Jeff Munks

Deputy Executive Learning Officer, U.S. Navy

Experience

Jeffrey J. Munks spent nearly 15 years as a police officer in the San Francisco Bay Area. While working for the San Jose Police Department, Mr. Munks began a volunteer telephone based interpretation service to help officers deal with the impact of more than 65,000 Vietnamese refugees who had moved into the city during the Boat-Lift years. Over six years, the service grew to the point where it was providing 24 hour access to interpreters of more than 140 languages and dialects for 911 centers, hospitals, and social service agencies across the United States. In 1989, Mr. Munks' business was acquired by AT&T and he joined the company as Director of Marketing and Sales, Product Management, and Strategic Planning. Over the next five years, Language Line grew more than 4,000%.

Mr.Munks holds a B.A. in English Literature from Notre Dame de Namur University in Belmont, California, an M.A. in Instructional Technology from San Jose State University. He served on the Goals 2000 National Advisory Council for Standards in Foreign Language Instruction, K through 12. He has served on the National Advisory Board of the Ohio State University National Foreign Language Resource Center and the Monterey Institute of International Studies Board of Trustees. Mr. Munks served on the National Steering Committee for the first ever U.S. National Assessment of Education Progress in Foreign Languages, a project of the Congressionally mandated National Governing Board on Educational Progress. He also served on the Board of NAFSA, the Association of International Educators.

Mr. Munks was in residence for 10 months on a Fellowship with the National Foreign Language Center at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C. during 1994/1995. On his return to AT&T, he served as California State Director for Local Government Relations. Based in San Francisco, he was responsible for building the company's Local Government Relations team throughout the state of California.

Mr. Munks left AT&T in April of 1996 to join California State University Monterey Bay where, reporting to the President, he developed new network-based initiatives. In January, 1997, California Governor Pete Wilson appointed Mr. Munks to the Education Council for Technology in Learning.

In July, 1997, Mr. Munks combined his work at CSUMB with several high technology ventures and launched a new corporation. As Chairman and CEO of Arista Knowledge Systems, Mr. Munks led a venture capital backed effort to develop software that supports network-based Learning. In July of 2000, his company was acquired by DigitalThink, Inc.

In May, 2001, Mr. Munks was appointed Assistant Dean and Executive Director of the Downtown San Francisco and Oakland Centers for the College of Extended Learning at San Francisco State University. In that role, Mr. Munks developed new executive education programs for the banking industry in China.

In April, 2002, Mr. Munks joined Phil Quast, VADM, USN (Ret), Executive Learning Officer of the Navy, as his Deputy. He is now helping to build a career-long professional development continuum for senior leaders of the Navy while working on a doctoral degree at University of La Verne, where his research focus is on learning accountability among senior executives.