Our Staff

Amy Morton

Amy Morton

• Executive Director

Amy comes to WPI with more than 20 years of experience in higher education publishing. Her responsibilities there included training and professional development, strategic marketing, brand management, and product development. At WPI, she’s focused on building effective cross-functional teams, developing strategic partnerships across campus, and results-driven marketing. Amy is a passionate leader with the drive to create a positive work environment and effective systems and processes. She and her family live in Harvard, Mass., and spend summer weekends in Maine. 

Brenda McDonald Salvi

Brenda McDonald Salvi

• Executive Assistant

Brenda is the administrative guru for the Division of Marketing and Communications, but her primary duty is to support the vice president, including organizing the VP’s calendar and managing projects and communications. Pursuits outside of WPI include working toward a master's degree in Arts Administration at Boston University and putting her undergraduate degree in classical voice to use moonlighting with various musical organizations throughout the state. You might even catch her singing at WPI events from time to time.

Maureen Deiana

Maureen Deiana

• Director of Marketing Programs

Maureen is an entrepreneurial marketing and communications professional with a wealth of experience in marketing management and support in the higher education, health care, high technology, and consumer markets. Joining WPI in 2010, Maureen quickly demonstrated a keen commitment to our stakeholders and their constituents and is a can-do, go-to professional who leads the initiatives for integrated programs, including print, web, advertising, and direct marketing.

Prior to joining WPI, she spent 14 years running her own marketing and public relations firm. Her early career was with HP, where her roles included manager of global product launch communications for a health care division, PR manager for the financial services and education markets, and employee-communications specialist. Her responsibilities include concept development, copywriting/editing, and project management.

Maureen spends her off-hours coaching her teenage daughter and younger son on strategies for gaining admission to WPI.

Jillian Ferguson

• Marketing Programs Manager

Jillian strives to ensure that WPI marketing messages are consistent and compelling throughout her portfolio of partners. She has a passion for working across disciplines and departments, writing and designing, and working in teams. Jillian joins WPI from Clark University, where her work in marketing and publications led to increased enrollment and recognition for multiple graduate programs. She previously assisted with fundraising and public relations campaigns for a health care organization and has worked in publishing.

Jillian and her husband live out in the country, where they hike, kayak, mountain bike, golf, ski/snowboard, fish, cross-country ski, and play tennis.

Sheila Georger

Sheila Georger

• Marketing Programs Manager

Sheila has spent her career helping organizations explain who they are, what they do, and most importantly, why people should care. She brings more than 15 years of corporate marketing experience and a diverse skill set to her role as marketing programs manager. Sheila is charged with developing and executing marketing and communication strategies that satisfy project goals, while supporting the university’s branding and overall messaging standards. Her capabilities range from strategic planning and concept development to copywriting and graphic design. She takes a fresh approach to each project she leads for her WPI campus partners, taking great pride in packaging ideas and relaying them in an invigorating way.

Sheila is the proud mom to two young children and enjoys reading, cooking, and exercising.

Peggy Isaacson

Peggy Isaacson

• Graphic Designer/Copy Editor

3.14159? Peggy's initials (a little math humor). 1974? The year Peggy began working at WPI (for Roger Perry in the Public Relations Office). Through on-the-job training, she became a graphic designer/copy editor -- the best of both worlds in her opinion. Peggy helps design print publications for various offices and departments across the university, edits and proofreads raw copy, finished manuscripts, and page proofs for virtually all publications produced by Marketing and Communications. 

Joan Killough-Miller

• Alumni Editor

Joan is responsible for the alumni columns and feature stories in the alumni magazine, Transformations. She enjoys communicating with alumni from different eras and keeping WPI’s history and traditions alive. Joan also writes for Research@WPI and the Marketing and Communications blog, where she has room to expound on all of WPI’s points of pride. Her stories focus on alumni, faculty, and students who are making a difference in the world, and on the unique programs that make WPI such a great place. News for Class Notes and Obituaries maybe submitted by email, fax, or postal mail. Alumni can post updates online by logging on to the AlumniConnect site. (Contact alumni-office@WPI.edu for an account.)

Stacie Murray

• Marketing Programs Manager

Stacie joins the Division of Marketing and Communications from WPI’s Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, where she supported the Undergraduate Program and helped coordinate communications initiatives. She brings a strong background in marketing strategy, content writing, and project management to the team. Working with different partners on campus, Stacie’s energy and passion for WPI is contagious. With three boys, her husband, Patrick, and Molly, her dog, Stacie’s ultimate goal in life is to spend a weekend without having to go to a sporting event.

