Across our team, we’ve racked up over 100 total years – that’s people years – of experience in K-12, higher ed, instructional design, and Canvas.
We’re proud to use all that experience to bring innovative products and stellar support to Canvas course designers everywhere.
Meet the team that is responsible for delivering Cidi Labs awesomeness:
Mike Zackrison started Cidi Labs in partnership with Utah State University in 2016. He’s an ed tech veteran with 20 years experience in product management, marketing, and start-up leadership. In some form or another he’s touched every major system schools use to deliver education. From the LMS (Canvas, Sakai) to the SIS (Banner, Kuali Student) and all the systems in between (CampusPipeline, SCT Luminis, uPortal, plus dozens of integrations), he’s helped forge the unified digital campuses of today.
Right before Cidi Labs he was with Instructure from 2012 to 2015 where he led Canvas’ openness initiatives including growing the partner program to over 150 partners and the number of LTI integrations to over 200 (made available thru Eduappcenter). Working with so many start-ups in this role helped Mike decide that he wanted to start his own company. After a chance meeting with Utah State’s commercialization office and Kenneth Larsen he jumped at the opportunity to start Cidi Labs with them and become a Canvas partner.
Mike holds an MBA degree from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management and BA degrees in German and Finance from the University of Utah. When not Edtech-ing, he enjoys traveling with his wife and two daughters, exploring the 40 miles of trails in the foothills above his home on foot or bike, and golfing. Two herding dogs ensure that he gets a walk each day too!
Kenneth is the genius behind DesignPLUS (formerly known as Kennethware), which he invented when he worked as a programmer/analyst with Utah State University’s (USU) Center for Innovative Design and Instruction (CIDI).
Kenneth blends a master’s degree in Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences from USU with 14 years of Internet development experience to empower teachers and designers to push the boundaries of online course development.
Kenneth loves exploring the outdoors with his wife and 2 daughters and often spends downtime taking pictures, drawing, reading and scheming new features to add to DesignPLUS.
Jacoba joined the Cidi Labs team in 2017 as the resident extrovert of the group. She’s done a little bit of everything–face to face and online teaching, technology marketing, fundraising, and now has the best gig of her life selling software that makes teaching and learning more accessible.
She has a Master’s Degree in American Studies from Utah State University, has been known to say “rad” in customer emails, loves jigsaw puzzles and books, and has recently begun teaching herself hand embroidery.
Other facts: she’s a mom of two humans and two pigmy goats, and she’s afraid of the following things (in order): 1. Rabies, 2. Bats, 3. Squirrels, 4. Moose, 5. Birds of prey.
Jen joined Cidi Labs in 2017, after working as a Customer Success Manager at Instructure.
While at Instructure, she supported early Canvas higher ed customers on the west coast and now gets the opportunity to work with amazing schools on the east coast.
Jen has been working for technology companies most of her career although transitioned to the ed tech space 6 years ago and hasn’t looked back.
When not working, Jen loves to entertain and throw dinner parties, exercise, garden and spend time with her husband and 5 step sons!
Chuck Crandall has been working in web development for over 17 years, with 12 of those years working in education technology. Chuck graduated from Brigham Young University with a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering, and received an MBA from Arizona State University.
He ran his own web development company for 8 years, and now enjoys his role as head of software development at Cidi Labs.
Chuck is happily married with 5 children. If he had free time, he would spend it hiking, golfing, playing tennis, and skiing.
Michelle was Cidi Labs’ first full-time employee. She came to the company with many years of experience in higher ed administration and marketing.
She holds a Master’s degree in Learning Technologies & Instructional Design from Utah State University where she had the honor of working alongside Kenneth. Michelle was a military brat turned military spouse and calls many places home including New York, Hawaii, and Germany.
Her family lives in Utah’s beautiful Cache Valley where they enjoy collecting all the animals – including many chickens and a few mustangs – that they couldn’t move around the world while connected to the military.
Jennifer’s experience in the ed tech industry dates back to the early days of WebCT, one of the original learning management system companies, where she developed a passion for building tools that enhance teaching and learning. From there, she had the opportunity to work for a variety of companies, all of which serve to enhance some aspect of the educational experience – from college admissions through student retention and even career services – with technology. She earned an M.S. in Educational Technology in a fully online program which enabled her to truly understand the student experience.
She is a Boston native (though you won’t ever hear her say “pahk ya cah”), loves to travel, ski, practice yoga, and spend time with her family.
Kristin brings to Cidi Labs two decades of varied edtech experience from K-12 classroom teaching and curriculum design to higher education research in online learning. Kristin holds a Master’s in Film and Digital Media from UCF. Kristin’s blend of design insight and creative problem solving have made their way into digital products for Florida Virtual School, McGraw-Hill, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. They’ve designed K-12 educational games, presented at SWSX Edu on the field of instructional design, and delivered a keynote presentation on ELL and ESL digital design.
Kristin has a passion for making things; painting, baking, crafting, and costuming are just some of their hobbies. They reside in Central Florida where they can spend oodles of time in nature foraging for wild mushrooms and edible plants. Pumpkin and Zucchini are Kristin’s furry feline office mates that love to join Zoom calls. Kristin believes storytelling can change who we are and how we work together in this world for positive change.
Matt has spent his career marrying technology with learning by overseeing strategic education software projects, partnerships and institutional improvements. Matthew has provided leadership both inside of education institutions and as part of organizations supporting and providing services to K20 institutions throughout the world.
Matt is dedicated to providing, for all students, regardless of situation or background, the opportunity to succeed in academic endeavors. He has contributed to the building of a student academic performance platform, an open source Student SIS, the most prolific higher education portal in use today and a community-wide adaptive virtual desktop environment for students.
