Meet Our Team
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Brandon Blangger
Co-founder
As a Co-founder of Openfield, Brandon’s focus is connecting business leaders and product owners to the power of UX research and design to realize revenue goals. Outside of work, Brandon can be found advancing his skills as a student of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. He is an ardent ground-level fan of Major League Soccer’s newest expansion team: FC Cincinnati. His latest personal project is converting his basement into a thunderdome for his daughter, Ella and son, Drake.
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Brian Keenan
Co-founder
As a Co-founder of Openfield, Brian’s focus is helping business leaders understand how UX research and design can help them increase revenue while reducing risk and waste. He is an avid student and practitioner of wildlife and landscape photography, which pairs well with his love of road tripping and exploring vast and wild destinations.
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Annie Hensley
Director / UX Design
As Director of UX Design, Annie is responsible for ensuring our team continues to deliver superior client and user experiences that result in tangible business outcomes. That includes fostering collaboration and crossover between our design and research teams, mentorship and career guidance, stewardship of Openfield’s culture and values, as well as, contributing to strategic decisions that ensure our company continues to evolve to meet the changing needs of EdTech clients and users. As an IAAP Certified Professional in Accessibility Core Competencies (CPACC), she is committed to ensuring accessibility standards are met by our team. Annie is a lifelong runner who completed the Boston Marathon for a second consecutive year in 2023. She is an avid lover of parks of all sorts – theme parks, ballparks, and National Parks (even revisiting Parks and Recreation too many times to count).
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Jacob Hansen
UX Design Lead
In the role of UX Design Lead at Openfield, Jacob’s collaborative approach to helping our clients plan and execute upon key product roadmap priorities is an asset to all those around him. His responsibilities include mentorship and guidance to ensure Openfield staff grow and uphold our standards for excellence. Jacob is a prolific character illustrator, a passion that blends his love of design, fine art, gaming and cartooning in both traditional and digital media. He is a storyteller who is inspired by both film and its history. He’s also a huge fan of Disney theme parks for the visitor experiences they deliver. Additionally, Jacob enjoys running road races, kayaking, gaming and learning on guitar and banjo.
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Lauren DeMarks
Senior UX Designer
As a Senior UX designer at Openfield, Lauren brings a highly collaborative approach paired with an excitement for innovative ideas and trends that move EdTech forward. She has a deep interest in the overlap between the disciplines of UX and learning experience design, as well as furthering accessibility standards that make products great for ALL users. Lauren enjoys helping her colleagues hone their design thinking and executional skills. She also pays it forward to the next generation of UX designers by guest lecturing and facilitating UX workshops designed to help students experience real-world scenarios at multiple universities in the region, including her alma mater, Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Lauren has a thirst for travel, having lived and studied abroad in Luxembourg and state-side in San Francisco, and is committed to supporting products and services that contribute directly to environmental and sustainability issues. Somehow she also finds time to create illustrations for new board games, continues to play ultimate frisbee, and is planning her upcoming wedding.
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Alex Hiser
UX Designer
Alex graduated from Ohio University with a B.S. in Visual Communications and specializations in User Experience Design and Publication. While studying there, she found her way to a career in UX when one of her professors suggested her knowledge of design and her ability to empathize with the unarticulated needs of users would make her a great asset to any UX team (spoiler alert: she was right!). As an IAAP Certified Professional in Accessibility Core Competencies (CPACC), Alex is committed to ensuring accessibility standards are met by our team. She also received a minor in Spanish while studying abroad in Toledo, Spain. Alex is an explorer at heart. She enjoys traveling to new cities, visiting cathedrals and temples, trying and cooking new foods and checking off her “Things to Do and See” lists. She continues to study the Spanish language through podcasts, movies and speaking it with friends. Alex feels a deep connection to nature. Her favorite hobbies include gardening, caring for exotic houseplants, and spending time with her pet Hedgehog, Milo.
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Jordan Aguilar
UX Designer
Jordan brings a blend of skills and life experiences that influence him in his role as UX designer at Openfield. A graduate of Miami University’s Interactive Media Studies in Oxford, Ohio, Jordan has worked in design and development roles so he understands the nuances of the relationship between UX and engineering. You don’t need to talk to him for long to learn how important his family is to him. Accessibility and empathy for all users isn’t just a job requirement for him, it’s directly inspired by the people who are closest to him. From an early age, visual arts have been a passion of Jordan’s. He currently enjoys digital illustration, 3D modeling, and experimenting with realism, stylization and abstraction in his work. In a noisy world, he finds calm and focus in simple things such as listening to the sound of falling rain.
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Juli Lanzillotta
UX Researcher
As a UX researcher at Openfield, Juli brings a deep understanding of the challenges facing today’s educators and learners. A graduate of the University of Cincinnati’s D.A.A.P., Juli earned a BS in Design and Visual Communication, a Minor in Marketing, and a Certificate in Horticulture. Prior to joining Openfield, she held positions at GE Aviation and Everything But The House (EBTH). At Openfield, she is excited about directly improving learning and teaching experiences for the users we serve. Juli’s love for travel really got off the ground after visiting 25 cities in 4 countries while studying abroad in Florence, Italy. In addition to enjoying watercolor, dessert, and TV, she is a devoted guardian to over 50 plants by her last count.
