Meet Our World-Class Instructors

Based in the technology mecca of Boulder, Colorado, BDA leverages the world-class talent in the area so that our students can learn from some of the best instructors in the world! All BDA instructors are working professionals who have deep knowledge and real-world experience and insights in the subjects they teach.

Angela Bowman

Angela Bowman

Angela Bowman has worked with WordPress since 2007 after learning about it in a class at Boulder Digital Arts. Since then, she has made a career of building custom WordPress websites for nonprofits and local businesses. Her blog AskWPGirl.com has gained an international following for its clear instruction on a variety of WordPress topics. Angela presents at WordCamps and Meetups and co-organizes the Boulder WordPress Builders Meetup. She is passionate about making the learning process engaging and satisfying by including students in discussions and providing easy-to-follow instructions along with thorough class notes.

Chris Carruth

Chris Carruth

Christopher is an artist, technologist, and educator, who has been a Teaching Assistant Professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder (CMCI, Information Science) for over 10 years. He draws from an interdisciplinary background in information science, digital culture, participatory design, and critical pedagogy. His current research interests, and practice, are related to the promise + peril, of an increasingly technologized world, with deep-learning and large-language models (Generative AI) being a key thread of interest.

Michael Chavez

Michael Chavez

For over a decade, Michael has dedicated his professional life to the art of visual communication through graphic design. Michael Chavez has taught graphic design at various colleges and institutions while also successfully running his own single man design shop. He has also served on the board of AIGA Colorado since 2012. On a daily basis, Michael not only uses the industry standard of design software but he also teaches the use of those programs. He has worked on projects big and small, ranging from branding and identity programs to logo design, collateral, typographic expression, digital illustration and different formatting for print, web, and social media. Michael is a Colorado native who loves letterforms, bicycles, and enjoying the outdoors with his family.

Stephen Collector

Stephen Collector

Based in Boulder, Colorado, Stephen Collector has over 25 years of freelance experience. Originally specializing in tabletop photography, his attention to detail and lighting techniques were applied to working on location for editorial and corporate assignments. Stephen's magazine clients include Esquire, Outside, Men's Journal, Field & Stream, Forbes, Fortune, Fast Company, and the New York Times. Corporate clients include United Airlines, Ball Corporation, Shell, Hain/Celestial Seasonings, Horizon Dairy, United Technologies, Oracle, and Sears Roebuck & Co., among many others.

Mike Connolly

Mike Connolly

Mike Connolly creates and manages direct response marketing systems for fast growing businesses so they can attract their ideal customers, put an iron fence around them and develop an abundant "herd" of customers for life. He has co-created and manages marketing systems using blogs, social networking sites, newsletters, e-letters, video networks, articles, multi-media follow-up systems, direct mail, teleseminars, webinars and affiliate marketing. He's an experienced teacher, trainer and coach and loves sharing his passion for magnetic attraction strategies with high achieving business owners and entrepreneurs.

Chris Eigner

Chris Eigner

Chris Eigner is the Chief Technology Officer at Colorado Blockchain Capital, one of the first few digital asset hedge funds in the world. He has over 10 years experience building software and managing teams. He got started building applications on Facebook before moving on to a payments company in San Francisco where he managed 20 people across 3 teams. This year he married his interests in cryptocurrencies and finance by starting a hedge fund with two other partners.

Jeff Gamet

Jeff Gamet

Jeff Gamet is the Managing Editor of The Mac Observer, and author of "The Designer's Guide to Mac OS X." He hosts TMO's Daily Observations podcast, co-hosts the Apple Context Machine and The iOS Show, is a regular panel member on The Big Show, and appears on Mac OS Ken Day 6, MacVoices, Mac Roundtable, Tech Night Owl Live, and more. He is actively involved in the blogging and social media world, and has spoken on social media, design and Apple-related topics at popular events such as Macworld Expo, the Macintosh Computer Expo and the RSA Conference on technology security.

