Daniel Williamson

About Daniel Williamson

As Managing Director of Rice University’s OpenStax, I’ve led one of the most impactful…

Experience

1. Managing Director

   Openstax, Rice University

   Jul 2012 — Present

   Managed day-to-day operations of OpenStax, which provides freely available, openly licensed textbooks and advanced learning technologies to over 2 million learners each month. • Established and branded company mission, values and operational protocols for a fast-growing, non-profit start-up. • Led strategic hiring and staffing for a fast growing team, which expanded from 6 FTE\'s to more than 60 over 2 years. • Initiated and successfully advanced legislative strategy for the state of Texas, resulting new laws that encourage adoption of openly licensed textbooks and fund new freely available and openly licensed textbooks for k12 students. • Secured significant philanthropic support to author a library of digital textbooks, build state-of-the-art educational technologies and conduct extensive R&D on personalized learning. • Diversified funding base adding 9 new foundation partners, state contracts, and expanded earned revenue opportunities. • Cultivated ecosystem of for-profit and non-profit partners that provide value-add services around OpenStax\'s core products and in return agree to pay mission support fees to support OpenStax\'s on-going sustainability. • Conceptualized and launched OpenStax intern program, which now engages approximately 25 student interns who contribute substantially to core project development and also participate in a creative summer design project resulting in new ideas for OpenStax expansion every summer. • Grew adopting user base from 0 to 1.6M current term students in 5 years (averaging 100% growth each year), saving students more than $340M on textbook costs. • Achieved greater than 46% market penetration into all degree granting US institutions of higher education in under 5 years.

Education

• Rice Business

  Master of Business Administration - MBA

Skills

• Multimedia
• Start-Ups
• Social Media
• Integration
• Operations Management
• Software Documentation
• Strategic Partnerships
• System Testing
• Editing
• Xml
• Test Planning
• E-Learning
• Strategic Communications
• Data Analysis
• Leadership
• Project Management
• Training
• Higher Education
• Content Management
• Proposal Writing
• Content Strategy
• Content Development
• Analysis
• Databases
• Publishing
• Grant Writing
• Digital Media
• Usability Testing
• Technical Writing
• Research
• Educational Technology
• Management
• Nonprofits
• Web Content
• Teaching