Michael E. Hansen
Chief Executive Officer

Michael E. Hansen is the Chief Executive Officer of Cengage Learning as of September 2012. As a thought leader in the information services sector, Mr. Hansen has an extensive track record in developing successful business models.

In the four years prior to joining Cengage Learning, he served as CEO of Elsevier Health Sciences, a division of Reed Elsevier. During his tenure, he developed and implemented a successful print–to–digital transition and accelerated new electronic product development.

Prior to Elsevier Health Sciences, Mr. Hansen served as President and CEO of Harcourt Assessment which was then the education arm of Reed Elsevier. Harcourt was unprofitable when he came aboard. Yet in a relatively short period of time, Mr. Hansen and his team were able to rejuvenate Harcourt’s growth and restore its profitability by combining new investments and undertaking intelligent cost cutting measures. This resulted in a lucrative sale of the business.

Early in his career, Mr. Hansen was Executive Vice President of Operational Excellence at Bertelsmann, a $20B global media company. In that capacity, he was responsible for the group–wide performance improvement initiative (BEX), setting the future strategic direction for the business. Prior to Bertelsmann, he served briefly as head of international operations at Proxicom, an internet focused technology company. Mr. Hansen spent the first 11 years of his career with the Boston Consulting Group in New York, ultimately becoming Partner and Co-Chairman of the e-Business and Media Practice.

Mr. Hansen holds a Master of Law degree from the University of Bonn in Germany and an MBA from Columbia University in New York.

Ronald G. Dunn
Chairman of the Board of Directors

Ronald G. Dunn is the Chairman of the Board of Directors for Cengage Learning, after previously serving as President and Chief Executive Officer.

Mr. Dunn was named President and CEO of Cengage Learning after the business, then Thomson Learning, was acquired by Apax Partners and OMERS Private Equity in July 2007, and he served in that role for five years. Earlier in his career, Mr. Dunn served as Chief Executive Officer of the Academic and International Group of Thomson Learning. Prior to joining Thomson Learning, he was President of the Information Industry Association (IIA), a trade association representing publishers and other information companies. Prior to IIA, Mr. Dunn was a business development consultant for the Educational and Professional Publishing Group at McGraw-Hill, and he also served as President of the McGraw-Hill College Division. From 1990 to 1993, he was President of Macmillan Publishing Company and Group Vice President of Macmillan, Inc., overseeing its electronic publishing companies.

Mr. Dunn began his career in 1972 with the American Chemical Society Chemical Abstracts Service Division. In 1986, he was named director of the Washington Operations for the American Chemical Society (ACS) where he was responsible for three of its major operating divisions – publications, education and membership.

Mr. Dunn holds a BA in Chemistry from Southern Illinois University and an MBA from Ohio State University.

Ken Carson
General Counsel

Ken Carson is General Counsel for Cengage Learning. In this role, he is responsible for managing the legal affairs of Cengage Learning's businesses worldwide, including responsibility for all legal aspects of acquisitions, divestitures, strategic alliances, litigation and dispute resolution. Mr. Carson also takes a leading role in the development of strategies for the acquisition and maintenance of intellectual property in support of growth initiatives. At the industry level, Mr. Carson is a member of the Association of American Publishers' Copyright Committee, providing an opportunity to influence industry-wide issues affecting Cengage Learning.

Mr. Carson joined The Thomson Corporation as Associate General Counsel in 1994, and was appointed Assistant General Counsel in 1998. In those roles, he worked for all Thomson businesses, including Thomson Learning, gaining broad experience in all aspects of information publishing. He became General Counsel of Thomson Learning, now Cengage Learning, in 2001 after acting as Thomson's lead in-house counsel in the Harcourt, Inc. acquisition.

Mr. Carson joined Thomson from Maxwell Macmillan, where he was assistant general counsel from 1989 to 1994. Prior to that, from 1985 to 1988, he was associated with the law firm of Gordon Feinblatt Rothman Hoffberger & Hollander, in Baltimore, Maryland. He also served as a law clerk at the Delaware Chancery Court from 1984 to 1985.