Steve Gandy

Steve Gandy

Steve Gandy is an educator, trainer, technology support professional and life-long photographer. Steve has introduced the ins-and-outs of digital photography to students young and old since 1995 and has been involved in education since 1978. His photography is varied but he focuses on nature, travel, and sports. Steve has contributed to training books and websites on Photoshop Elements, StarOffice/OpenOffice and other educational topics. He leads photographic tours to the southern Utah canyon lands.

Cassandra Huidobro

Cassandra Huidobro

For over a decade, Cassandra (Cassy) Huidobro, used her skills in the field of Learning and Development to facilitate and create training materials for Corporate America. She went on to create Miranda Park Learning as an extension of her own professional practice.

As online courses become more of the norm in instruction and education, Cassy delves into the world of eLearning by creating modules and simulations.

Her passion in instructional design includes written materials, for which she uses Adobe InDesign, training videos, for which she uses Adobe Premiere Pro, and eLearning, for which she uses Adobe Captivate.

Sam Irwin

Sam Irwin

Sam Irwin has worked in digital marketing since 2004 and has become an "online marketing lifer". Over the years he has managed a wide variety of SEM and SEO products: everything from on-site SEO, content strategy and local search optimization to Pay Per Click and Display advertising. Solving complex problems and creating successful outcomes for clients is what keeps the job fresh after all these years.

After eight years working for local agencies, he founded Eastern Star Marketing which offers a full suite of SEO and SEM services from strategy creation to day-to- day management. By relying on data and experience we build a transparent relationship with each client aimed at leveraging the right channels for the best results.

Specialties include: Online Marketing Strategy, SEO, Content Creation, Pay Per Click (PPC), Display Advertising, Tracking and Analytics, A/B Testing and Conversion Optimization.

Debra Jason

Debra Jason

Marketing & writing with heart, not hype, Debra Jason is a national speaker, author, direct response copywriter and marketing mentor. She speaks about the value of building relationships and the art of engaging as they relate to attracting clients, generating leads and networking - online and off. From authors and engineers to speakers and real estate agents, she has guided hundreds of professionals in creating robust and optimized LinkedIn profiles that help them open the doors to receiving more opportunities on the network.

Debra started her copywriting business from scratch - with one client to her name and no degree in marketing. After a consistent and persistent effort to market herself and keep marketing herself, she is proud to say she's still in business - more than 30 years after she opened her doors. Author of the award-winning book, Millionaire Marketing on a Shoestring Budgetâ„¢, she shares cost-effective marketing strategies that help you gain increased exposure, create a steady stream of happy clients, and build your business without breaking the bank.

Android Jones

Android Jones

Android Jones' pictorial work is one strain of a larger project that he calls "Electro-Mineralist Art." Moving "beyond the traditional organic vegetable and animal technologies of pencils, ink, and brushes", Android takes up emergent technologies that are crystalline, metallic, electronic and digital in their materiality and aesthetic feel, implicating a historical scheme that echoes the integral view of planetary evolution from physiosphere to biosphere to noosphere to theosphere where the techno-media of exhibition artworks have been by and large, as the artist says, bound to or associated with the biologic. Android is classically trained in academic drawing and painting and this traditional art background is the foundation through which he bridges the knowledge of the past and brings it into the future.

The content of these marvelous works ranges vastly from the kosmic to the micro, from tantric beloved to sacred civics, from expansions of consciousness to reconfigurations of our three bodies. The pictorial syntax is at the very least proper to a teal register a collage mode descending from synthetic cubism. Subtle radiance and causal voids abound throughout.

Honoring the history of art, the mystical projects of the later Dali come to mind, Android taps into pre-modern, modernist, and post-modernist aesthetic idioms, advancing an Electro-Mineralist Art as Integral Alchemy.

Kevin Menzie

Kevin Menzie

Kevin Menzie is the Office Director at Pivotal Labs in Boulder. In his free time, Kevin draws cartoons using a pencil, a scanner, and Adobe Illustrator. Samples of his illustration work can be seen on his website: http://www.kevinmenzie.com/.

