About Us

Wayne Bovier

Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer

Co-founder and CEO Wayne Bovier leverages his expertise in the higher education ecosystem to build upon his vision to help institutions dramatically improve their approach to digital transformation initiatives. With over 20 years of experience leading global product teams and organizations that have consistently delivered strong results, Bovier lends his strategic perspective to the development of products and services that are laser-focused on solving his customer’s biggest pain points.

Bovier has spent over ten years working in global higher education. Most recently, Wayne led the digital transformation for the Laureate Education (LAUR) Global Products and Services division, including Walden University, University of Liverpool, and University of Roehampton.

Prior to Laureate, Bovier led the mobile, portal, analytics, document, and teaching and learning business lines for Ellucian, which served over 2,400 institutions and 20 million students, faculty, and staff in 40 countries. Bovier was responsible for creating and delivering groundbreaking solutions like Ellucian Mobile and Colleague Student Planning, which generated historical adoption across the global Ellucian client base.

Bovier also served in a leadership capacity at Blackboard, the global leader in learning management systems for higher education, K-12, and professional education. Bovier led Blackboard’s international, portal and mobile product strategy across all global regions (APAC, EMEA, and LAC).

Bovier has held product management roles with Wired Magazine and four start-up companies in Silicon Valley and Washington, DC. His notable product awards include University Business Magazine’s Top Product for Intelligent Learning Platforms, a Horizon Interactive Award for Ellucian Mobile, Internet Telephony magazine’s Product of the Year, and Computer Telephony magazine’s Best User Interface of the Year.

Bovier holds a B.A. in English from Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and an M.B.A. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, with a concentration in international business.

EDUCATION

M.B.A. with a concentration in international business.
University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill, North Carolina

B.A. in English
Dickinson College
Carlisle, Pennsylvania

Colleen Baker

Co-Founder & Chief Operating Officer

Co-founder and COO Colleen E. Baker leads the digital transformation initiatives for Higher Digital customers, with client success as her key driver, leveraging her innovative thinking and expertise in her field. She has spent the last 20 years transforming IT and software development in the insurance, education, and healthcare industries, optimizing teams and aligning organizations across departments and functions.

Baker created a new framework (Simplified Enterprise Agile™), and has deep experience in software development, digital transformation, strategic planning, program management, technology operations, and end-user adoption, and she fully understands the challenges involved in improving how organizations can create world-class digital experiences.

Prior to Higher Digital, Baker led digital transformation initiatives for the Laureate Education Global Products and Services Division, a $1.1B division of over 9,000 employees, including Walden University, University of Liverpool, and University of Roehampton, all specialists in online learning. She oversaw the transformation and change management for over 350 developers, testers, architects, product management, and technology executives.

As a specialist in transformation management, and with the ability to apply agile technology expertise, Baker created a cohesive institutional readiness and change management plan across 84 campuses, and oversaw the transformation of the user experience for online school prospects.

Before Laureate, Baker provided technical leadership to the IT operations of several insurance companies. She has been able to apply her technical prowess and strategic thinking to higher education engagements that drive progressive change.

Baker has certifications as a SAFe Program Consultant (SPC), Agile Alliance Scrum Master (SM), ITIL 4.0 Professional, and Project Management Professional (PMP).

EDUCATION

B.S. in Information Systems
University of Maryland
College Park, Maryland

Michael Agnew

Senior Vice President, UK and Europe

Michael Agnew has over 25 years of experience as an international software development executive. He has lived and worked across Europe, and overseen product teams from Australia to California. Michael has a proven business background, running development organizations with over 200 employees, managing budgets and payroll, securing governmental subsidies, and generating revenues. He combines his deep technical ERP and CRM skills with a truly global understanding of higher education.

Most recently, Michael was Vice President International at Ellucian, managing numerous large distributed development groups. These centres focused on international customer requirements, internationalization and localization, and were funded either internally or by securing new product development capital from customer consortia. He has presented at international conferences and seminars, on topics such as The 4th Industrial Revolution at the Education Strategy Forum, and on Higher Education Data Models at Ireland’s HEAnet Conference.

Michael is a Certified SCRUM Product Owner who is passionate about Agile methodologies. He has an MBA from University of Bradford/TIAS NIMBAS and a B.Sc. (Hons) in Computer Science from the University of Strathclyde. Michael speaks English and Dutch fluently.

EDUCATION

M.B.A.
University of BradfordSchool of Management/TiasNimbas Business School
Bradford, United Kingdom

B.Sc. (Hons) in Computer Science
University of Strathclyde
Glasgow, Scotland

Joe Gottlieb

President

President Joe Gottlieb is responsible for corporate strategy, product portfolio management, analytics and marketing. His role ensures that Higher Digital’s business, product lines, and supporting functions are continuously pursuing an intentional vision through an explicit and well-understood strategy for customer value. He also supports customers with strategy development, change management, and strategic operations, energized by the complex challenges and profound opportunities facing higher education.

