Innovative solutions to drive student success

Ty Field

Chief Executive Officer Ty Field has been the Executive Chairman of Scholarus Learning for the past several years and now leads our group of companies as CEO. Working with the Scholarus leadership team for many years has seen Ty combine his deep knowledge of the portfolio with the group's strategic goals, along with expertise in the EdTech industry, to drive our corporate partnerships and customer success.

Brett Costello

Brett Costello places partnership at the center of all aspects of his work. Over the past 20 years, Brett has developed a unique ability to cultivate enduring relationships and solutions through close collaboration with customers, vendors, and internal stakeholders.

By keeping partnership at the core of his philosophy, Brett has successfully built and led dynamic teams of sales, marketing, product development and operations professionals to drive sustainable growth, profit, but most importantly - customer satisfaction.

Brett earned a Master of Business Administration from the Ross School of Business and his undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan.

Marc Steinberg

As Chief Technology Officer , Marc designs, manages, and supports digital strategies and systems to deliver maximum value to our customers. His portfolio spans all facets of technology, including architecture, engineering, infrastructure, and customer-facing technical support.

Marc previously held technical leadership roles at SkillCheck and First Advantage, most recently acting as Senior Director of Software Development for First Advantage. Marc began his career writing curriculum and software for QWIZ (now part of SHL).

Marc earned his undergraduate degree at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. He is based in Boston, Massachusetts where, in addition to all things technical, he pursues music composition and enjoys almost any DIY project, from amplifier circuit design to whole-house renovation.

Ruth Siporin

Ruth Siporin (CPA) has deep experience in both public accounting (PwC) and as CFO with Scholarus Learning she is the controller, treasurer and financial leader of all of the companies under the Scholarus portfolio. It is this combination of experiences that has provided Ruth with the skills to evaluate transactions, close them and account for them, giving consideration to the needs of all key constituents, limited staffing and potential system limitations.

Specialties include technical accounting (purchase accounting, revenue recognition, stock-based compensation, etc.), audit support, controls documentation, and close process review.

Kevin Woodman

As Senior Vice President of Sales and Operations, Kevin is responsible for the day to day operations of XanEdu’s production and fulfillment teams. He provides strategic direction to the company in order to improve processes and develop customer service initiatives.

Kevin has been with XanEdu for over 11 years and has served in various roles such as Account Executive, Regional Sales Manager, and Director of Folio-xPress.

Kevin earned his undergraduate degree at Michigan State University and then went on to earn his MBA at Eastern Michigan University.

Sharon Norris

As Vice President of Human Resources, Sharon provides leadership and guidance to XanEdu’s HR operations. She is responsible for setting, enforcing, and evaluating legally compliant human resources policies, procedures, and best practices, and identifying and implementing long-range strategic culture & people goals.

Sharon holds a BS from Oakland University, with a major in Human Resource Management and post graduate studies at Central Michigan University in HR Leadership.

With over 20 years of Human Resource experience and she has worked in the airline, telecommunications and Education Tech industries. She is a certified sales training facilitator, a certified “Mind Gym” facilitator, and a certified Leadership Development Coach. Sharon is a former Board member of the “YES” Foundation, an education equity organization, and a current member of the Association for Talent Development (ATD), Society Human Resource Management (SHRM).

Passionate about serving her community and mentoring future leaders, she serves as a volunteer with the Girl Scouts of Southeastern Michigan and mentors young women from a residential empowerment program in Metro Detroit.

John Carroll

John has joined XanEdu as the SVP, Product Management & Strategy. In his current role, John is responsible for the strategic vision and implementation of XanEdu’s K-12 product roadmap and its content/curriculum vision.

John has over 15 years of edTech experience in the K-12 school market including Product Management, Marketing, and Strategy roles at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, McGraw Hill Education, Pearson School, and Scholastic.

John holds a BA in Economics from Tufts University and an MBA from Northeastern University.

Jeff Shelstad

Jeff is a native Minnesotan and proud Gopher.  He began his professional career in higher education publishing, spending almost 20 years with McGraw Hill Higher Education and then Pearson Prentice Hall, mostly in product and editorial roles.

