Richard Culatta is a leader in the field of educational innovation. He has worked in K-12, higher education, corporate, and government training environments. His current focus as Acting Director of the Office of Educational Technology for the U.S. Department of Education is on using data and learning analytics to create customized learning experiences for all students. Prior to joining the Department of Education, he served as an education policy advisor to U.S. Senator Patty Murray. Culatta also focuses on leveraging social media to create effective large-scale distributed learning environments. As Chief Technology Officer at CIA University, Culatta developed a collaborative online learning platform to extend training opportunities to CIA officers worldwide. Before his work with the federal government, Culatta was the learning technologies advisor for the David O. McKay School of Education at Brigham Young University and the Director of Operations for the Rose Education Foundation. He began working with instructional technology at the University of Rhode Island where he co-taught the university’s first technology integration workshops for faculty. Since then he has coached instructors and administrators in leveraging social media and data for learning, provided strategic consulting for organizations, and served on a variety of advisory boards across the U.S. and Latin America.