Update: Lois Brooks now has a blog post up about the transition as well.
Well, I’m sad but not surprised to report that Michael Korcuska has been wooed by an organization with deep pockets to take on a very important role. The founder of LinkedIn, who is apparently a personal friend of Michael’s, invited him in for an interview and the inevitable happened. He was offered a job as their global head of customer operations, with a deal that was too sweet for him to turn down. Michael will be departing as Sakai’s Executive Director as of March 15th. The announcement is here and Michael’s poignant blog post about it is here.
We are very lucky that Stanford’s Lois Brooks has agreed to step in as interim Executive Director. As you may know, Lois just finished serving her second term on the Sakai Foundation Board and has been an instrumental force in Sakai’s development from early on. We are lucky to have her leadership to help ensure that the transition is a smooth one.
Sakai has made great strides during the three years of Michael’s tenure. During that time, project development communications and coordination have vastly improved, quality assurance has taken huge strides, teachers have taken a much more central role in the Sakai community, and the future of the platform has brightened considerably with the start of the Sakai 3 project. Michael had a hand in all of those improvements. Sakai—both the project and the community—has grown tremendously under his leadership.
Michael, you will be missed. But, thanks to the great work that you and the community have done over the past three years, Sakai is going to be just fine.