Tom Parkin

Tom Parkin

Tom Parkin is a Colorado-based filmmaker with over 25 years of experience in producing, directing, cinematography and editing. He currently produces and hosts the television series "Colorado Health Matters" on KDVR Fox 31 Denver. Through his production company Tom Parkin Films, he produces independent films, marketing media, and live-event video production for concerts, comedy, and film festivals.

Bob Pearson

Bob Pearson

Bob Pearson is a photojournalist and editor with 30+ years of experience in news photography, covering sports, politics and the human condition worldwide. Bob spent over 20 years with Agence France-Presse (AFP). He served as Chief Photographer and Director of Photography for AFP, covering the White House and Capitol Hill, and coordinating coverage for North America. Pearson's photographs have been published worldwide, including major newspapers and magazines such as The NY Times, USAToday, Time Magazine, Newsweek, US News and World Report, Paris Match, Der Spiegel and others.

Bob is currently based in Indian Hills where he runs his freelance photography and consulting business.

Lowel Pierce

Lowel Pierce

With 35 years in the film and video production world, Lowel Pierce has done a little of everything and enjoyed the variety. A Colorado native and graduate of CSU in Technical Journalism, Lowel has worked as a TV news photographer, a cinematographer in Saudi Arabia, a partner in a video production company. As both one-man-band and freelance Director of Photography for 22 years, Lowel has worked on indie features, shorts, documentaries, TV commercials, and high-end corporate productions earning a CINE Golden Eagle, Heartland Emmies, and Videographer Awards of Distinction.

Madeleine Pollak

Madeleine Pollak

Madeleine Pollak is the Executive Producer of Pollak Productions, Inc, which she founded in Boulder 8 years ago. She is a six-time Emmy Award-winning producer, writer and director, who has worked on a diverse range of TV programming including: Oprah Winfrey Network, The Discovery Channel, National Geographic, TLC, Dr. Phil for CBS, HGTV, among many others. She has also worked with major corporate clients such as The US Olympic Committee, American Express, Visa, PayPal, Crocs, Coors, Microsoft, Oracle, Bank of America, and many more. Madeleine has also written, directed, acted, and coached for live stage and has appeared on camera.

Michael Rosenzweig

Michael Rosenzweig

With a background in teaching and holding just about every position in a summer camp, Michael is a natural educator who has a knack for finding creative ways to approach marketing your business, services, or nonprofit mission. After studying marketing in college and trying a few careers, Michael landed in Colorado with a job in the nonprofit world, working his way up from the Receptionist to the Marketing Director. He subsequently went to work at a digital marketing agency where he helped small businesses grow and learned the value of scalable systems and processes.

Michael founded The Marketing Handyman to change the way local businesses and nonprofit organizations think about marketing agencies and consultants. He truly enjoys sharing his knowledge, creativity, and experience with you! Find more information about Michael and his business at themarketinghandyman.com.

Ron Ruelle

Ron Ruelle

Ron Ruelle has spent his career as a Cartoonist, Illustrator, Graphic Designer, Writer, Blogger, and anything else creative that fits his schedule. Over the last decade or so, he has also been teaching those same subjects to everyone from elementary kids to college students and professionals. Ron enjoys the energy of a classroom setting, even if it's a remote gathering online. To see some of his creative work, including his graphic novels and comics, visit www.ronruelle.com

Michael Scalisi

Michael Scalisi

Mike Scalisi of Pixel Mill Studios is a skilled editor, director and motion graphics artist with over 8 years of professional experience creating everything from corporate videos to broadcast television series to feature length documentaries. In 2009 he worked as an editor and motion graphics artist on the Academy Award winning documentary "The Cove" which was produced right here in Boulder. Mike works daily with Adobe creative apps such as After Effects , Photoshop, and Premiere as well as Apple's Final Cut Studio to create visually stunning videos for local and international clients.

