XanEdu works to inspire the education community with innovative solutions to build affordable, accessible learning experiences that drive student success.
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We envision a XanEdu solution in every instructional environment because we believe students succeed when relevant and accessible educational experiences are tailored to their learning communities.
What drives us:
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By working with college bookstores, university faculty, school administration, and K-12 school districts, millions of students use XanEdu learning materials.
Since 1999 we have provided a wide range of custom options for formatting and creating content, and distributing educational materials—improving the student experience by making it more relevant and affordable.
Whatever your learning needs, XanEdu can help.
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In addition to the good work we do for our customers and their students, XanEdu actively works to have a positive influence on the world. Some of the ways we put those words into action:
Annual Food Drives:
Gleaners Food Bank
Feed America
Educational Donations:
United Negro College Fund (UNCF)
Mid-West Education Trust
Environmental Initiatives:
Arbor Day Tree Planting
Big thanks to @XanEdu for working with our curriculum team to create over 400,000 learning support materials for NHA students during COVID-19. We appreciate the high-quality materials and record turnaround. We’re so grateful for your team’s hard work & dedication.
Often, teachers feel like they should stick with the exact language in the textbook, but our open custom solution provides an opportunity to adapt [the material] and make it appropriate for the students in their classroom.
We choose to use XanEdu because of their excellent customer service and hassle-free returns policy. I have over 10 years of experience doing business with XanEdu and have never been let down. We highly recommend using XanEdu to all our colleagues.
Not only is the custom organization of the units more impactful for student achievement, but the strategies used to unpack a text or create a piece of writing have helped our teachers improve their practice.
XanEdu was a pleasure to work with as we put together a custom course reader for a large class of 500 students. (They) were consummate professionals throughout, listening to our needs, setting clear time lines, and keeping us on track with everything that needed to be done.
John DeBoer
Chief Executive Officer
As Chief Executive Officer of XanEdu Publishing, John oversees the global products and services operations. Prior to accepting the role as Chief Executive Officer, John served as XanEdu’s Chief Financial Officer. Previously, John served as CFO at Applimation, Inc., a world-wide provider of application data management software that was acquired by Informatica in early 2009.
His experience at Applimation included all facets of financial management, from acquisitions to international tax to treasury management. John also worked for Allied Domecq and Price Waterhouse.
John earned his Bachelor’s degree from Central Michigan University, has completed executive studies at the University of Michigan and Babson College, and is a registered Certified Public Accountant in the State of Michigan.
(Photo credit: Ginger Liemohn Photography)
Brett Costello
Chief Business Development Officer
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.
Kevin Woodman
Senior Vice President, Manufacturing and Production
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.
(Photo credit: Ginger Liemohn Photography)
Marc Steinberg
Chief Technology Officer
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.
(Photo credit: Ginger Liemohn Photography)
Tom Stevens
Chief Financial Officer
Tom joined XanEdu in 2020 as Chief Financial Officer following several years as the CFO for RS Energy Group, a private equity owned technology company. Prior to RSEG, he was the CFO for Crain Communications, a privately held media company, and VP of Finance at ProQuest, leading their digital content publishing efforts.
He has also held executive level positions with publicly traded entities, including Pulte Homes and Borders Group, was an equity analyst with Manning & Napier Advisors, worked in M&A with Deloitte, and began his career as a CPA with Ernst & Young.
Tom has an MBA from the UCLA Anderson School of Management, and a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Michigan State University.
(Photo credit: Ginger Liemohn Photography)
Sharon Norris
Vice President, Human Resources
As Vice President 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.
Rich Foley
Senior Vice President, Sales and Marketing
As the Senior Vice President of Strategy and Corporate Development, Rich brings more than 25 years of experience in the education sector, with executive-level sales expertise working with colleges and universities, K-12 Districts, public and academic libraries, and for-profit organizations across the country.
A key part of XanEdu’s management team, Rich works to expand opportunities in XanEdu’s custom publishing solutions, seek strategic partnerships and assist in developing digital and custom sales.
