Management

Mark L. Miller, Ph.D.

President and Executive Director

Mark L. Miller, Ph.D. completed his doctorate in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT, in 1979, specializing in applications of artificial intelligence to education.

In 2000, Miller founded Learningtech.orgĀ®, incorporating it as The Miller Institute for Learning with Technology, a California 501(c)(3) non-profit. He serves as both its lead technical contributor and its President and Executive Director. The mission of the organization is to help “children of all ages” use technology more effectively for learning. The firm has helped schools throughout California and in several other states. Services include: E Rate applications; technology plan preparation; professional development relating to Computer Science, Robotics and Making; IT consultation (network design; server router configuration/administration; technology impact assessment); and sponsored research in the areas of Educational Technology and Computer Science Education.

Before founding Learningtech.org, Dr. Miller served as Lab Director for Learning and Tools at Apple, reporting to the Vice President, Advanced Technology Group [ATG], where he spent almost a decade heading up educational technology investigations. Apple programs under his direction at various times included: Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow [ACOT]; Apple Global Education [AGE]; Visualization and Simulation; Business Learning and Performance Support; and Multimedia Authoring Tools. Responsibilities included oversight of over three-dozen employees, including Apple Distinguished Scientists and numerous engineers with advanced degrees, with annual budget responsibility in excess of $6M.

Dr. Miller’s industry experience includes Texas Instruments’ Central Research Labs [TI], where Miller established its widely recognized Machine Intelligence research program, emphasizing educational applications, expert systems, natural language processing. Miller later co-founded Computer*Thought Corporation (Dallas, TX), a high-tech TI spinoff backed by venture capital, where he led the design of an advanced instructional system to retrain software engineers for the Ada programming language, then being implemented for the International Space Station.

Dr. Miller’s teaching experience includes the University of Texas (Introduction to Artificial Intelligence; Survey of Knowledge Engineering; Design and Implementation of Programming Languages; Compilers, Assemblers, and Operating Systems; Software Engineering Using Ada; Discrete Structures). He also supervised successful M.S. and Ph.D. candidates at UT and Southern Methodist University. While a graduate student at MIT he served as both Research Assistant and Teaching Assistant in the Department of Electrical Engineering and the Artificial Intelligence and LOGO Laboratories, and as a Research Assistant at Bolt, Beranek, and Newman. Miller has also taught high school mathematics, computer science, making, and other topics at K12 schools, Community Colleges, and County Offices of Education. He developed and co-delivered a high school CS elective that received University of California “G requirement” approval, for use at multiple schools in the San Francisco Bay Area. In June 2020, Miller, along with Cynthia Solomon and a half-dozen Logo pioneers, published an article, History of Logo, in ACM SIGPLAN’s History of Programming Languages journal, describing the early development of this highly influential programming language for children. Logo was made famous by Seymour Papert (1980), in Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas). Miller worked with Papert at MIT and TI; some of Miller’s contributions are mentioned in the End Notes of Papert’s seminal publication. Mark is President Emeritus of the Silicon Valley Computer Science Teachers Association. He also teaches Python and object-oriented design (Java) in the ALIGN MS program at Northeastern University’s San Francisco and Silicon Valley campuses (https://www.khoury.northeastern.edu/people/mark-miller/). Previously, he also served as a member of the Computer Science Steering Committee of the San Mateo County Office of Education.

Eileen Miller

VP of E-Rate & Technology Planning

Eileen Miller has been part of the Learningtech.org team since 2005, and now serves as Vice President to manage our E-Rate and Technology Planning operations. Decades of work in corporate America taught her broad business and management skills. She brings a variety of additional expertise to the organization, including software programming, technical writing, marketing/research and analysis and product, project and facilities management. She holds an M.B.A. in Marketing, a B.A. in Art History and a B.S. in Computer Science. Eileen’s combination of technical expertise with her M.B.A. provides a solid foundation for her current role, which requires technical understanding of the products and services sought, solid project management, and an appreciation of market forces and trends.