Bethany Siegler

Bethany Siegler

Bethany Siegler of UniqueThink helps build your complete online presence and find cost-effective marketing solutions. Bethany has created online marketing campaigns for musical artists as distinct as Frank Black (Pixies) and David Wilcox, software developers as diverse as Wild Divine and OfficeTime, and local independent businesses like The Video Station and Boulder Weekly. She has represented major corporations like SONY and Budweiser, yet prefers to find solutions for smaller companies, often by building sustainable websites and blogs in WordPress.

Reggie Stjernholm

Reggie Stjernholm

Reggie has worked for 3 digital marketing agencies and has marketed hundreds of websites. For 2 Years, she worked with the smartest PPC-Savants in Denver at a company called Metric Theory, working with both ecommerce and lead-gen companies/websites. She worked with companies ranging from selling doors, selling makeup and rentable gaming computers, to billing software and more. There she managed high budget campaigns, including $400K+ per month ecommerce revenue campaigns & total budgets of $500K+ per month at one time. The largest company she managed campaigns for had a $75K - $100K/month budget solely on Google/Bing and affiliate websites. She then worked with one of the largest digital marketing agencies in Colorado working with startups & SMBs. There, she learned what full-service digital marketing looks like - Facebook & Instagram ads, email marketing, CRM software, text message marketing, SEO, user experience (UX), and Web Design, among other things. She now works with her own clients and runs her company, Penta West, where it is her passion to help businesses succeed online!
Dave Taylor

Dave Taylor

Dave Taylor has been involved with the Internet since the beginning and is widely recognized as an expert on both technical and business issues. He has been published over a thousand times, launched four Internet-related startup companies, has written twenty business and technical books. A professor at the University of Denver where he teaches graduate courses on digital marketing and media & society, he holds both an MBA and MS Ed. Dave maintains two active Web sites, Ask Dave Taylor.com and his GoFatherhood parenting blog, as well as a popular YouTube tech channel AskDaveTaylor. Dave is an award-winning speaker and sought after conference leader, workshop speaker, panelist and judge.

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Gretchen Troop

Gretchen Troop

Gretchen's primary business is Gretchen Troop Photography, a wedding/portraiture/landscape/music photography business based in Boulder. In addition she runs a successful digital graphic design business, GT Digital Studio, specializing in Photoshop design, video production, animation, UI/UX, HTML and WordPress. Gretchen has been a successful landscape photographer since the introduction of digital cameras (although she studied film in college as well). Gretchen Troop Photography combines her passion for the landscape with her skills in photographing people, founded on her Bachelors of Science degree in Photography from Syracuse University. Gretchen is also a passionate teacher who brings both her deep knowledge and a fun interactive approach which helps her students retain what they learn.

Nathan Valderrama

Nathan Valderrama

Nathan started his career in UX over 12 years ago. Working within quick moving startups, technology agencies, fortune 500 IT departments, government, medical, ecommerce and classic design agencies, he has learned a valuable and diverse UX skillset. As an instructor at BDA, his goal is to arm students with the tools they need to go into the live market and feel confident and capable of handling UX workspaces and projects.

Abigail Wright

Abigail Wright

Abigail Wright is a professional filmmaker, writer, producer, and information designer. For the independent film company Miranda Productions, Inc., Abigail wrote and produced four environmental documentaries that have accumulated over eighty major awards and have been broadcast all over the world. She is the senior producer of an innovative immersive website soon to be launched, working on a hybrid documentary based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and developing a TV series for kids on the wonders of food. Before moving to Boulder in 1994, Abigail acted and directed on stages in New York, Toronto, and Montreal.

Christopher Wright

Christopher Wright

I started out as a musician, hailing from Rochester New York and then moved to Colorado in 2003. My love for music and sound production propelled me to study Audio Production at the Art Institute of Colorado and then proceed to receive my Masters at UC Denver for Recording Arts and Post-Production. I am a multi-instrumentalist focusing mostly on drums and percussion. Currently I am playing in a number of groups along the Front Range, as well as studio recording and post-production for commercials, movies and documentaries.

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