(Photo credit: Ginger Liemohn Photography)
Joyce Mueller
Vice President of Marketing
Effective educational experiences can transform lives and Joyce is thrilled to lead marketing for XanEdu's K-12 and Higher Education teams. The marketing team works diligently to translate customer insights and trends into actionable, measurable and impactful marketing programs.
Joyce's journey has taken her through a diverse array of industries including education, consumer services and manufacturing. This broad base gives her an expansive viewpoint from which to challenge teams to find innovative ways to reach customers and bring relevant products to market.
Joyce feels the opportunity to play a role in advancing affordable education tools that complements evolving learning styles brings nonstop, intriguing business challenges that are incredibly fulfilling.
(Photo credit: Ginger Liemohn Photography)
John Carroll
Senior Vice President, Product Development
John has joined XanEdu as the SVP, Product Management & Strategy. In his 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.
(Photo credit: Ginger Liemohn Photography)
Lance Westbrook
Senior Vice President, Corporate and Business Development
Lance is responsible for the SharedBook business unit and our Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions for Training Firms, L&D organizations, Associations and Publishers. Since joining XanEdu in 2013 Lance has played a key role developing new market segments and managing strategic opportunities.
Lance has 20+ years of sales management and strategic alliances experience with leading Learning Technology vendors, enterprise application providers and software startups.
Lance served as Vice President, Business Development at Applimation (now Informatica) as Director of Alliances at Sybase and as Director of Business Development at Docent (now SumTotal Systems).
Lance graduated from Boston University’s School of Management and resides in greater Boston.
Aaron Meyers
Vice President, Operations
As the Vice President of Operations, Aaron Meyers oversees fulfillment and customer service for all of our Higher Ed and K-12 customers. Aaron has been with XanEdu for seven years, has a passion for our people, and is driven by providing the best customer experience possible.
Aaron has been in the publishing industry for almost 20 years and has a wealth of experience in operations, account management and customer service. He has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan and a graduate degree from the University of San Francisco.
(Photo credit: Ginger Liemohn Photography)
Hilary Mitchell
Vice President, User Experience and Design
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.
Dave Schroeter
Vice President, K-12 Sales
Dave has 15+ years of sales and sales leadership experience in K-12 education, public libraries, federal and state government, corporate and higher education markets. His proven leadership style has resulted in the positive transformation of numerous sales and services organizations.
Leading with a results-oriented approach, that emphasizes personal accountability, strategic thinking, and hard work, has resulted in the consistent delivery of financial commitments. Additionally, Dave has extensive experience in helping organizations leverage their investment in Customer Relationship Management, CRM, software. Having both sold and led the implementation of CRM software, Dave possesses the insights and knowledge on how these tools can truly help improve an organization’s effectiveness.
Prior to joining XanEdu Dave managed his own consulting firm. He has also held numerous positions with increasing responsibilities, most recently as Senior Vice President of Sales & Services at Follett School Solutions and Gale, a division of Cengage Learning. He has also held positions at Proquest and Siebel Solutions Systems prior to that organization be acquired by Oracle Software.
Dave holds a Bachelor of Science from the University of Toledo and a Masters in Education from Eastern Michigan University.
(Photo credit: Ginger Liemohn Photography)
Jason Plackowski
Vice President, Finance
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.
(Photo credit: Ginger Liemohn Photography)
Jerry Friends
Director of Operations, K-12
Jerry has experience managing just about every aspect of book publishing, including editing & design, eCommerce & wholesale distribution, print manufacturing, and supply chain management.
As Director of K-12 Operations, Jerry leads the K-12 team responsible for guiding projects through to completion, ensuring thoughtful and efficient execution and timely delivery.
(Photo credit: Ginger Liemohn Photography)
Kate Newlin
Director of Operations, Higher Education
Kate Newlin is the Director of Operations for Higher Education, overseeing coursepack production for all Higher Ed customers. She started at XanEdu in 2014 building coursepacks for a few select schools and has worked her way up to her present role leading the team. She brings this experience and perspective to her role, ensuring her team has the tools and processes they need to perform at the highest level of operational excellence in meeting the needs of customers.
