Founders & Associates
The FutureU™ Team
The FutureU™ team includes more than 50 organizational consultants, technology experts, and course content developers and instructors. Most have extensive experience in business education, technology-mediated learning, community building, and organizational management and communications.
On this page, you will find biographies and photographs of selected FutureU™ associates. To learn more about each associate, use any of the following links:
| Roberto Aponte Bob Browning Hidetake Enomoto David Ferrera |
David M. Fetterman Sylvia Cowan Gail Terry Grimes Susan Marcus |
Chris Mays Steven Saltzberg Claude Whitmyer |
FutureU™ Co-Founders
Gail Terry Grimes (CEO and chief creative officer) had been an independent communications consultant to organizations for 25 years before launching FutureU™ with Claude Whitmyer in 1997.
Today, Ms. Grimes draws on all these experiences to oversee FutureU’s team of specialists and to assist clients in the planning, implementation, and analysis of communication and learning activities that will help them reach their ideal future.
During the mid-1990s, she was the communications consultant to a $52 million Internet startup with a not-for-profit mission related to the humanistic use of technology for improved communications. This project laid the groundwork for her work with FutureU.
Since founding FutureU™ with Claude Whitmyer in 1997, she has focused increasingly on Web-based content creation, delivery and program strategy. She is the author, designer and frequent presenter of numerous FutureU™ webinars and face-to-face workshops, including:
- “How to Wow ‘Em with PowerPoint”
- “The Art (Not the Science) of Teaching with Technology”
- “Course Mapping and Storyboarding”
- “The Best of the Web’s (Ever-Evolving) Resources for Teaching”
- “Accommodating Learning Styles in the Virtual Classroom”
With Mr. Whitmyer, she has used this and other content to train numerous university faculties—from California to Puerto Rico and from Canada to Saudi Arabia.
While Mr. Whitmyer is an internationally known expert on the new technologies for education and communications, Ms. Grimes specializes in the art of communicating, teaching and learning with the new tools. Her presence as a “non-techie” in the classroom, and her ability to simplify and explain technical skills and concepts, are especially reassuring and helpful to beginners and instructors in the arts, humanities and social sciences. At the same time, her attention to “soft skills” raises the bar for instructional design and communication in the new media among more technologically inclined faculty and staff members.
Claude Whitmyer (President) is a veteran business educator and organizational consultant who has served more than 2,000 clients in several hundred corporations, non-profits, and small businesses.
His consulting focus has encompassed:
- Strategic planning
- Market research
- Corporate communications
- Executive and management coaching
- Instructional design and curriculum development for organizational learning and individual advancement
- Computer mediation
- Management systems automation
- Computer systems design
In the early 1990s he was the founding director of one of the first online graduate business programs in the U.S.
Mr. Whitmyer has authored three books:
FutureU™ Associates
Roberto Aponte, M.A. (consulting associate) brings to his work an in-depth combination of skills in communication technologies and their application for personal and organizational development. He is an experienced event producer and training facilitator who has also delivered training programs in team development, communications skills, and strategic planning for both corporate and non-profit organizations, including Kaiser Permanente, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, Xerox, Courtyard Residence Inn, and Mariott Hotels. He previously spent 12 years with Mariott, culminating in a dual role as a manager providing audiovisual support and technical innovation for meetings, conferences, and conventions as well as facilitation of training and organizational development workshops.
Bob Browning, BSEE (senior associate), provides management advisory services and business process outsourcing to clients and their stakeholders worldwide. He specializes in providing the consulting, training, and outsourcing required for effective live online training and events, such as classes and webinars.
Mr. Browning has used a large number of applications including Zoom, Saba/Centra; WebEx Meeting Center, Training Center, and Event Center; Elluminate; Genesys; Microsoft Office Live Meeting; Citrix GoToWebinar; and several small niche-market applications.
Recent engagements include producing continuing education webinars for the members of a professional organization and delivering software development tools and processes training to software engineers at R&D locations around the world for a major telecommunications company.
Bob earned a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering (BSEE) degree from North Carolina State University (NCSU) and is a licensed Professional Engineer (PE) in North Carolina. He holds a certificate of completion for a course of instruction in synchronous facilitation presented by the Learning Times InSync Center.
Sylvia Cowan, Ph.D. (senior consulting associate) has more than 30 years of experience working in the field of education and professional development with educational institutions and the intersection with private and public sectors. She has taught and provided professional development seminars to more than 2000 educators. She directed training services and developed an international network of trainers for two major intercultural consulting firms serving Fortune 500 companies. She conducted a major international development training project for 492 professionals—university professors and business owners/managers in a variety of industries—and led international projects on conflict resolution and multicultural understanding for leaders in human services, education and government.