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Josh Barnes
Co-founder
As a Co-founder of Openfield, Josh’s focus is the finance, operation and human resources systems that serve as the underlying bedrock for our team’s growth. Having completed numerous half marathons and endurance races, he is an avid runner who is always looking ahead to his next challenge. His passion for guerrilla art has earned him recognition as the Banksy of our office.
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Trevor Minton
Chief Experience Officer
As CXO at Openfield, Trevor collaborates closely with our clients and ensures that our team delivers world-class design thinking and execution that results in strong emotional connections between users and digital products. He is passionately enthusiastic about music, local and international soccer, automotive design and racing, and getting under the hood of his old but new-to-him BMW to keep it on the road for another couple of decades.
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Sarah Freitag
Director / UX Research
As Director of UX Research, Sarah draws on her deep understanding of EdTech users and her background in research, design and business strategy to enable our clients to make confident decisions that result in products that solve real needs and create demonstrable impacts on their business’ bottom lines. Like her design-side counterpart at Openfield, Sarah is responsible for fostering collaboration, team development and for bringing new strategic initiatives and methodologies that allow our company to stay ahead of the curve of what EdTech users truly need to realize higher levels of learning and teaching success. Sarah is an avid reader and an adventurous explorer. Highlights from her favorite travels include Morocco, Peru, Italy, Denmark and France. With the recent pandemic-induced reduction in travel, she makes it a point to fulfill her wanderlust with another one of her passions, cooking and baking, by experimenting with recipes inspired by cultures around the world.
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Kyle Bentle
UX Design Lead
As a UX Design Lead at Openfield, Kyle’s calm and thoughtful approach is complemented by his uncanny sense for wrangling and making sense of complexity. As a data visualization expert, he brings a rare ability to analyze and translate complicated concepts and information into engaging and useful stories that help clients and users make confident decisions. Kyle’s approach to UX is informed by a diverse set of professional experiences. After earning a journalism degree from Ball State University with a concentration in graphic design, he spent the next decade working in news organizations in Jacksonville and Chicago. Outside of work, he enjoys time with his wife, Lee Ann, and their dog, Scooter. Among his hobbies are biking, spending time outdoors, and painting poorly (his words).
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Tanner Sotkiewicz
Senior UX Designer
In his role at Openfield, Tanner brings a passion for technology and creating apps that he developed at a very early age. He earned his Bachelor’s Degree in Interactive Media Studies with a focus in User Experience Design and a minor in Spanish and Latin American Studies from Miami University. Outside of the office, Tanner is passionate about music, with the electronic genre currently filling his playlists. He’s an avid fan of football, college basketball and soccer, zealously following Openfield hometown favorite, FC Cincinnati, on the domestic front as well as Chelsea FC overseas. In 2014, Tanner achieved the truly impressive and often elusive goal of qualifying for and completing the Boston Marathon.
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Jesse Bruce
UX Designer
When you consider the sum of Jesse’s educational and professional experiences, it’s obvious why he’s a perfect fit for Openfield’s EdTech focus. His perspective on UX design is uniquely grounded by his firsthand experiences as a former educator and curriculum designer. Prior to pivoting to a career in product design, Jesse earned bachelor’s degrees in History and Psychology as well as a masters in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Denver. He brings eight years of real-world teaching experience, a passion for student engagement, and a track record of using data to improve instruction and curriculum development. In short, he got into UX to build better tools for teachers so they can make a bigger difference for their students. Outside of work, Jesse is obsessed with surfing and becoming a pro-level home cook. He loves exploring new places and cultures. He has visited 11 different countries, lived outside of the U.S. five separate times, speaks Spanish, Portuguese, and plans to add French soon.
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Natty Smith
UX Designer
While Natty’s background as a UX Designer is atypical, it is also perfectly aligned with Openfield’s niche in EdTech. He earned a Bachelors in Geography from Middlebury College which inspired a love for cartographic design, data visualization, and high-calibre presentations. But it was his passion for facilitating communication and learning that drove him to obtain a Masters in Teaching Secondary English from Tufts University. During his seven years as a high school English teacher he developed a special interest in curriculum design and event planning. For Natty, a career in UX was a natural next step that led to him completing the University of New Hampshire’s UI/UX Design Bootcamp program. For Openfield, his dual experiences in education and design are no less than tailor-made. Outside of work, performing and supporting music and dance has long been a part of Natty’s life. He has played violin since the age of five and has served on Boards of Directors for several arts organizations. When he isn’t playing and singing traditional English, Irish, and American fiddle music, you may find him participating in a variety of folk dance traditions, including contra dancing and English Morris and sword dancing. Natty also enjoys backcountry skiing in the winter and sailing in the summer.
