Curriki Leadership Team

Kim Jones is the Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Curriki, a non profit organization focused on improving education through technology for children.

Kim was formerly an Executive with Sun Microsystems for over 20 years. Most recently Kim was President and Managing Director for Sun UK & Ireland. In this role she oversaw all sales and managerial functions within Sun's UK operations, across all technology lines of business.

Prior to accepting the role of UK MD, Kim was Vice President of Global Education, Government and Healthcare, where she headed up a team committed to providing advanced technologies and services to key constituencies in the public sector. It was during this time that Kim established education as an independent line of business for Sun. During Kim’s leadership, Curriki was incubated in the education development community of Java.net, better known as the Global Education and Learning Community. Realizing the value that such a contribution would bring to the teaching community, Kim was instrumental in leading the charge to make Curriki a non-profit, committed to advancing the open source educational resources movement.

Prior to this position, Kim held a number of general management, sales and marketing roles at Sun where she had extensive global experience working in over 100 countries around the world including Europe, Asia, Latin America, the United States and all of the emerging markets.

Kim has been active in driving policy initiatives, evidenced by her testimony before the Congressional Web based Education Commission in the USA. She is also regularly featured as an honorary speaker on the impact of technology in education at influential meetings around the world, including NCTET, the Worldwide Education & Research Conference (WWERC) in the United States, Europe, and Asia, and other key public sector forums.

In addition to her role at Curriki, Kim is a member of the MIT Open Courseware Industry Advisory Council.

Kim has received numerous awards and recognition throughout her career including the Sun Leadership Award, the prestigious YWCA Award for Women in Business, and in 2006, she was inducted into the Women in Technology International (WITI) Hall of Fame. Kim has an honorary PHD from the University of Edinburgh, and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree from University of California, San Diego.

Follow Kim on Twitter.

Joshua Marks has focused his 20-year-long career on using emerging technologies to enable and improve learning opportunities for all children in both formal and informal settings. As Chief Technology Officer, Joshua oversees all technology development and hosting infrastructure for Curriki.org. In this role Joshua sets the technical direction, manages the development teams and collaborates with partners, contributors and the open source software community to design and provide the tools needed to realize Curriki's innovative vision. Joshua is also the point person for engaging with standards groups such as IMS Global and SIF (The schools Interoperability Framework).

Before joining Curriki, Joshua was a Senior Systems Architect at CTB/McGraw-Hill where he was responsible for enterprise technology renewal and re-design of the company's online assessment system. Prior to that, he was the Senior Director eLearning Technology at Harcourt Education where he launched Harcourt Education's e-learning group. He spearheaded a first-of-its-kind tablet PC 1-to-1 e-learning pilot project with 150 middle school students in partnership with Microsoft and HP as vision for the future of educational publishing.

Earlier in his career, Joshua was co-founder and CTO for the ZapMe! Knowledge Network, a broadband satellite delivered network for K-12 education. Joshua pioneered the use of personal computers in learning as a Producer of award winning early learning games at Electronic Arts and The Learning Company.

Joshua holds a degree in Mathematics from University of California at Santa Cruz

As Chief Academic Officer & Director of Product Development, Janet leads and manages all of Curriki’s content development, user experience, and academic direction. She leads the vision and strategy for Curriki’s online learning offerings and develops and maintains relationships with academic partners. In addition, Janet oversees all Professional Development and implementation.

Prior to Curriki Janet managed marketing at CampusCruiser, a Learning Management Systems provider for the higher education market. Her efforts were focused on branding, market analysis, and all aspects of marketing communications. Prior to joining CampusCruiser, Janet was director of marketing communications at SchoolNet, a K-12 education technology company. In this role, she was responsible for making measurable improvements in the company’s brand visibility and lead generation. Janet managed product marketing at Classroom Connect, where she successfully led the marketing efforts for the company’s flagship professional development product line.

Janet began her career in the education field, spending 6 years as a Special Education teacher. She transitioned from the classroom to the boardroom when she joined Sun Microsystems Public Relations team. While at Sun, she earned her wings managing international press tours, crafting press releases, and coordinating Sun’s PR outreach for the Global Education and Research group.

Janet is a graduate of Northeastern University and holds a Masters in Education from the College of New Rochelle. Follow Janet on Twitter.

Debra joined Curriki as Chief Operating Officer in March 2011, with over 20 years of experience as a nonprofit organization executive and financial leader. She oversees Curriki’s finance, human resources and administration. Debra worked as CFO at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, a $30 million not-for-profit science, art and human perception museum for 17 years, and was Corporate Budget Director and Assistant Treasurer at LucasFilm for 5 years. She began her business career at Levi Strauss, while receiving her MBA from Pepperdine University..

Cindee combines business aptitude with a passion for writing and is a published author in several media outlets, including Harvard Business Review. Her expertise spans a broad range of marketing activities, from value proposition, message development, and executive communications, to competitive research, social media and crisis management issues.

She is a principal at Orion Marketing and previously held leadership roles at several high technology PR agencies, as well as at Sun Microsystems and SunLabs. Cindee holds a BA degree in International Studies from U.C. Berkeley and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and two teenage sons.