Hidetake Enomoto (consulting associate) single handedly introduced career coaching to his native Japan. In a culture that has not traditionally valued individual fulfillment, his seminars and workshops on the meaning of work struck a chord with professionals there. Following his success with coaching in Japan, Hide spent several years researching eco-villages, living for three years at the Findhorn intentional community in Scotland. He is currently involved with the Transition Towns green metro movement in Japan.
Mr. Enomoto is available for cross-cultural workshops and teleconferences on new developments in the Japanese workplace, community building, and eco-villages. He is author of Coaching (PHP, 1999) and translator of the Japanese edition of Jessica Lipnack’s and Jeffrey Stamps’ Virtual Teams.
David A. Ferrera, M.A., (consulting and training associate) is a member of FutureU’s virtual team-building project. Mr. Ferrera also works with senior management teams as a meeting facilitator, strategist and team performance specialist. He has been educating adults in for-profit and non-profit training programs for more than ten years, drawing on his varied background in information technologies, training development and training delivery.
He holds a Masters of Arts in Business and a certificate in Organizational Development and Transformation, from the California Institute of Integral Studies. David was personally trained by FutureU™principle Claude Whitmyer in our unique online facilitation methodologies. His clients have included Birkenstock USA, Whole Foods Market, the Yosemite National Institutes, Black Rock City L.L.C., and the National Coalition for Environmental Education.
David M. Fetterman, Ph.D. (consulting associate) is Director of Evaluation, Career Development, and Alumni Relations at Stanford University.
From 1993 to 2003 he was Director of the Master of Arts in Policy Analysis and Evaluation in Stanford’s School of Education.
Prior to that, he was a Principal Research Scientist at the American Institutes for Research.
David is a past-President of the American Evaluation Association.
In addition, he is a past president of the American Anthropological Association’s Council on Anthropology and Education.
Formerly, Fetterman served as a senior administrator at Stanford, a Senior Researcher at RMC Research Corporation, and a Director of an Anti-poverty program.
Dr. Fetterman has extensive online teaching experience and has developed numerous research and education courses for partial or full online delivery. Currently, he is a leading developer and advocate for a new ethnographic research tool called “empowerment evaluation,” designed to help people help themselves.
Dr. Fetterman has contributed to numerous journals and encyclopedias and has authored several books, including Speaking the Language of Power: Communication, Collaboration, and Advocacy.
Susan Marcus, Ph.D. (executive associate) is a specialist in planning and strategy, with a current focus on innovative applications for the World Wide Web and effective Internet strategies for business and business education. Clients recognize her as a skilled facilitator and organizer of complex projects on tight deadlines. Dr. Marcus has designed and directed marketing surveys, focus group projects, needs assessments, studies on the outcomes of medical treatments, and computer software and clinical information systems. She developed a national online health information service for consumers and health care professionals and produced customized health information as source materials for audio tapes. Her graduate training in psychology and her 15 years of project management for business and government have prepared her to coordinate diverse client projects for FutureU™. She also worked with FutureU™ co-founder Gail Terry Grimes in the mid-1990s, on the $52 million Internet startup for which Gail was the primary communications consultant.
Chris Mays, MLIS, (consulting associate) is an activist and advocate for open access to technology-mediated information sources. In 1996, the Northern California chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists awarded Mr. Mays the James Madison Freedom of Information Award for his development of the California Electronic Government Information Project, an extensive State knowledge base now available to the public over the Internet. A summa cum laude graduate of San Francisco State University, with a B.S. in Business Administration with a concentration in small business entrepreneurial management, he is a librarian at San Francisco State University.
Steven Saltzberg, M.S., (senior consulting associate) has many years of experience as an independent consultant on distance learning and instructional technology programs and grants. Before that Steven was a Vice-President at Blackboard, and President and co-founder of madDuck Technologies, the creators of Web Course in a Box. He was also formerly the CIO at Randolph-Macon College and Director of the Multimedia Development Center and Academic Campus Computing Services at Virginia Commonwealth University. Saltzberg previously held positions in education, health care, and industry. Steve holds a Master of Science degree and a Bachelors of Arts degree from the University of California at Los Angeles. He has presented nationally at conferences and workshops on a diverse range of issues in higher education. In addition Steve has taught several college level courses (statistics, calculus, computing, Computer Aided Instruction), and advanced algebra at the high school level.
Directory of FutureU™ Associates
Click on an associate’s name to jump to their biography.
Co-Founders
— Grimes, Gail Terry
— Whitmyer, Claude
Associates
— Aponte, Roberto
— Browning, Bob
— Cowan, Sylvia
— Enomoto, Hidetake
— Ferrera, David
— Fetterman, David
— Marcus, Susan
— Mays, Chris
— Saltzberg, Steven