Alex Draper

Founder & CEO

Alex has been working in experiential learning design and delivery since 2002. In 2015, Alex started DX Learning Solutions as a way to build upon his passion for the EQ part of leadership development, and is now on a mission to shape organizations worth working for by training managers from top to bottom to think and behave more inclusively and lead with your values.

Richard Roach

Director of Business Development 

With over a decade of experience helping learning organizations meet and exceed their training goals, Rich has developed a passion for helping organizations think critically and creatively to make adult education interesting and effective for the long run. Rich is dedicated to providing the best EQ development solutions for leaders by understanding what is at the root of their challenges before prescribing the best solutions. In short, he is a problem solver as well as a people person. Reach out anytime for a conversation or consultation!

Jackie Sikich

Director of Relationships

Jackie is passionate about building strong relationships with clients to enable them to meet and exceed their leadership and learning objectives throughout their organizations. Her goal is to make sure our clients have the necessary support when it comes to working with DX. She is dedicated to creating an always-improving client experience through gathering client feedback and utilizing it toward a more streamlined process and experience. In her spare time, Jackie loves to travel to warm places after living in Chicago since 2000, spending time with her husband Jason and son Mason, and checking out the many different restaurants popping up in the Chicago area. Reach out anytime for a conversation or consultation!

Kristin Dammacco

VP of Operations

Kristin Dammacco is the VP of Operations at DX Learning Solutions with a decade of experience in practical operational application. She is dedicated to maintaining and fostering a healthy workplace culture and providing a strong foundation for our team to flourish in. Kristin firmly believes in the critical balance of a people first culture and sensible business solutions and is responsible for implementing policy and procedures where both of those aspects are in the forefront.

Emily Markanich

Director of Sales Enablement

Passionate about creating more emotionally intelligent leaders, Emily leads internal collaborative efforts toward uncovering client needs and fulfilling those needs with customer-centric learning journeys. With a natural curiosity toward strategically solving problems, Emily enjoys offering solutions through collaborative storytelling on multiple platforms. She is a talented writer, copy editor, video producer, and graphic designer, creating valuable content that develops a loyal fan base and effectively communicates how DX solutions will meet and exceed client leadership & learning objectives. Emily also enjoys managing DX events, conferences, and award applications. Outside of the office, she is a tea enthusiast, shameless book collector, and neuroscience and existential philosophy nerd… just ask her cat, Kierkegaard (Kier for short). 

Matt Sandel

Director of Design

Matt's goal is to harmoniously blend technology with soft skills; leveraging the ever-changing leadership development landscape with cutting-edge technology. His study of neuroscience and hobby of designing software applications helps him do just that. Even before he graduated college, he was working for a company dedicated to creating positive behavior change where he soon rose to creative director. A major interest of his is how habits are created and then maintained throughout an individual’s life.

Ryan Aguiar

Business Psychologist

As DX’s in-house Business Psychologist, Ryan aims to make sure that DX’s content is on the cutting edge of what’s new in leadership, learning & development, and experiential learning. During the pandemic, he helped keep the business agile and transfer the DX portfolio to a virtual medium to extend our field of influence globally. Ryan continues his research and education in I/O Psychology in The Chicago School of Professional Psychology’s doctoral program. Moving forward, he is excited to continue creating new exciting ways for leaders to engage with our content while taking advantage of new technologies and continue bringing insights to DX’s existing catalog.

Audrey Hebson

Director of Program Management

As DX Learning’s Director of Program Management, Audrey oversees the program roll-out and sales process with each account and ensures that our clients have a positive training experience from beginning to end. She enjoys developing a rapport with client administrators and is a resource that they can rely on throughout the simulation planning process. She has coordinated large scale innovation projects so that our transformational simulations fully support the client’s values and principles.

Mareea Gaines, M.A.

Program Manager / Learning & Design Specialist

Starting as a design specialist and proving her capabilities, Mareea transferred her knowledge of design processes into the realm of program management. This balance allows for a unique perspective to both create and effectively execute client program journeys to produce high-quality positive client experiences. With a masters in I/O Psychology, Mareea works to improve leadership trainings by researching popular business trends and incorporating other psychological phenomena into DX content. When she isn’t exercising her brain, she is exercising her body. Mareea loves spending her free time lifting heavy objects for optimal muscle gains or kicking a ball around for points out on the pitch.  

Hatem Azzam

Managing Partner of DX Learning Europe

As a servant leader, Hatem's purpose is to inspire, empower,  and flourish leaders, businesses, and lives. He is a serial entrepreneur, international business veteran, strategy management consultant, and executive & leadership coach.

Hatem has always been fascinated by people and their capacities and abilities to change and grow. He likes to continuously challenge himself to explore new territories of what's possible. For that, he is in the pursuit of trying to be the best of who he can be. He aims to touch the lives of as many people as he can touch, serve the growth of as many leaders as he can, and make our world a better place through leadership development & coaching. 

Can Papuccuoglu

Managing Partner of DX Learning UK

Born in Istanbul, Turkey, Can Papuccuoglu is a business consultant, keynote speaker, and published author who has more than 20 years of professional experience under his belt. 

He is the founder and the CEO of Better Outcome and its parent company Junction Global Group which he founded in 2010. His work with multinational clients in the United States, UK, European Union, Asia, and Pacific inspires him to continue developing emotionally intelligent leaders globally. 

His biggest challenge is explaining to English-speaking people how to pronounce his name. (Hint: It sounds like John, not a can of coke!)