Ignatius Valentine Aloysius completed his MFA in Creative Writing with a focus on fiction from Northwestern University’s School of Professional Studies, where he received the Distinguished Thesis Award for his novel manuscript Fishhead. Soup., now under consideration by Curbside Splendor Press. A finalist for The Claire Rosen and Samuel Edes Foundation Prize for Emerging Artists competition, Aloysius was also an interdisciplinary Ragdale resident. In addition, he became the 2014 Writer-in-Residence at el Ranchito Cielito con Nopales in La Union, New Mexico. Aloysius moderated several writers’ panels and also participated as a guest panelist at the 2015 Chicago Writers Conference. His writing has appeared in TriQuarterly, Newcity, the Chicago Tribune, LaTolteca Zine, and Gander Press Review. Aloysius is currently Managing Editor of the bilingual LaTolteca Zine online. He lives in Evanston and makes a living as a graphic designer and teacher of English and design software. In his spare time, he writes songs and plays lead guitar in a hard rock band.
Jessica Ashley is a content strategist, award-winning author, and certified coach.
She earned a BA in Journalism from Truman State University and an MA in Women Studies and Speech Communication from Oregon State University. Jessica’s thesis examines the heirlooms matriarchs pass down to their daughters, and the oral history these possessions preserve, and was the first-ever documentary accepted as a thesis into the school library. She served as an instructor of women studies at Oregon State University and gender studies at Western Oregon University. Jessica launched a national feminist zine when that was a radical act of communication, was a founding editor at Yahoo's first women's site, contributed to many major digital publications from Forbes to Scary Mommy, appeared as a guest expert on morning shows across the country, and served as a panelist on Oprah’s Super Soul Sunday Life Class on single motherhood.
Jessica is the founder and voice of Single Mom Nation online community and its sister podcast, and helps women thrive through transition at Divorce Coach for Moms. She is the author of three independent divorce and self-care guides, and a forthcoming publication with Rockridge Press. She responds to both Jessica and Ashley.
Kevin Budelmann is the president and co-founder of Peopledesign, a design strategy firm based in Michigan. Kevin oversees the firm’s strategic direction and helps manage client relationships as designer, strategist and change catalyst. Budelmann has been a designer at Herman Miller Inc, served as the president of APDF (Association of Professional Design Firms) and AIGA West Michigan (Professional Association for Design) and is on the board of IxDA (Interaction Design Association). His co-authored book, Brand Identity Essentials (Rockport 2010) has been translated into six languages and is available worldwide. He received a Master of Design Methods from IIT Institute of Design and is a frequent speaker and guest blogger on brand and design innovation.
Mike Callero has developed consumer research and insights throughout his career. He is currently the Founder of Big Blue Crayon, where he trains organizations to transform their insights into business influence. Most recently, he was the Vice President of Consumer Insights at Allina Healthcare, a Minneapolis health system, where he launched one of the first consumer insights functions of its kind in healthcare. He has been the head of consumer research for Walgreens and a research leader at Best Buy and other organizations. Early in his career, he learned the power of determining consumers’ needs and translating them into great business decisions. Mike’s consumer curiosity sprang from the particular fabric of his educational background. He received bachelor’s degrees in both Advertising and Psychology at the University of Missouri Columbia. He earned his master’s degree in Market Research from Southern Illinois University. He is based in Minneapolis.
Randy Hlavac is an expert in digital marketing and how to use consumer and business big data to define, target, and develop high value markets. Randy teaches Digital, Social and Mobile Marketing Strategies in the Medill IMC program, Marketing Analytics in the McCormick Engineering Management program and Social Media and Content Curation in the School of Professional Studies. Randy also works with The Garage and the Farley Entrepreneurial program to assist entrepreneurs to grow and position their brand using social and digital marketing. In addition to teaching, Randy is director of the OmniChannel Initiative – a joint venture with IBM to bring new business and marketing technologies into the college curriculum at Northwestern.
Randy also helped Northwestern develop Coursera online programs in Social Media Marketing and Content Strategy and Content Curation. These courses are offered worldwide and have students in over 150 countries. They are some of the largest online programs on marketing and content in the world.
Randy is CEO of Marketing Synergy, Inc. Founded in 1990, Marketing Synergy helps clients from start-ups to Fortune 100 to develop effective digital marketing strategies and deploy the marketing, customer service, and financial metrics systems to improve profits and grow market share.
Randy speaks at business, technical and marketing conventions around the world. He is a frequent speaker at IBM conferences on Big Data, Watson, and IoT. Randy is also the author of the book – Social IMC – Social Strategies with Bottom-Line ROI and will soon be publishing Prosper – Your Guide to Building Profitable Digital Marketing Programs. Randy is also a blogger on digital and social marketing technologies.
Lauren Liss is the Coordinator of the Interaction Design major and the User Experience and Web Development minors in the Interactive Arts and Media (IAM) Department at Columbia College Chicago, and has been a faculty member in this program since 2006. She received her Masters in Education, Learning Design and Leadership, New Learning, from the University of Illinois, where she studied knowledge acquisition and educational theory through the lens of usability and technology. She teaches interface design, interaction theory, user experience and usability, and collaborative development. She also runs an interaction design company, Goodspark, which focuses on content management systems and usability analysis for small businesses, with a specialization in women-owned businesses and creative
Roger McMinn is an adjunct lecturer in Northwestern’s IDS program and a vice president of marketing for BNY Mellon. McMinn has worked in marketing and communications for more than 25 years for well-known companies like Vanguard, Nuveen, and Nationwide. He earned a bachelor’s degree in Finance from Penn State University and an MBA in Marketing from Drexel University. McMinn is also a graduate of the Northwestern IDS program. He previously taught IDS 403: Effective Communication. He lives outside of Philadelphia, PA, with his wife, three kids, and two dogs.
Dr. David Noffs has spent over 10 years as an Instructional Technologist and Designer in the Center for Innovation and Teaching Excellence at Columbia College Chicago where he oversaw the development of online interactive tools and the use of Learning Management Systems (LMS’s). In this capacity, he supervised the installation of a campus-wide Moodle (Modular Object Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment) LMS in 2008 and development of training programs for students, faculty and staff. Noffs’ work grew to include not only teaching faculty and staff ways to use technology in the classroom, but also oversight of the creation of faculty led virtual learning communities, and non-stop facilitated online courses for faculty and staff development. In addition, he helped develop and teach workshops for mobile app development, online coursework development (instructional design), grade book design, portfolio design, and an array of online teaching tools, including integration of social media into virtual learning communities. Noffs joined Northwestern University School of Professional Studies in 2015. His doctoral dissertation in Adult and Continuing Education from National Louis University is entitled, Resonating Frequencies of a Virtual Learning Community: An Ethnographic Case Study of Online Faculty Development at Columbia College Chicago. Noffs also teaches courses in Sound Design, Web Design and iOS, C# and C++ Programming at Columbia’s department of Interactive Arts and Media.
Chris Rinere has been working in the strategy, program and learning development, design, and analytics for over 13 years. He is a recognized expert in talent and learning strategy, user-centered design, product management, change initiatives, and data analytics. Rinere is a 2017 graduate of the Information Design and Strategy (IDS) program at Northwestern University with an emphasis in Data Science and Analytics and holds a dual-Bachelor’s Degree in Adolescent Education and English Literature from the State University of New York at Geneseo.