In January 2007, along with a colleague, Jeff ventured out and started Flat World Knowledge, the world’s first commercial OER publisher. Flat World grew to over 40 employees, raised over $30m, and grew to serve thousands of professors and higher education institutions. 16 years later, Flat World is still in existence.

Jeff is the parent of a Husky (University of Washington Freshman) and a Cougar (Washington State University Junior). When not working, Jeff can often be found near a golf course.

Aaron Meyers

Hilary Mitchell

Since joining XanEdu in 2013, Hilary has worked with team members across the organization to ensure engaging human-centered experiences to support XanEdu’s mission of accessible learning experiences that drive student success.

Hilary brings over 20 years of experience in web and application design and development, and working with web-to-print workflows. Prior to XanEdu, she worked at a technology startup specializing in web-based story creation, sharing, and printing, as well as customizable photo merchandise creation and printing for companies including Universal Orlando Resorts, IBM and Royal Caribbean International. 

Hilary is a graduate of Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT, and lives outside of Boston, MA where she enjoys drawing and trying to keep up with her ever energetic Boston Terrier. 

Jason Plackowski

As the Vice President of Finance, Jason works closely with all groups of XanEdu to ensure all functions of accounting and finance run as smoothly as possible. He has been with the company since 2008 after being in public accounting for 8 years as a CPA.

As the company has changed over the years, many opportunities and challenges arose at XanEdu to allow him greater growth and to gain invaluable experience in finance and business in general.

Karen Stec

As the Executive Director of Sales Operations, Karen works collaboratively across functional teams at all levels of the business creating organizational excellence that drive results.

With over 20 years in education publishing and technology, Karen is an accomplished leader with experience in overseeing, directing, and supporting customer success and operations. She is a strategic sales & marketing partner providing business, and operational expertise to the organization to drive improved sales effectiveness and revenue outcomes. 

Karen earned her Bachelor of Science from Western Michigan University.

Caitlin O'Brien

Caitlin O'Brien is a 15-year veteran of rights and permissions in educational publishing across all formats, genres, and levels. Though she grew up in Washington and Alaska, she completed her studies in Melbourne, Australia, where she started her publishing career as a Copyright & Pictures Editor for Pearson Australia's K-12 division. After several years in Australia, she returned to the US, managing permissions for Boston-based publishers Pearson Learning Solutions and Vista Higher Learning.

From her home office in southern New Hampshire, Caitlin manages XanEdu's expert permissions services, ensuring our customers' products are rich in engaging, copyright-compliant content.

Danielle Aceves

As Design Manager Danielle oversees the design and prepress production of all K12 titles, ensuring that files are ready for their final output. Danielle has over 15 years of experience in the print and publishing industry, specializing in design management, creative problem solving, and workflow development. She has worked in nearly all facets of title production from design and layout, to preparing files for press, and on to eBook and digital asset creation.

Prior to joining XanEdu, she worked at Macmillan Learning where she helped higher ed professors format their content for their custom textbooks and building workflows to scale for growth.

Danielle graduated from Herron School of Art and Design in Indianapolis, Indiana where she earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Visual Communication. She now resides in Michigan and enjoys traveling, painting, gardening, and finding new ways to exercise her creativity.

Mike Kesson

As Director of Print and Fulfillment, Mike oversees the production, manufacturing and delivery of all print and fulfillment solutions for the K-12 and Higher Ed teams. This includes supporting the operations teams as well as maintaining the partnerships required to ensure the best customer experience and the highest quality products in the market.

Previously, Mike spent 25 years at Hayden-McNeil Publishing (Macmillan Learning) working with the leadership team to create the foundation of the production, warehousing, and shipping workflows and processes. Mike has deep expertise in designing, implementing and managing production, ERP, warehouse processes and workflows within the educational business space.

Mike studied business at Eastern Michigan University, and when he isn’t on the job at XanEdu he enjoys fishing, hunting, golfing, and his favorite pastime is baseball.

Kelly Wozniak

Jim Agostine