

He previously served on the board of Aratana Therapeutics from 2018 until its sale to Elanco in 2019. He also previously served on the board of Evine from 2014 to 2018 where he was chairman of the audit committee and served on the finance committee. He also served on the board of HigherOne, a fintech education services company, from 2014 until its sale in 2016, where he chaired the audit committee and was on the risk management committee.

From 2006-2009 Robinson was chief financial officer and chief operating officer of Miva, a digital marketing company. He was on the board of Edison Schools from 2002 to 2004, where he chaired the audit committee and was lead director; while on the board of Edison Schools, he was interim chief financial officer for NYU Polytechnic. From 2000 to 2002, he served as senior vice-president and chief financial officer of HotJobs, which was acquired by Yahoo.

Robinson has also served on the board of the University of Wisconsin Business School, the Council for Economic Education, the University of Wisconsin Economics Department, the Harvard Business School Club of New York, and the New York Academy of Sciences.

Barnes & Noble Education is based in Basking Ridge, New Jersey.

Frontline Education Frontline Education, a provider of K12 school administration software, has appointed Victoria Silbey as chief legal officer.

Silbey has more than 25 years’ legal experience and will be responsible for legal, corporate governance, compliance matters and human resources as part of Frontline’s executive team.

Silbey was previously senior vice-president, chief legal officer, chief compliance officer and corporate secretary at Laureate Education. Before that, she was chief legal officer and senior vicepresident at SunGard Data Systems (now part of FIS Global) and served as a litigation attorney at law firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius.

Silbey will be based at the company’s headquarters in Malvern, Pennsylvania.

Ken42 Bangalore-based ed tech app platform Ken42 has appointed Sasi Kumar Sundararajan as its advisor, Indianweb2 has reported.

Sundararajan has 23 years’ experience with PwC, Deloitte and EY as practice leader covering public, government and private sector consulting in growth, restructuring, investments, technology and capacity building across several sectors in India, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Bangladesh, the Middle-East and the Gulf Cooperation Council.

He has also been a guide, mentor and advisor to start-ups, incubators, accelerators, private equity funds and universities.

Meten EdtechX Meten EdtechX Education Group, an Englishlanguage training provider in China, has appointed Henry Wong as chief financial officer, succeeding Ricky Ng, who has stepped down to pursue other opportunities.

Wong has more than 27 years’ experience in corporate finance, accounting, internal control, and corporate governance across international markets including mainland China, Hong Kong, Singapore, London, Japan and the US. He is an independent director of Hong Kong-listed Shifang Holding Company and Raffles Interior. He was previously chief financial officer of CITIC Frontier Services Group, a Hong Konglisted group with international subsidiaries and projects across airlines, logistics and insurance sectors.

Wong has also held senior finance and internal audit positions for multinational companies listed in the US, Demark, Japan, Hong Kong and China. As a chartered accountant, he spent more than 11 years in senior roles at Deloitte, Touche Tohmatsu and PwC. Nelnet Campus Commerce Nelnet Campus Commerce, a division of Nelnet, which provides secure payment technology in higher education, appointed Jackie Strohbehn as president, effective 1 August. Strohbehn was recently regional sales director of the west region for Nelnet Campus Commerce.

Strohbehn has held customer-focused roles in both higher education and financial markets. She joined Nelnet in 2016 spending the past four years leading the sales team in the western half of the US. Before that she worked at Oracle as an enterprise application manager focused on PeopleSoft and Oracle Cloud solutions.

Strohbehn will report directly to DeeAnn Wenger, president of Nelnet Business Services.

Nelnet Campus Commerce is based in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Showbie Showbie, which provides software as a service solutions for hybrid learning in K12 and higher education, has appointed Abdul Chohan as vice-president learning to oversee the expansion of Showbie’s professional development, training, and implementation services offered to schools and districts.

Chohan has experience helping organisations globally to design their digital strategy and assisting teachers in using technology. He is the director of audio/video and IT integration firm ThinkSimple, founder of a free school in the UK, and a former chief executive of a multi-academy trust in the UK

Showbie is based in Edmonton, Alberta.

St. Thomas University Private Catholic St. Thomas University in Miami Gardens, Florida has appointed Mark Apple as vice-president of marketing and communications, to oversee all aspects of the university’s communications strategy, media relations, marketing, social media, branding, and public relations.

Apple has experience of marketing and communications in both higher education and the corporate sector. Most recently, he was vice-president for marketing communications at Marian University in Indianapolis, Indiana, where he led a team in content generation, paid advertising, social media outreach, internal university communications, print collateral, event marketing, and crisis communications.

Before that, he was director of public relations at Harrison College in Indianapolis, and for more than 10 years was regional vice-president, communications and public affairs, at Comcast - Indianapolis region. He was also a business development executive at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

St. Thomas offers 39 undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate degrees at its 144-acre campus.

The American University of Bahrain The American University of Bahrain (AUBH) has appointed William D Hurt as chief operating officer.

Hurt has more than 10 years of regional operational and strategic experience and will oversee all business operations and development for AUBH. He began his career as a management consultant in the US and worked for clients in a variety of sectors including education, defence, and pharmaceuticals. He focused on solving complex financial and procurement challenges in a variety of transactional and operational contexts, often bringing businesses out of crisis, or through developmental stages.

Hurt was previously managing director of Middle East Operations for US-based Laureate Education, where he helped develop from startup and lead eight educational institutions across Saudi Arabia and their shared service offices in Riyadh and Dubai. In addition, he has worked on educational projects in Morocco, Egypt, Jordan, Oman, the UAE, and Lebanon.

Vector Solutions Vector Solutions, an e-learning and performance support solutions company, has appointed Tommy Richardson as chief technology officer to lead the company’s IT and infrastructure systems and operations.

Richardson has more than 20 years’ experience focusing on large-scale software as a service and business process outsourcing mission critical systems.

Richardson was previously chief operating officer, chief technology officer, and senior vice-president of product at Nextech Systems, where he was responsible for the technology, product, and support organisations. Before that, he held chief technology officer roles at Teradata Marketing Applications and Siemens Healthcare. He also held similar chief technology officer positions at Automated Data Processing, Stardata Technologies, and Ricochet Systems. At these companies, he led large migrations from enterprise to SaaS architectures, M&A of new technologies and products, and development of new scalable cloud offerings.

Vector Solutions is headquartered in Tampa, Florida. n

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