Christopher Miller

Director of Information Technology

Chris has been with Learningtech.org since 2001, when he merged his own successful computer consulting proprietorship with the company, to the enrichment of both organizations. A widely-recognized expert on Macintosh Server installation and configuration, Chris is Apple-certified and has been working on Macs since childhood. Chris is at home with the Unix command line and has written numerous tools and teaching programs in Java, C, Python, and other languages. He teaches robotics and computer programming to middle school and high school students at our summer camps and in-school electives. He has installed and configured countless networks and servers in K-12 schools throughout California.

When not sitting at a server’s keyboard, Chris plays keyboards professionally at local jazz/rock/funk venues. As a camp instructor, his favorite topics besides programming robots include sharing his musical experience through tools such as Garage Band.

Lea Gray

Director of Accounting

Lea joined Learningtech.org in 2016. She has a Bachelor of Accountancy and a Master of Accountancy from the University of Mississippi, and holds inactive CPA licenses in California and Virginia. Lea was an auditor for 8 years before she was the Business Administrator of a small California nonprofit for 3 years. Those experiences provided a strong foundation in finance and nonprofit operations and provided the skills to assist clients with many facets of the E-Rate process. When not crunching numbers, Lea enjoys hiking and biking with her husband and three daughters.

Staff

Teirra Howe

E-Rate Consultant

Teirra Howe joined Learningtech.org in 2016. She started working with E-Rate in 2010, sparking her passion for the program. Additionally, she has worked in the administrative field for over 15 years. Teirra holds an A.S. in Business Administration and is currently working on her B.S. in Accounting.

Curtis Menn

Database Developer

Curt Menn rejoined Learningtech.org in 2022. In earlier times, Curt’s Learningtech.org experience included building school networks from the ground up; computer labs, both Mac and Windows based, were also built, and then supported.

After Curt joined Apple Computer’s support division, he was quickly advanced to Tier2 support of Apple’s Education Support. When Apple launched its PowerSchool division, Curt joined that team to support schools around the world for the next 14 years. He gained specialized skills in the PowerSchool application, eventually assuming a Subject Matter Expert role working deeply in PowerSchool’s Oracle database backend and with PowerSchool’s Hosting Operations, using tools such as Amazon Web Services and VSphere. Another advancement to PowerSchool’s Development and Operations division put Curt in a Quality Assurance role.

Curt is also a musician, enjoys road tripping with his wife, and cooking different regional food styles to relive memories of places visited.

Kimberly Oesterreich

E-Rate Data Coordinator

Kimberly was raised in an environment where she was allowed to keep up with the boys whenever she wanted and learned that she could do anything they could do that she cared to. As a result, she satisfied her love of science and math by becoming an engineer and excelled at helping others grasp technically complex concepts using more easily understood terms and ideas. After more than 15 years in the simulation field working to help representatives in our country and other partner countries to embrace simulation for training, Kimberly took a break to be a stay-at-home mom. Now she is energized to help kids embrace technology and hopes to see that effort yield more women who are technologically savvy in traditionally male-dominated fields. “I’d love to see more women teaching in science, technology and engineering fields in high schools and college; working in technical fields throughout our military and corporations; and inspiring others to do the same. I want the engineering world to be filled with engineers, not enginerds, and I believe women have a significant role to play to ensure that happens.”

Sally Savona

E-Rate Consultant

Sally joined Learningtech.org in 2020. She has 22 years of experience working in the educational technology field, previously serving as the Division Director, Technology & Learning Resources for Stanislaus County Office of Education in California. She has worked with many local school districts in the County providing services and support as well as completing the service provider’s responsibilities for E-Rate. She also was the Director, Technology Services for Sacramento City Unified School district where she was responsible for managing the district’s E-Rate program. She enjoyed the work and valued the long term benefits the program provided to the district in securing funding to enhance and improve technology. Sally has a BS degree in Business Administration – Quantitative Analysis (Computer Applications & Systems) from CSU Fresno and a Network Administration and Management Certificate from UC Davis. She found her passion while working in the field of education in supporting the technology aspects for business, operations and instruction. She notes that with the integration of technology, professional development is critical along with the need for digital citizenship and cybersecurity to ensure safe and secure learning environments.

