Co-founder and Chairman, Matthew Pittinsky is a recognized leader in the field of online education and, particularly, on the Internet's impact at institutions of higher education. He is credited with an early vision of the need for an open standard platform powering online learning environments and he is as an early member in the EDUCAUSE IMS standards project.
Pittinsky is responsible for the company's initial vision, born of research conducted at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. His background includes training as a social studies teacher, and he comes from a family of educators.
Pittinsky is responsible for developing Blackboard's business strategy, managing several company divisions, establishing strategic business alliances within the education and technology industries, and serving as Blackboard's chief evangelist to the education and financial communities. He spends much of his time meeting with faculty, students, university CIOs and others to align Blackboard's strategy with the technical and pedagogical needs of educators.
Before founding Blackboard, he served clients of KPMG Peat Marwick's Higher Education Consulting Practice, the world's largest professional services firm serving colleges and universities. In this capacity, Pittinsky led the firm's entry into online learning in the higher education marketplace.
As Chairman of Blackboard, Matthew has served on numerous panels and presented at industry conferences for such organizations as EDUCAUSE, the Harvard Business School and the Software Publishers Association. In 1999, Pittinsky was named by Washington Business Forward as among 'The People to Watch' in the capital region business community. He was also featured among the regionŐs under-40 tech leaders in Washingtonian Magazine. In addition to authoring numerous articles, Pittinsky is often quoted in major media outlets including The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, Educom Review, The Industry Standard, Reuters Newswire, CNN Online, CNNfn, the Associated Press and Architectural Digest. He was recently named to the advisory board of Syllabus2000, a prestigious education technology forum.