D2L
Careers
Professional Services and Support

D2L Careers

Professional Services and Support

The Professional Services and Support team surrounds customers with the necessary support to help them meet and exceed their learning goals at each phase of the journey: Onboard and Launch Services, Customer Success and Technical Support, Learning and Creative Services and Premium Services (Technical Account Management, Learning Administration Management, and Data Solutions Consulting). Interested in learning more?

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How does Professional Services and Support make an impact at D2L?

Once the sales cycle is complete, a client is transitioned to our Professional Services and Support team to start their client journey with D2L. These teams support with change management, learning strategy, implementation of Brightspace, Brightspace training, and their day-to-day use of the platform, and consult the best ways to adopt and structure the product. Professional Services and Support is all about value-add services to Brightspace clients – providing the help customers need, when they need it, for as long as they need it.

Onboard and Launch Services

Global Support and Community

Premium Services

Learning and Creative Services

Onboard and Launch Services

Learning Strategy Consulting: Our Learning Strategy Consulting team help customers accelerate digital transformation and enable greater value realization by guiding them through the process of strategic change. They help outline a clear vision for the future of learning, determine milestones and success criteria for achieving it.

Implementation and Training Services: Picking up the client journey after the sales process, all of the way through to a successful launch, the Implementation & Training Services team supports the client with their experience transitioning to Brightspace. The team ensures that our customers are confident and set up for success by providing professional services such as program management, project management, technical consulting, private training, and scalable e-learning solutions.

Global Support and Community

Customer Support (Administrator Support, End User Support), Knowledge, Localization, Community.

Our front-line team that ensures Administrators, learners and instructors have the answers they need when they need them through:

Supporting users (Instructors, learners and subject matter experts ) day to day questions with our platform 24x7x365

Creating and translating product documentation, guides, and knowledge resources

Building the Brightspace Community with resources and information to help customers with Brightspace adoption – our 24x7x365 one-stop-shop for Brightspace knowledge and connection

Premium Services

Our premium services are designed to provide the attention and care customers need to take Brightspace to the next level and move faster.

Technical Account Manager (TAM): Working with one of D2L’s premium service team that offers personalized ongoing support to D2L customers. TAMs act as an advocate to ensure their client’s technical needs are highly prioritized and help with Brightspace operations

Learning Administration Manager (LAM): This premium services team allows customers to delegate the day-to-day administration of Brightspace to a LAM, so they can focus on their strategic goals. With many years of experience as Brightspace admins, LAMs also provide expert guidance on how to optimize the Brightspace setup, ensuring customers get the most out of the platform.

Data Solutions Consulting: The Data Solutions Consulting team helps customers improve business outcomes by leveraging data from Brightspace to make more insightful decisions, faster.

Learning and Creative Services

Our team of instructional designers and courseware developers helps customers to build engaging, accessible, and responsive content that will help to improve learner outcomes and wow every learner. In addition, the learning strategy team and the learning experience consultants will consult and guide customers through best practices, tools and templates on pairing pedagogy and course design and help increase adoption and engagement.

Unique Activities or Events

LCS: Innovation Days are an effort to allow everyone to work on something that would make the team more efficient, do something innovative, etc. We break into teams and work through a project over two days, with presentations (~10 minutes each) on the last day. What you work on is entirely up to you, and although you don’t necessarily need something tangible to present, the ask is that you work on something that could be implemented or iterated on in the future! In the past, we’ve seen people present proof of concepts, research findings, and completed projects (among other things).
Implementation: Collaboration Days are an effort to bring everyone together and learn about new products, features, processes and services. We break into teams and work through brainstorming new services offerings or looking for efficiencies in existing processes. We celebrate our successes over the past year, share knowledge about unique use cases we have done recently, do retrospectives on some of our large customers or initiatives, and troubleshoot together some of our more complex use cases.
IDespite the Technical Account Management team being spread across the globe, they have a strong workplace culture that fosters inclusivity, fun and high-performance.

One important and unique initiative this team has started is IDEA (Inclusivity, Diversity, Equity and Awareness) that focuses on providing a judgement free space for employees to openly discuss recent events/issues surrounding DEI in the workplace while embracing the difficult conversations and educating each other.

The TAM/LAM teams have a huge focus on collaboration and continued learning, which is why they run a week-long “TLC Week” (TAM/LAM Collaboration) where the entire global team meets at D2L headquarters. The week is spent learning, collaborating, socializing and have a lot of fun!

Leadership

Stephen Laster
President

Stephen Laster
President
At D2L, Stephen leads D2L’s strategy, product, services, sales, and marketing teams, working alongside Founder and CEO John Baker. He is focused on delivering world-class product and customer experiences that enable D2L’s customers to reimagine learning.

Stephen has over 25 years of leadership experience in digital transformation, product development and technology enablement. Before joining D2L, Stephen was the Chief Product Officer of Ellucian, the market-leading student information system provider for global higher education. Prior to Ellucian, Stephen held critical roles including Chief Product Officer for Penn Foster, Chief Digital Officer for McGraw Hill Education, and Chief Information Officer for the Harvard Business School. He also served as a Trustee, member of the faculty, and head of innovation for Babson College. Previously, Stephen founded and ran Intelligent Solutions, LLC, a higher education technology consulting firm. Stephen has been a board member of IMS Global, Microsoft Higher Education Advisory Board, The Online Learning Consortium, and FineTune Learning.

Stephen holds a bachelor’s degree from Bowdoin College and an MBA from the F.W. Olin Graduate School of Business at Babson College. He lives in Wellesley, Massachusetts with his wife Debi and their two children.
Al Patel
Senior Vice President of Professional Services & Support

Al Patel
Senior Vice President of Professional Services & Support
Al Patel is Senior Vice President of Professional Services & Support. Before joining D2L in 2022, Al spent more than 20 years in enterprise software, consulting, managed services, and edtech. Al previously was Vice President of Customer Success at Blackboard and served as Vice President of Global Services at Apollo Education Group.

Al lives in Scottsdale, AZ with his family and received his BS in Finance and Computer Information Systems from Indiana University, Bloomington. Al is passionate about software, customer service and producing outcomes that generate value for clients.
Adam Hartshorn
VP, Digital Learning Services
James Millard
VP, Global Support and Community
Alexander Persaud
Director, Implementation & Training Services
Joel Guerin
Director, Technical Account Management
Jon Krochmalnek
Director, International Implementation and Channel Enablement

Interested in learning more about a career in Professional Services and Support at D2L?

View Available Positions

D2L Careers

Professional Services and Support

How does Professional Services and Support make an impact at D2L?

Onboard and Launch Services

Global Support and Community

Premium Services

Learning and Creative Services

Unique Activities or Events

LCS: Innovation Days

Implementation: Collaboration Days

Technical Account Management; IDEA

Leadership

Stephen Laster

Al Patel

Interested in learning more about a career in Professional Services and Support at D2L?