Prior to joining Scriyb, Mr. Christopher Etesse, as CEO, completed a 3-year restructuring of FlatWorld Inc. He relocated the former freemium publisher from upstate New York to Washington, DC, rebuilt the team, and pivoted the company into a new opportunity called competency-based learning.

Prior to joining FlatWorld, Chris has provided a shaping hand to the technological evolution within higher education, developing the first LMS at Thompson Publishing (now Cengage) called World Class Syllabus (acquired by Pearson) and as one of the founding employees (#20) at Blackboard, where he helped architect some of their most successful web-based products and ran the International Services business over an eight-year tour. Earlier in his career, Chris served in leadership positions that included CEO of Kadoo, a cloud based consumer internet play allowing users to truly control their stuff online (applications, social and content), the Chief Technology Officer at Presidium, an innovator in higher education strategic enrollment management, financial aid and student services, that was later acquired by Blackboard (becoming Blackboard Student Services), where he became CTO and SVP of Strategic Accounts.

Working to advance the state of technology in education, Chris has helped draft a number of open software standards, is named on numerous patents, and has served on the technical advisory board of the IMS Global Learning Consortium. He also currently serves on the University of Kentucky, College of Engineering, Dean’s Advisory Council, and has previously served on the Board of Trustees for Loudoun Country Day School. With 18 years of leadership in driving business model and product innovations for the education market, Chris brings a unique perspective on what the next-gen virtual educational landscape will look like, and how learning can be improved with the cloud, AI, social, and peer-to-peer learning, but that the ‘teacher and the student’ are still at the heart of the learning experience.