Russ Carlson was appointed Chief Executive Officer of Overture Technologies in May 2009.

Before joining Overture, Carlson was President of Blackboard Inc’s academic technology business in North America with responsibilities for over 1,600 clients and $130m in revenue. Blackboard is a global leader in enterprise technology and innovative solutions designed to improve the experience of millions of students and learners. Founded in 1997, Blackboard is headquartered in Washington, D.C., with offices in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia.

Carlson joined Blackboard in 2002 as a director for field operations for both the Blackboard Academic and Commerce Suite in the western United States. He later became vice president of sales for the Blackboard Commerce Suite and in April 2006 took responsibility for the leadership of Blackboard’s campus card business unit. Over the next two years the Commerce management team increase the number of students served by Blackboard technology by over 250,000, increased customer satisfaction by almost 10 percent and crafted a product strategy that refreshed the campus card solution.

Carlson spent the first ten years of his career in software development and implementation first with AT&T and then in IBM Professional Services. This was followed by a move to sales and business development first at Manugistics, the technology company that created supply chain management as a category, and then at Oracle where he had sales responsibilities for the process industry line of business.

He holds a bachelor of Business Systems from Taylor University in Indiana.