about ollie
As Road Runner's Director of Product Design, Annette mastered all things online, overseeing everything from design, production, content development and feature writing, to third-party product integration, QA, co-branding, and product migration. She left the company in 2001 and founded Gildea Media Group -- now known as Ollie Interactive.
Annette has served the National Academy of Engineering's "Women in Engineering" program since 2000 as a member of their Advisory Committee. She has appeared on NPR's "Diane Rehm Show" as a subject matter expert on women in Internet technology, and is currently a member of the Board of Directors for Habitat for Humanity of Northern Virginia. She holds an M.A. from Temple University, and has studied art and design at the Parson's School of Design in NYC, where her favorite color was and still is PMS021.
Alex
Alex worked professionally as a computer systems admin for several years before transitioning into the web arena. Armed with an abiding love of perfect summers and a fondness for precipitation, Alex made his home in the Northwest, helping form the left coast arm of the Ollie powerhouse. As part of the Ollie team he commonly click clacks teammate's graphic concepts into html and css reality. When not tapping keys Alex soars around his rainy burg in a recumbant trike and enjoys demolishing his online enemies with well-placed TV cam shots.
Carolyn
Carolyn is the tenth of eleven children, which is likely why she's highly skilled at managing projects, developing and improving processes and systems, and managing logistics. She has worked in the field of distance learning, responsible for managing content for more than 125 courses in a variety of formats. She also managed distribution logistics -- no small feat, getting course content and multimedia from development through production and into the hands of the universities that licensed the products. She may speak softly, but we all think she carries a big stick -- somewhere.
Daniel
Dan has a knack for bringing order out of chaos -- not that there's any chaos at Ollie, but we all believe we have Dan to thank for that. After 9-11, he helped create the database to answer questions aimed at the Department of Transportation -- the first agency to tell people what to do in the hours after the attacks. He's also run the Archives at the National Academy of Sciences, and put Donald Trump's home mortgage files on microfilm. THAT's how organized he is.
Jacquie
Jacquie joined Ollie Interactive months ago, and hit the ground running so fast she has yet to post her bio. Check back later -- we'll keep on her about it!
John Patrick
John Patrick (or JPP) writes the words that make the whole world click. Or flip. Or call. Whatever the required result, he's coaxed it out of readers of websites and magazines across the world, including the in-flight magazine of Continental and Boston Magazine. As an editor, he has delivered spark and flare to communications for companies such as General Motors, Coca-Cola, Adobe, IBM, ITT Technical Institute, and the U.S. Army. This American Life's Ira Glass once left him a voicemail -- the very same week that David Sedaris sent him a postcard. Weird.
Laura
Laura is a jane-of-all-trades. She has worked as a promotions coordinator, a data analyst, a quality assurance manager, and a speech-language pathologist. She's brought her skills to companies such as StarBand Communications, Road Runner, Price Waterhouse Coopers, and Georgetown University Hospital. But her favorite job of all is raising her daughter Emily to be a confident, loving, self-assured girl who eats all her broccoli.
Reed
Reed's web work is a perfect extension of his love of visual expression, and his childhood habit of taking apart toys to build new ones. He has worked with PBS as a web technologist in the e-commerce and catalog areas, ShopPBS, and TeacherLine -- a resource offering professional development for educators nationwide. Reed also has a feather in his cap not many other developers do: a degree in fine art. He's the optimum left-brain right-brain guy.
Sam
Sam is like the Swiss Army knife of graphic design. He can switch from web to print to video to audio to architecture and back to web with ease. Since 1998 he's worked for the likes of Discovery Channel, Network Solutions, and Washington Post among others. For nearly 10 years he played professional basketball (!) for his native country. He still plays basketball today, but rather than getting paid for it he has to pay to play. How times have changed.