About Us
Mike Zackrison Principal, Founder
Mike Zackrison is an experienced Edtech start-up, product management, marketing, and business development executive with a passion for bringing good software to educators. Mike recently co-founded and launched Cidi Labs, in partnership with Utah State University, where he currently serves as CEO. Cidi Labs commercializes software tools developed by instructional design professionals. Before this endeavor he worked as Sr. Director of Partnerships for Instructure, the makers of Canvas, where he helped establish Canvas as an open learning platform by forming partnerships with hundreds of Edtech solution providers. Previously he has held roles that have enabled him to touch and influence just about every major enterprise software system required by a school or university -- from the student information system (SIS), learning management sytem (LMS), and the enterprise portal to the integrated library system (ILS) and many systems in between. Mike has a unique and holistic view of all the major systems that support today's higher education and K-12 institutions.
Mike also has a unique understanding of the collaborative nature of education having been involved in many leading open source projects over the years. He has been a long time ally of open source software in higher education going back to his days at Campus Pipeline where he worked diligently in support of the uPortal project, one of the earliest open source success stories in education. In 2010 he was the lead Product Manager for the Kuali Student project. At Instructure he advocated for openness and helped hundreds of Edtech companies understand integration possibilities using open standards like LTI and open APIs. Mike believes firmly in the advantages of openness, open standards and collaboration and the value that these things can deliver in support of the mission of education.
Mike Zackrison founded ZSix Consulting after having developed an extensive background in developing and marketing enterprise software products and technologies for the education market. As mentioned, Mike formerly worked for Instructure. Prior to joining Instructure Mr. Zackrison was VP of Product Management at SirsiDynix. Before his role with Kuali Student, he was VP of Marketing and Strategy at rSmart where he led marketing and product management there with the goal of fine-tuning the business model of commercial open source software support for the education market. Prior to rSmart he led product management for Unicon, Inc., where he launched open source support offerings and established key marketing partnerships with Oracle Corp. and Zimbra. While working for SunGard Higher Education (now Ellucian), he was a member of the original Campus Pipeline product team that conceptualized and launched the SCT (Ellucian) Luminis product line, still a popular enterprise portal solution in higher education. As the SCT Luminis Platform product manager, Mike directed the innovative use of the uPortal framework within the product, which was one of the early successful examples of commercially supporting open source software in the education market. In addition to Unicon, SunGard Higher Education, SCT, and Campus Pipeline, Mike has experience in product management, strategic planning, and sales and marketing at technology companies such as Ingenix (a division of United HealthGroup), TenFold, and U.S. Robotics Corp. (acquired by 3Com). He received his MBA in marketing and entrepreneurship from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and Bachelor degrees in finance and German from the University of Utah.
The name ZSix was inspired by a childhood nickname given to Mike by one of his favorite relatives. Being the sixth (and last) child of the Z family, "Z Six" was an apt description.