Lynn M. Plotczik

Lynn M. Plotczik

• Marketing Communications Specialist

Lynn brings more than 30 years of design and printing experience to her work for the Division of Student Affairs and Campus Life, academic departments, and senior staff. Prior to joining WPI, she owned a design shop serving primarily higher education, healthcare, and cultural organizations. She also spent several years in the corporate realm working for a former client: the U.S. marketing and sales division of a worldwide company. Lynn works methodically through the design process to ensure that marketing messages are supported visually—and she’s even been known to write catchy headlines and compelling calls to action. Always, she ushers her projects and clients from early ideas to engaging deliverables.

Tara Probeck

Tara Probeck

• Senior Marketing Programs Manager

Tara wears many hats in Marketing and Communications. The results of her creative leadership can be found across the print and digital media that promotes undergraduate and graduate enrollment. Whether managing and designing materials in-house or through outside agencies, or providing art direction to her peers, Tara is the go-to person for everything from viewbooks to videos, coordinating integrated teams of strategists, writers, photographers, and print specialists. Tara has an aesthetic creative vision and brings projects to life.

Prior to joining WPI, she managed a team of marketing coordinators for a global engineering firm in Chicago. For recreation, Tara enjoys cooking, traveling, bowling, and skiing. Mostly, she enjoys spending time with her husband, John, and her dog, Maggie. 

Dianne Vanacore

Dianne Vanacore

• Print Production Coordinator

Dianne loves the smell of ink. She brings more than 20 years of print-management experience to assure that the hundreds of university materials produced annually meet the highest standards. From the President’s Report to Commencement programs, admissions viewbooks to promotional postcards, the best bet for a quality outcome is to have it start and finish with Dianne’s oversight. Clients can depend on her to evaluate production processes, research alternatives, and make recommendations for improvements. When she’s not directing production traffic, administering the WPI photo database, learning new printing techniques, or “on press,” Dianne enjoys running, hiking, and sketching and painting.

Jim Wolken

• Editor and Executive Writer

Jim is editor-in-chief of WPI’s alumni magazine, Transformations, and the executive writer for marketing and communications. Jim brings 25 years of magazine experience to WPI, having launched more than a dozen national magazines in his career, including award-winning alumni magazines for Suffolk University and the Rhode Island School of Design.

Eileen Brangan Mell

Eileen Brangan Mell

• Director of Public Relations & Strategic Communications

Eileen oversees all of WPI’s public relations efforts, from internal communications to media relations. In addition to managing the planning, strategy, and media outreach for all of WPI’s major announcements, she also handles crisis communications for the university. Prior to joining WPI in 2007, Eileen was the national manager of media relations for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) and brings nearly 20 years of public relations experience to the job. Members of the WPI community with potential news stories should contact Eileen directly.

Marty Luttrell

Marty Luttrell

• Public Relations Associate

Marty comes to WPI with 30 years of newspaper experience. Most recently, he was a bureau chief and reporter for the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, where he wrote about technology, business, criminal justice, and municipal government. His reporting skills are put to work here at WPI in reaching out to regional and national media to publicize research, innovation, and the loads of good stuff the faculty and students do here and around the world. He also finds experts within the WPI community to provide comment to the press on a range of topics, and contributes to the university's internal communications.

Marty is a veteran of the US Air Force, where he served as a radar operator. When not at work, he enjoys fly fishing, surfcasting, backpacking, or cycling. He lives in Mendon with his wife, Sharron, and two children.

Cheryl Sullivan

Cheryl Sullivan

• Public Relations Coordinator

Cheryl is responsible for the coordination and distribution of all press releases and advisories to various media outlets via the internet. She monitors all WPI media coverage, whether in newspapers, television, radio, magazines, or online. She also tracks trends and identifies opportunities for stories to receive media coverage. Cheryl is also responsible for posting news releases on the WPI home page, WPI.edu.

Michael W. Dorsey

Michael W. Dorsey

• Director of Research Communications

Mike is responsible for all aspects of university communications involving research and faculty achievement. He finds, develops, and disseminates news about the outcomes of faculty research and creates a variety of communications vehicles that spotlight the quality of the faculty and the recognition they receive for their scholarship, teaching, and professional service. He has been at WPI for more than 25 years working in media relations, publications, and marketing. Prior to joining WPI he worked in marine-science education, as a newspaper reporter, and as a writer and editor for a utility company. He has also co-authored books on marine-science education and nutrition. He holds a BA in biology from the University of Connecticut.