Mr. Carson received his law degree from the University of Maryland in 1984.

Jim Donohue
Chief Product Officer

Jim Donohue is the Chief Product Officer for Cengage Learning, reporting directly to the Chief Executive Officer. In this role, he oversees the development, ideation and creation of all Cengage Learning products. He also is responsible for establishing and maintaining an open collaboration between product development and the company’s users to ensure that all of Cengage Learning’s products meet and exceed the expectations of customers.

Prior to joining Cengage Learning, Mr. Donohue served as Managing Director of the Global Clinical Reference group at Elsevier Health Sciences. Among his key responsibilities was the management and coordination of Elsevier's ClinicalKey commercial product launch. Mr. Donohue began working at Elsevier in 2006 as Managing Director for Science and Technology Books and then as the Senior Vice President and General Manager of MD Consult.

Earlier in his career, he founded and served as Chief Executive Officer of NetDoctorUK, the U.K.'s leading internet health website and the fifth most recognized website in the U.K., and went on to serve as CEO of NetDoctor Europe. Mr. Donohue has also served as Vice President of EMEA at Times Mirror International Publishers, President of Simon and Schuster European Professional Publishing Group and Vice President of Marketing Higher Ed at Harper Collins.

Mr. Donohue holds a B.A. Honors in Political Science and Rhetoric from the University of Arizona, and an M.A. in Rhetoric and Public Address from the University of Iowa. He is based out of the Cengage Learning Boston, MA office.

Dean D. Durbin
Chief Financial Officer

Dean D. Durbin is the Chief Financial Officer for Cengage Learning and a member of the Cengage Learning Executive Committee. He oversees all financial functions for the company, along with warehousing and distribution, strategic partner management, manufacturing and inventory, technology services, real estate and facilities.

Mr. Durbin has more than 30 years of experience and a strong track record in finance and executive roles. Before joining Cengage Learning, he served as the Chief Financial and Chief Operating Officer of American Media, Inc., a publisher and distributor of newspapers and magazines. In the 10 years before joining American Media, Mr. Durbin served as Chief Financial Officer, Chief Operating Officer, and in his last two years as President and Chief Executive Officer of Vertis Communications, Inc., a marketing services company.

Earlier in his career Mr. Durbin served as Vice President and Chief Financial Officer for Thomson Professional Publishing, a division of The Thomson Corporation (now Thomson Reuters). Mr. Durbin first began his career at the McGraw-Hill Companies where, in his 20 years of service, he advanced through a variety of senior financial management positions in the company's publishing and information services divisions.

Mr. Durbin graduated from St. Francis University in Loretto, Pennsylvania with a BS in Accounting.

Mark Howe
Chief People Officer

Mark Howe is the Chief People Officer for Cengage Learning and a member of the Cengage Learning Executive Committee. In this role, he is responsible for all aspects of Human Resources within the organization, including overseeing and providing HR-related consultation and guidance to business leaders and employees, and helping to ensure that the company's global HR strategies and programs are aligned with overall business goals.

Mr. Howe has more than 25 years of experience in human resources. Prior to his current role, Mr. Howe served as Senior Vice President of Human Resources at Cengage Learning for five years, where he was charged with managing HR generalist functions across many of the company's U.S. offices. During his tenure he managed the HR integration of major corporate acquisitions, including Houghton Mifflin Harcourt College Division in 2008 and National Geographic School Publishing in 2011. In addition, he led multiple reorganizations of the business as it transitions from a collection of individual business units into a functional matrix business focused on a digital transformation.

Earlier in his career, Mr. Howe held various senior and management HR positions with Thomson Learning's Career & Professional Group, Matthew Bender & Co. (a subsidiary of Reed Elsevier), and Avon Products, Inc.

Mr. Howe holds an MBA in Human Resources Information Systems from the State University of New York at Albany and a BS in Business Administration from Cornell University.

George Moore
Chief Technology Officer

George Moore is the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for Cengage Learning, reporting directly to the Chief Executive Officer. In this role, he is responsible for shaping Cengage Learning’s long-term technology vision and focusing innovation across the company during a transformative time.