Kate moved to Ann Arbor in 2011 to attend graduate school at University of Michigan and is one of those people who never left.
(Photo credit: Ginger Liemohn Photography)
Beth Firenze
Director of Marketing, Higher Education
Beth is responsible for the development and execution of XanEdu’s Higher Education marketing strategy. She brings a unique blend of agency and client-side experience to her role. Most recently, Beth spent the last 6 years at Gale, a Cengage company leading the market launch of multiple e-learning solutions for K-12 schools and academic institutions.
Prior to Gale, Beth worked in ad agencies in both Chicago and Madison, where she accumulated a wide range of multi-channel experience activating the creative development process in service of her client partners.
Beth enjoys snowboarding, pampering her two cats, and exploring our country’s national parks and monuments.
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(Photo credit: Ginger Liemohn Photography)
Chris Posa
Director of Marketing, K-12
Chris is responsible for the development and execution of XanEdu’s K-12 marketing strategy. He believes some of the most effective education occurs when students can learn “in context” with relevant, meaningful curriculum materials.
Chris has worked in the education community for more than 15 years, serving both higher-ed and K-12 institutions and believes that educators are some of the most underappreciated and underpaid people on the planet.
Chris earned his undergraduate degree from Eastern Michigan University and his MBA from Walsh College.
(Photo credit: Ginger Liemohn Photography)
Mandy Gagel
Managing Editor, Higher Education and Custom Books
Mandy Gagel is Managing Editor for Custom Books and Higher Education. She leads the Custom Books editorial team and oversees the production of approximately 150 custom and OER titles a year.
Mandy has over 15 years of experience as an editor for scholarly publications and textbooks for colleges and universities. She holds a PhD in scholarly editing from Boston University, and prior to joining the XanEdu team worked as an editor for a number of university publishing projects, including the Mark Twain Project at UC-Berkeley.
Mandy loves working with our authors to discuss and craft their custom books and is happy to share her knowledge about textbook publishing with them.
(Photo credit: Ginger Liemohn Photography)
Don Yowchuang
Director of Sales, Higher Education
As the National Sales Director for Higher Education, Don leads our talented team of Sales Consultants in growing our traditional custom solutions business and in strategically expanding our new digital courseware offering, FlexEd. Don brings valuable experience in creating and transforming sales teams utilizing change management strategies and fundamentals.
Prior to joining XanEdu, he created and led new sales teams, from the ground up, based on new go to market strategies for Staples Business Advantage. Don earned his Bachelor’s degree from Central Michigan University.
(Photo credit: Ginger Liemohn Photography)
Mike Kesson
Director of Print and Fulfillment
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.
(Photo credit: Ginger Liemohn Photography)
Tamra Tuller
Managing Editor, K-12
Tamra Tuller, Managing Editor, joined the XanEdu K-12 team in May 2019. Prior to that, she was Creative Director for the Publishing Services department at Thomson-Shore in Dexter, Michigan, as well as being an acquisitions editor in New York and San Francisco for companies like Scholastic, Penguin, and Chronicle Books, where she specialized in editing middle-grade and young adult novels as well as children’s picture books.
Throughout the course of her career, she has edited and worked with New York Times bestselling authors and illustrators as well as National Book Award-winners, and she traveled internationally speaking at conferences for authors and publishers.
(Photo credit: Ginger Liemohn Photography)
Kelly Wozniak
Production Manager, K-12 Guidebooks
As K-12 Guidebooks Production Manager Kelly builds and organizes the materials and process guidebook orders. She has been with XanEdu for 3.5 years and started journey in Higher Education as an Account Representative.
Last year Kelly made the move to work with the K-12 team. She has two dogs and lives in Kentucky.
Jim Agostine
Customer Service Manager
Jim is responsible for overseeing XanEdu’s Support team, which provides customer and technical assistance to our end users across multiple product lines. He brings nearly 30 years of experience in managing customer-facing support groups, and has been with XanEdu for the last 16 years.