Bill Denneen

Bill Denneen

• Director of Web Strategy and Operations

Bill is responsible for managing the Web Operations staff and ensuring that WPI's websites are world-class and always getting better. Prior to joining WPI, he served in similar roles at Tufts University and Mount Holyoke College. Bill holds a BA in psychology from Brown University and an MM in marketing and strategy from the Kellogg School of Management. He enjoys spending time with his wife and three children.

Kimberly A. Allen

Kimberly A. Allen

• Web Content Writer/Editor

Kim is a writer and website architect. Her responsibilities at WPI include providing content strategy and writing original copy for the WPI website, as well as editing existing website copy and client-supplied text. She is also responsible for site architecture, user experience, and search engine optimization. She has worked in marketing since the mid-1990s, with an emphasis on website marketing since 2000. She has received 12 industry awards for her work on various websites. Kim began her professional career as a sportswriter with the Quincy (Mass.) Patriot Ledger where she spent years covering high school, local, and professional sports.

AnnMarie Burtt

AnnMarie Burtt

• Interactive Designer

AnnMarie is responsible for the design and initial coding of WPI.edu, custom Wordpress themes, and mobile optimization. She serves a key role working with clients to develop visual designs and experiences that work for the university and its audiences while maintaining branding and identity consistency across devices. Prior to joining WPI in 2006, AnnMarie earned a BA in studio graphic design and communications from Clark University. She also minored in photography, a hobby she continues since her 2002 graduation. Her other passions include web/mobile usability and user experience.

Christine Della Monaca

Christine Della Monaca

• Web Writer

Christine reviews, assesses, creates, and revises content for new and existing WPI websites. Prior to working at WPI, she spent five years writing and editing content for Monster.com’s Career Advice website. She has also done stints in trade publishing, working for several trade magazines, as well as freelance writing. Christine lives in Leominster with her husband Michael, a Fitchburg-based estate planning attorney, and young son Gregory. When not writing, Christine loves being with her family, music, and surfing the Internet.

Mike D'Onofrio

Mike D'Onofrio

• Web Writer

Mike works on a variety of writing projects for Web Operations and the entire Marketing and Communications group. From website content to news articles and press releases, his focus is on informative, persuasive, and effective communications. Mike has worked as a copywriter, journalist, publisher, and educator.

Nicholas P. Galotti III '05

Nicholas P. Galotti III '05

• Senior Web Applications Developer

Nick is a developer for the WPI website, creating applications and modules used throughout the site. In his free time, Nick is the advisor to the WPI/Burncoat High School FIRST Robotics team. His responsibilities include maintaining key applications such as Google Mini, Regi, WPI Reg, OpenText, and Red Dot (WPI's content management system). He also manages the web server and  develops new applications.  

Galen Lipin

Galen Lipin

• Content Management System Assistant

Galen helps migrate website content into the CMS and assists faculty and staff with CMS-related issues. Prior to joining the Web Operations team at WPI, he was a publicist in the music industry and also spent several years handling marketing, web development, and customer relations in the organic and natural foods world. A fan of gardening, writing and recording music, and tinkering with instruments and electronics, outside of WPI you might find Galen working on any number of zany projects. He, his wife Libby, and their two fabulous cats call Gardner, Mass., home.

Luke Salsich

Luke Salsich

• Project Manager

Luke manages projects big and small for the Division of Marketing and Communications. He brings a process-driven approach to project development, ensuring the work is done on time and meets the high standards of the group. Prior to WPI he had extensive experience in high tech, as a software developer and development consultant. In his spare time, Luke loves to swim and spend time with his young children.

Carol Williams

Carol Williams

• Content Management System Administrator

Carol is responsible for the administration of the WPI Content Management System (CMS), including managing the migration of pages from HTML into the CMS and providing training and support to hundreds of CMS users. She has been supporting web development and IT for many years, including work at Compaq Computers, Hewlett-Packard, Tuthill Corporation, General Dynamics, and the U.S. Coast Guard Academy. Carol lives in Woodstock, CT with her beautiful teenage daughter, Dawnn-Marie. She is s true soccer mom: for many years she has been traveling and supporting her daughters' premier soccer league. When she has spare time, she enjoys camping and the outdoors. She’s a huge fan of the New England Patriots and NASCAR driver Tony Stewart.

Danielle Wilson

Danielle Wilson

• Web Projects Manager

Danielle is responsible for managing online projects at WPI from inception to launch with a focus on organization and ease of use for the end-user. Prior to working at WPI, Danielle spent nine years in The LEGO Company’s direct marketing department, working as a senior web producer for the online store and for the licensed sites. In her spare time, Danielle enjoys spending time with her two young children and designing beaded jewelry.