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Richard Datz: Vice President, General Manager
Rich Datz was vice president, sales and marketing, of Education World for three years prior to being named general manager. Before joining Education World, he was a sales and marketing leader for the McGraw-Hill Companies for 14 years. As McGraw-Hill's sales and marketing director, Datz was responsible for five sales and marketing units, including a 120-person worldwide sales team, the company's List Management Center, and an outbound telemarketing operation. Datz has extensive experience in developing and implementing sales plans and directing domestic and international growth initiatives. He has a track record of exceeding the revenue and NOI plans, and he has implemented successful e-business sales programs. Prior to being named a director at McGraw-Hill, Datz was general manager of worldwide circulation sales in the company's Information & Media Services segment. Datz has a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Glassboro State College and an MBA in marketing from Drexel University.

Forrest Stone: Executive Editor in Chief
Forrest Stone came to Education World from Weekly Reader Corporation, where he was vice president and editor in chief of Lifetime Learning Systems, a leading publisher of sponsored curriculum materials. During Stone's tenure, the company set new revenue and profit records each year from 1998 through 2000. He previously served as executive editor of Weekly Reader, supervising the editorial function of the nation's oldest and most-widely circulated periodical for schoolchildren. He created "HearAmerica," an innovative program covering the 1996 presidential election, for which he conducted exclusive interviews with all the major candidates. He also created Weekly Reader Galaxy, the first Web site to win the EdPress Golden Lamp Award, the highest honor in educational publishing. A faculty member of the Yale Summer Program, he teaches screenwriting and playwriting. Other editorial positions have included editor in chief of Sundance Publishers, where he created 122 new K-12 titles in 24 months, and editor of Scholastic Voice, a literature magazine for teens. At Scholastic, Stone also created Storyworks magazine. A Harvard graduate in creative writing and a Yale School of Drama graduate in playwriting, Stone was also a filmmaker at Robert Redford's Sundance Institute.

Gary Hopkins: Founder, Editor in Chief
Gary Hopkins joined Education World after eight years with Weekly Reader, the national weekly children's periodical, where he served as managing editor of the third and fourth grade editions. His responsibilities included planning the content of the student and teacher editions and managing the teams that produced them. Hopkins's Weekly Reader career began in 1989, when he was hired as associate editor of the second and third grade editions. He was promoted to editor of the third grade edition in 1992, then managing editor in 1994. Before joining Weekly Reader, Hopkins taught third grade and Adult Basic Education (ABE) in the Middletown (Connecticut) public schools. He holds a degree in K-8 education from the University of Southern Maine and has done graduate work in special education and school administration. In addition, he has presented numerous workshops on integrating the Internet into classroom instruction, individualizing student instruction, using learning contracts in the classroom, and other topics at local, state, and regional education conferences.

Linda Starr: Curriculum & Technology Editor
Linda Starr joined Education World in 1997 as a contract writer and became a full-time member of the EW editorial team in 1999. Ms. Starr came to Education World from McGraw Hill's School Software Division, where she worked first as a documentation editor writing and editing teacher guides for curriculum-based software programs. She then became an instructional designer, where she developed and wrote interactive lessons and activities for K-8 math, science, social studies, and reading software. At McGraw Hill, Starr also served as director of field research. In that capacity, she developed criteria and procedures for a school-based field-testing program, supervised software testing at various stages of development, and prepared field test reports and program development recommendations for the entire design team. Ms. Starr, a former first grade teacher, began her educational publishing career at Weekly Reader, where she served first as editor of the second grade edition, and later as editor of the fifth grade edition of that national classroom news magazine. The mother of four grown children, Starr holds a degree in elementary education from St. Joseph College in West Hartford, Connecticut, and numerous graduate credits, both in education and in instructional design.

Ellen Delisio: Editor, News & Features
Ellen R. Delisio is Education World’s editor of news and features. She came to Education World in September 2000 after working for two daily newspapers in Connecticut for 11 years where she developed an interest in education issues while covering local school districts. Ms. Delisio also had a brief stint as a police reporter, and won a second place award for contributing to a breaking story about a murder. She also taught an after school journalism course for third-through-fifth graders for three years, and helped the students publish a school newspaper.

Prior to moving to Connecticut from her home state of New York, Ms. Delisio spent almost four years as the editor of The Westbury Times, a weekly newspaper in Nassau County, New York, and earned a first-place award for education reporting. Ms. Delisio has a B.A. in communications from Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pa., and an M.A. in newspaper journalism from Syracuse University.