Digital Initiatives
Romy Ruukel: Director
Romy leads the Digital Initiatives group, comprising of the Digital Education Incubator and the Instructional Production Services team. She joined BU after program managing at edX, a global e-learning platform. She has MA degrees in human development & psychology (Harvard University) and humanities & leadership (New College of California) and a BA in English Language and Literature (Whitman College). Throughout her career, Romy’s work and research have focused on sociology of education, universal design for learning, and 20th-century social movements.
Kristen McCarthy, Administrative Coordinator
Kristen started with Digital Learning and Innovations in February 2020 and supports DL&I’s Digital Initiatives and Educational Technology teams. In this role, Kristen coordinates administrative tasking—helping to ensure these teams have necessary support and resources. Kristen received a Master of Learning Sciences degree at Northwestern, focusing her research on the way that portable internet technology affected a learner’s sense of knowledge ownership. Her dedication to higher education advancement brought her to Michigan to work in Academic Affairs for the University of Michigan. She supported digital learning in the Dental School and worked on admissions and recruiting for the School of Public Health before relocating to the east coast. Kristen loves reading, hiking with her dogs, and visiting the New England Aquarium.
Diana Marian: Senior Project Manager
Diana joined the Digital Education Incubator team after coordinating several projects within the Open Society Foundations network. She has managed innovative literacy initiatives, including adult education programs and the development of an online tool guiding legal comprehension. She holds a Master’s degree in International Education Policy from Harvard Graduate of School of Education, where she focused on education initiatives for 21st-century demands and strategic management of education non-profits. At the Incubator, Diana works with faculty, staff, and other stakeholders to facilitate the development of new Incubator projects and guide their implementation using an Agile PM approach centered on design thinking.
Diane Carroll: Project Manager
Prior to joining Boston University, Diane managed product education projects at a large healthcare software company. With a focus on user experience, she led teams in designing and delivering scalable solutions that aligned to established learning principles and technologies. In addition to program and project management, Diane’s professional interests and experience include instructional design, process improvement, and change management. She holds a Master’s degree (Technical and Professional Writing) from Northeastern University and a Bachelor of Arts (Sociology) from the University of Virginia. Diane is an ESOL tutor with the Literacy Volunteers of Massachusetts.
Instructional Production Services
Nancy Bartlett: Manager, Instructional Production Services
Nancy leads the Instructional Production Services team in the design and development of digital courses for the Online MBA program as well as specialized projects from across Boston University. Nancy has more than 25 years in leading and facilitating the development of instructional and professional development materials across modalities including classroom and online, most recently at Harvard Business School Online. With a focus on broadening access to quality education, Nancy seeks to create and implement learning design and development processes and structures that enable the execution of innovative and effective teaching at scale. Nancy earned her MBA from the Questrom School of Business.
Robert (Bob) Heim: Educational Media Producer
Bob has been shooting and editing video for 25 years. After graduating from UMass Boston, he started his video career at a Boston television station editing movies for content. Over the years, some of the organizations he has worked for include the Boston Red Sox and the New England Patriots; shooting two World Series and four Super Bowls. Bob was a principal partner with Boston Digital Productions then set off on his own to create Mass Video Productions. His clients included Governmental Agencies, large and small businesses and many colleges and universities. While running his own business, Bob was able to focus on documentary film making that took him all over the world. In addition to working at DL&I as a Senior Media Producer, Bob currently teaches Cinematography at Boston College.
David Charpentier: Senior Instructional Multimedia Producer
David is an experienced media producer and editor. After graduating from UNC’s School of Architecture, David grew into a career of media production and design, which he later amped up with an MFA in Film and Media Production from Boston University’s College of Communication. Before joining the Digital Learning & Innovation team, David worked freelance in New York, shooting digital media, writing and producing theatrical films and television shows, and directing and editing a wide range of commercials, lifestyle videos and educational media. As a media producer and technologist at DL&I, David is interested in crafting inclusive, interactive education experiences that use a combination of traditional lectures, collaborative online environments, and the ever-expanding world of digital media.