Sally has a strong desire to continue to provide quality service and support for educational entities as new opportunities with emerging technologies present to support learning. Sally enjoys traveling with her husband and is eager to spend more time exploring the Pacific Northwest where she calls home.

Corvus Sheperd

E-Rate Consultant

Corvus “Crow” Sheperd joined Learningtech.org in 2022 with several prior years of E-Rate consultancy experience. He holds a B.S. in Economics, and was the recipient of Oregon State University’s 2017 Achievement in Economics award. He is currently a graduate student in the Applied Economics program at Johns Hopkins School of Public Policy. Crow is familiar with the entire E-Rate process from beginning to end, including many successful appeals to both USAC and the FCC.

Tom Wilkerson

Senior E-Rate Consultant

Tom Wilkerson has been with Learningtech.org since 2001. Tom is a first-rate network administrator and desktop technician. Tom is Apple certified on Mac OS X. Tom has probably cloned more Macintoshes in K-12 schools in the Bay area than any other single individual. His experience prior to joining included extensive experience in customer support roles relating to technology. Through this experience, Tom has become a patient teacher and excellent troubleshooter. His hobbies include automotive customization and audio engineering; Tom is an expert on Pro Tools, yet still enjoys getting children started with Garage Band. He also has considerable experience teaching troubleshooting skills to middle school students through our summer camps. Tom also plays a major role in providing technical support both internally and for our IT Services clients. These technical skills, along with many years of E-Rate application experience, make Tom a key member of our E-Rate team.

Contractors

Len Erickson, Ph.D.

Consultant

Dr. Len Erickson holds a Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology from Stanford University and a B.S. in Biology from Caltech. He has thirty years of experience in a range of high tech industry roles. This has included product design, development and marketing for the manufacturing software that was created to track and control the manufacture of silicon chips. This experience ranges from startup ventures to work as a senior technical consultant in HP’s Professional Services group.

Len is especially well-known in coastal San Mateo, where he has developed extensive collaborative efforts to ensure access to Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics [STEM] for under-served students from Pescadero to Pacifica. His relationship with Learningtech.org began as our key collaborator to create the San Mateo County Community STEM Alliance [SMCCSA].

In addition to his high tech industry experience, Dr. Erickson developed and sold a product that provided one of the first graphical interfaces for educational robotics, Hyperbot, developed as full featured product for the Macintosh platform. In the 1990’s these material were used frequently in public workshops at The Tech Museum in San Jose and in school classrooms both many sites in the Bay Area and across the country. This range of experiences provides Dr. Erickson with a direct acquaintance with the critical competencies of the High Tech industries and considerable experience work with students both in in-school and out-of-school camp and workshop settings.

Mike Wirth

Instructor and Maker Project Developer

Mike has a broad set of professional interests and background. After graduating with honors from the US Air Force Academy with a BS in Physics, he was selected as a Hertz Fellow and earned an MS and PhD in the Department of Applied Science (a small graduate school affiliated with UC Davis, but co-located with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory). His thesis on computational physics combined computer science and physics, the first of his many interdisciplinary activities. His subsequent Air Force career found him at Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio, defining large computer systems for logistics, doing computational fluid dynamics, and teaching math and computer science at AFIT, the Air Force’s graduate school.

After leaving the military, Mike continued a varied career, directing a scientific computer center for Sohio Petroleum, being COO of an early Hollywood startup for CGI (Computer-Generated Imagery), and building information-integration tools for oil and gas exploration. He subsequently led software development teams at Apple, IBM Research and Adobe Systems, all of which centered on building personal enablement tools across areas such as mobile devices, multimedia, usability research, and assistive technology.

More recently Mike has returned to combined hardware and software projects, creating wearable wireless devices. As a private consultant, he has designed, built and programmed these devices for uses as diverse as keeping track of kids in the park, helping blind people navigate around their neighborhoods, tracking the motion of disabled vets, and several medical applications. Now at Learningtech.org, he brings this experience to bear in leading Maker Space classes, and development of integrated hardware and software for teaching kids maker skills and robotics.