Prior to joining Cidi Labs, Matthew was COO of eLumen, CTO of Hartnell College, Director of IS at Delta College, and Strategic Architect/Snr. Product Manager at Ellucian. He has also been active in multiple open source projects, such as Kuali, Etudes, Drupal and Sakai.
Matt holds an M.S. in Instructional Technology from Utah State University and was raised by his wife and 5 children. When not talking to an institution, you can find Matt being walked on the beach by his dog or nearly drowning in the nearby pacific ocean attached to a boogie, surf or paddle board.
Abby comes to us from the partnership team at Instructure, where she happily worked for 4 1/2 years. While at Instructure, she managed and oversaw 150+ partners, working with them to create dynamic event and marketing opportunities. She loved working with partners and developed a love for the EdTech industry!
Each year, she worked alongside Instructure’s Events Team in creating the much-anticipated annual user event, InstructureCon where she managed and directed the popular “partner hall.”
Abby recently moved to New York City (go figure), where she now calls home. Running in Central Park is her new favorite thing to do, and she secretly wants to steal every dog she sees. She loves people and is an inveterate people watcher. She is a recently converted Yankee fan, much to the dismay of her father, a diehard Red Sox fan. A fun fact, she is a triplet!
Ethan was the first in a wave of new developers to join the Cidi Labs team this past year.
While getting his Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Central Florida, he worked on a team of developers there known as the Techrangers. It was there that he got introduced to the world of ed tech and was able to work directly on amazing products such as UDOIT. He was overjoyed to be able to take that experience to the next level by joining Cidi Labs.
In his off-time, Ethan loves to hang out with his cat and play online games with his friends.
Scott holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Brigham Young University Hawaii. He has been working as a developer for the past 5 years and enjoys working on many projects varying from virtual reality to backend development, learning technologies to implement in his new career at Cidi Labs.
Alongside his wife of 6 years, he spends his free time fixing up his 1930’s home, gardening, mining bitcoin, and training his two rambunctious Australian Shepherd puppies.
Justin has been developing enterprise web applications for over 15 years. Justin graduated from Mississippi State University with a Bachelor’s degree in Business Information Systems.
Justin has had experience in a wide array of development industries, ranging from ecommerce, automotive, and aerospace.
Justin and his wife have one son and one golden retriever. In his spare time, he enjoys producing music, staying active, playing disc golf, and traveling.
Ethan Deceuster (dee-CUS-ter) is an elementary school teacher turned higher ed instructional designer turned Cidi Labs tools developer. Ethan loves teaching and has a current Utah Level 2 Teaching License. He also has degrees from Brigham Young University and Utah State University.
Ethan currently lives in sunny Washington, Utah with his wife and four children. He is an avid musician and plays many instruments including guitar, bass, drums, and accordion. A few other fun facts about Ethan: he’s enjoyed mild success in the local standup comedy scene, he loves writing songs and micropoetry, and he is deathly afraid of self-driving cars.
Juli’s Educational Technology career started in 2000, when her community college’s Online Instruction program had just recently launched its first couple classes. Over the years, she worked to grow the program, provided documentation and personal guidance to faculty, and participated in (and later led) many systems transitions, such as WebCT to Blackboard, and Blackboard to Canvas. In an effort to meet increasing demand for support (with a very small team) as the program grew, she began recording video tutorials, built a resource center for faculty, and designed and taught an online Introduction to Canvas course.
When a faculty member introduced her to DesignPLUS, it was love at first sight. She campaigned to get it adopted in her district, had an immense amount of fun creating a webinar training series for it, and ultimately realized a career dream by joining the amazing Cidi Labs team!
Juli combines her love of training and fitness by teaching Pilates at a local studio, and in her downtime is an avid reader and board-gamer. She is a strong believer in the power of playfulness in our everyday lives.
Brad Moser is an experienced and fun-loving education technology leader with over 15+ years of working with several K-12 school districts. Prior to joining Cidi Labs, Brad graduated from Brigham Young University in Physics Teaching, taught high school physics, and earned his Master’s from the University of Missouri.
Recently, Brad led the Blue Valley School District as their Director of Blended Learning. He is an active participant and always learning with his professional learning network via Twitter and Facebook.
When he’s not tinkering with the latest technology app in the edtech space, you might find him running outside, playing adult league soccer, strumming on his guitar, or riding bikes and exploring Kansas City with his family. He loves to make things more fun. When you are with Brad, life and work are just more rad.
Bob brings over 25 years of experience in education across multiple sectors and geographical contexts, understanding the critical role that educational technology companies play in enabling educational organisations to deliver on their goals. He works diligently to identify, communicate, and bring to life a vision for his team and clients that clearly articulates where we’re heading, how we’ll get there and how we’ll know when we’ve succeeded.
He brings a high level of energy, passion and enthusiasm to his work. Living in Melbourne with wife and two teenage daughters he spends his time balancing family life with being a golf tragic.
Julian is well known within Edtech circles as a passionate practitioner and enabler of Educational Technology, which has been his passion for the past 20 years. Having worked first as a teacher, he fell into eLearning in its early days and this led to roles with both Moodle (where he was known as Moodleman for many years) and then as the second employee of Instructure in APAC where he helped launch Canvas across several countries in the region.
Julian is a passionate educator, engaging presenter, product expert, and strategist. His mission is to always listen to, respect and champion the voice of the user/customer within all parts of the business.
Julian lives in Sydney Australia with his wife and teenage daughter. His free time is spent playing board games (did we mention he has a board game problem??), writing music and being cheer squad to his wife and daughter as they participate in their many Cheerleading events.
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