Gottlieb has spent his entire career helping enterprises to digitally transform, combining the broad view needed to grapple with heterogeneous IT architectures with the specialized perspectives required to address disruptive challenges and opportunities in identity management, security, cloud computing, databases, and networking. Along the way, he has managed hypergrowth (Nokia), built technology ecosystems (McAfee and SailPoint), raised startup capital (Sensage and Aerospike), taken companies public (META Group and SailPoint), and managed acquisitions — both being acquired (Sensage) and acquiring companies (Nokia and SailPoint).

In his last five roles, he has owned the strategic planning process for his company (McAfee, Sensage, Aerospike, SailPoint) or division (Nokia). A strategic thinker and change agent, Gottlieb considers himself fortunate to have been actively engaged in digital transformation throughout his career.

Gottlieb holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University.

EDUCATION

B.S. in Electrical Engineering
Cornell University
Ithaca, New York

Henry DeVries, Ph.D.

Vice President, Analytics & Finance

Henry DeVries has over 44 years of experience in higher education, in positions ranging from graduate teaching assistant to faculty member to Chief Information Officer. Most recently he was as a Management Consultant, Principal at Ellucian, an international higher education software company. His client-facing activities included business process modeling, departmental governance planning, IT organizational assessment, reporting review, data governance, performance metrics, and business analytics reporting. He was also a regular presenter at client user groups and national conferences.

Prior to Ellucian, Henry served as the first Vice President for Information Services/CIO at Calvin University, directing operations of IT, the library, the college archives, and instructional/AV resources; he eventually assumed responsibility for the Administration and Finance Division of the college as its CFO, overseeing all financial services, physical plant, the college architect, human resources, and auxiliary services. Before that, Henry served on the faculty in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell University, as well as Director of its Extension Electronic Technology Group; and previously spent time as an Assistant Professor of Agriculture at Dordt University.

Henry has served on several EDUCAUSE Expert Panels. and on the Boards of Directors of the Central Association of College and University Business Officers (CACUBO) and the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO).

Henry DeVries received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Calvin College with a major in biology and minor in chemistry. He then received a Master of Science degree in Agronomy and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Floriculture and Ornamental Horticulture from Cornell University.

EDUCATION

M.S. in Agronomy and Ph.D. in Floriculture and Ornamental Horticulture
Cornell University
Ithaca, New York

B.A. with a Major in Biology and Minor in Chemistry
Calvin College
Grand Rapids, Michigan

Gwen Kerdiles

Vice President, UK and Europe

Gwen Kerdiles has over 20 years of experience working in Higher Education or with software for Higher Education. Gwen’s passion for usable data, concise syntax, complete semantics, and well-defined logical rules are a recurrent theme in his professional career.

Most recently, Kerdiles served as the lead architect of several core engines of the Ellucian Banner that are the cornerstone of Ellucian’s strategy for statutory reporting, extensibility, and the path to the cloud. He then managed the Technical Solutions Consulting team at Ellucian for EMEA and APAC.

Prior, Kerdiles served as a consultant in software risk management for the French National Aviation Agency and lead a project of the French Ministry of Transport that assessed the national traffic planning system prior to a reimplementation.

Kerdiles has been using the Ethos framework since its inception and developed integrations for universities, provided in-depth functional and technical training, and enabled partner solutions to become Ethos certified. Kerdiles has a research background with a specialization in knowledge representation and graphical-based reasoning methods. He completed his research and associated teaching career in Amsterdam and Montpellier and has been a guest researcher in Seattle, Darmstadt, and Copenhagen.

EDUCATION

PhD. Humanities
Universiteit van Amsterdam
Amsterdam, The Netherlands

PhD. Computer Science
Université de Montpellier II
Montpellier, France

Amy Shaw

Senior Director, Customer and User Experience

Amy Shaw has well over 20 years of experience in design and user experience leadership. A majority of those years have been spent in the higher education field. She has a passion for providing user-centric experiences that embody the needs and wants of end-users through research, testing, inspired design and new technology innovations.

Prior to joining Higher Digital, Amy lead the User Experience team at Ellucian, responsible for the entire digital user-experience of the Ellucian digital ecosystem for 60+ products with 4 large ERPs, 3 CRMs, and both responsive and native Mobile applications. In less than 5 years, Amy grew a team of 9 to over 30 global, multidiscipline members including UX Designers, Analysts, Researchers, and Developers, to address the demands for user-driven software.

Before joining Ellucian, Amy worked for several strategy and technology companies such as Booz Allen Hamilton, VCampus and General Dynamics designing web-based, animated training modules and websites. She also taught evening courses for design certifications in continuing education at Northern Virginia Community College for over 7 years.

Amy has a BS in Graphic Arts and Imagining Technology from Appalachian State University in North Carolina.

EDUCATION

B.S. in Graphic Arts and Imaging Technology
Appalachian State University
Boone, North Carolina