Amy Bennett has been named the executive director of the Online Learning Initiative (OLI), effective May 2. Ms. Bennett, who has served since 2013 as the director of the OLI, was selected following a national search. 

Ms. Bennett will oversee the strategic planning and day-to-day activities of the Initiative, as it continues to evolve in the rapidly changing area of online learning and technologically enhanced instruction. OLI is responsible for the development of massive open online courses at Penn, including relations with Coursera and edX. The Initiative also works with schools and other offices at Penn to develop online certificate and degree programs, to bring technologically enhanced instruction to campus courses, and to facilitate research on online teaching and learning. 

“I’m delighted that Amy has agreed to take on this new role, and I look forward to working with her. She has proven herself to be creative, hardworking and efficient in pursuing OLI’s goals,” said Stanton Wortham, the OLI faculty director and Judy & Howard Berkowitz Professor in the Graduate School of Education. 

Ms. Bennett has an MBA from Wharton, an MS from Penn Engineering in product design and a BA from Penn in Japanese. She is currently a lecturer at Wharton. Prior to Penn, she was vice president of operations at Traffipax and the US Green Building Council, leading large project management and client services teams in both the corporate and non-profit sectors. She spent seven years with Prometric running project management teams to deliver global testing services and also worked as an executive for organizations in consumer products and services.