Mr. Moore is passionate about technology’s potential to revolutionize the publishing and education industries, and will focus his attention on partnering and collaborating with faculty and students to drive an "outside-in" approach to product development. In addition, he plans to actively collaborate with customers and partners to leverage technology to enhance the learning experience.

Prior to joining Cengage Learning, Mr. Moore served as CTO of Elsevier Health Science, where he was recruited to transform the world’s leading medical publishing company into a medical information company. During his tenure, he was instrumental in developing ClinicalKey, one of the most innovative and successful product introductions in the health-care information industry.

Earlier in his career, he was SVP of Product Development for Thomson Reuter's Healthcare organization, where he led the consolidation effort of the company’s disparate acquisitions into a consolidated product development organization. Mr. Moore has also held various roles with a number of commercial software companies. Most prominently, he was VP of Product Development at Liquent, the industry leader in Pharmaceutical Publishing and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software. At Liquent, he led the company’s efforts in defining how pharmaceutical companies would develop their information management systems that support drug discovery and approval, and also played a leading role in the sale and integration of Liquent into Thomson Reuters.

William D. Rieders
Chief Strategy and Business Development Officer

William Rieders is Chief Strategy and Business Development Officer for Cengage Learning. In this role, Mr. Rieders is focused on developing effective strategies for approaching our markets with emphasis on business modeling and forecasting techniques. He is charged with overseeing strategies for our distribution channels and for accelerating our international growth, while also leading the company's acquisition and partnership activities. Mr. Rieders is a member of the Cengage Learning Executive Committee.

Mr. Rieders was most recently a Partner of The Parthenon Group, a leading global strategy consulting firm. While at Parthenon, Mr. Rieders advised numerous clients across industries, including information publishing, education, and private equity. His work at Parthenon focused on corporate strategy, profit improvement, growth and innovation, and mergers & acquisitions.

While at Parthenon, Mr. Rieders was an advisor to Thomson Learning (now Cengage Learning). In this role, Mr. Rieders served a significant role in improving the overall growth and profitability of the business, including successfully integrating the acquisition of Harcourt, restructuring the sales force, driving changes to pricing, recommending profit improvement strategies, and prioritizing future growth opportunities. Mr. Rieders also brings a deep understanding of the education space where he has advised some of the most successful for-profit education players in the market.

In addition, Mr. Rieders has played integral roles in transforming a variety of information businesses, including healthcare, scientific, intellectual property, legal, and tax. In this capacity, Mr. Rieders successfully developed new electronic business models, identified adjacent markets, built strategies, and supported implementation efforts.

Prior to The Parthenon Group, Mr. Rieders was a manager with the Analysis Group (Integral), a management consulting firm focused on developing innovative growth strategies. Mr. Rieders holds a BA from Connecticut College, and an MBA/MSIA from Carnegie Mellon University.

Kevin Stone
Chief Sales and Marketing Officer

Kevin Stone is the Chief Sales and Marketing Officer for Cengage Learning, reporting directly to the Chief Executive Officer. In this role, he is responsible for all aspects of Sales and Marketing across the company, which have been integrated into one team under his new leadership role.

Mr. Stone joins Cengage Learning with more than 22 years of experience in the publishing industry, most recently serving as Chief Sales Officer of the Higher Education unit at Pearson. In this position, Mr. Stone played a strategic role in leading a team of over 900 sales professionals that consistently outperformed the industry. He played a central role in multiple sales reorganizations and realignments, and actively partnered with the CEO and executive team to shape and execute sales strategies and participate in strategic planning.

Earlier in his career, Mr. Stone worked at various subsidiaries of Pearson and held positions in editorial, marketing, technology and sales, helping him to gain insight into the many working parts that join together to create a world class sales and marketing team. Throughout his diverse career, he has gained invaluable insight into many aspects of publishing, education technology and higher education.

Mr. Stone is based in Boston, MA. He holds an MBA from Boston University’s Graduate School of Management and a BS in Marketing from Oswego State University of New York.