Irene Su: Educational Media Producer
Irene joins the Digital Learning & Innovation team with a background in digital media making and teaching, as well as a passion for exploring how media can be used to enhance education. Her work has been shown internationally in places like the United States Institute of Peace, TED Talks, VICE, and IranWire. She has taught courses and workshops at the Rhode Island School of Design, Brown University, and Riverzedge Arts. Irene graduated from the Film/Animation/Video department at the Rhode Island School of Design. In 2014, Irene also completed the Fletcher Summer Institute on the Study of Nonviolent Resistance at Tufts University, focusing on how storytelling and video can be used for social change.
Peter Pa: Educational Media Producer
Peter is a media producer who’s invested in innovative digital learning content and technology that’s accessible to a diverse population. He utilizes visual design and media production to envision and build multimedia work that’s engaging and informative. Peter graduated from Rhode Island School of Design with a focus on video and motion graphics production.
Joshua Mackler: Digital Learning Designer
With a rich background in multimedia, Josh facilitates the pre and post-production phases of digital learning projects for faculty. He joins Instructional Production Services after 7 years of creating countless interactive training modules for multinational corporations, universities, and museums. He is passionate about utilizing cutting-edge technologies to increase learner engagement and outreach. Josh graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in New Media from SUNY Purchase College, focusing on video production and interactive programming.
Irena Fayngold: Digital Learning Designer
Irena Fayngold joins DLI’s Instructional Production Services with 20 years of experience in educational digital content creation. She has collaborated with faculty on professional studies and higher education online course design at Babson College, Brandeis University, Simmons University, Hebrew College, Tufts University, and Harvard Business Publishing. Her formative years were spent at WGBH, developing cutting-edge educational media and contributing to the design and development of the PBS platform, www.pbslearningmedia.org. Also a documentary filmmaker, her 2005 film Hineini was accepted at 50 film festivals worldwide and its accompanying educational curriculum was featured at over 300 community screenings. Irena’s passion is to drive educational innovation in support of learner experience and pedagogical goals.
Laura Nooney: Digital Learning Designer
As a digital learning designer within the IPS team in the Digital Initiatives group, Laura collaborates with faculty on creating engaging ways to teach and connect students with their curriculum through digital media and in the online learning environment. Her goal is to ensure faculty take full advantage of the affordances of digital tools to teach and convey passion for their subject matter. Laura’s approach to learning design is equal parts pedagogy and curiosity. After over a decade of educational game, lesson, and web design at GBH, she is a firm believer in experiential learning, deep listening, learner-centered design, and starting with a clear end in mind. Her community media center board experience with emerging and conventional media and three years on BU’s Marketing & Communications team afford her a unique understanding of what is possible in the digital media landscape within the context of the university ecosystem. She is passionate about the confluence of education, digital media, and innovative storytelling.
Caroline Holley: Digital Learning Designer
Caroline joins DL&I’s Instructional Production Services with 15 years of experience in teaching, educational content creation, and instructional design for higher education and adult learners. Her design work is informed by her experience teaching international politics in the SUNY system and collaborations on international virtual learning experiences with faculty from Universidad del Caribe in Mexico and Universidad Católica Andrés Bello in Venezuela She has designed learning experiences for SUNY, SNHU, and Johns Hopkins. She has been a consultant for the Open Society Foundations’ Global Drug Policy Program and began her career working in marketing and communications for the United Nations and several non-profits. She has an MA in International Relations from Columbia University and is pursuing a doctorate in Curriculum, Instruction and the Science of Learning at the University at Buffalo.
Sarah Seminski: Coordinator
Sarah coordinates digital media creation, instructional strategy and design in online/hybrid modalities and course production with the Instructional Production Services team with a focus on college, department and faculty initiated projects, as well as grant-funded initiatives and special projects. Previously, Sarah was a Program Manager at a global corporate and education consulting firm where she developed support team structure, workflow and best practices for coordinating logistics for workshops in US and abroad.