Our Team
Tracy Augustine, Founding & Managing Partner
Tracy Augustine co-founded OceansThree in 2014, and is currently its Managing Partner, focusing on executive search in ed tech for Director to C-level positions in sales, marketing, technology, and product areas. She has over 25 years of experience in almost all aspects of the education industry: in K12 and Post-Secondary segments; in B2B, B2B2C, and B2C channels; in US and Global markets; working with content, mobile, software, and hardware products and services. She has held leadership positions in sales, training and development, marketing, product, and e-commerce from Pearson Education, Cengage (CMO) and, prior to OceansThree, from Apple, where she was Director of Worldwide Education and managed marketing teams across Europe, Asia, Australia and North America.
Tracy is a graduate of Duke University and a native New Yorker. After living in the Bay Area for eleven years, she now lives outside of Phoenix, AZ with one of each—a husband, son, dog and cat.
David Gillespie, Founding Partner
David Gillespie is a co-founder of OceansThree and now leads the talent-development side of the business. Prior to that, he had a rich, 25-year career of marketing, sales management, and talent development from Pearson and Cengage. At Pearson, he successfully managed the US higher-education sales organization through the start of its digital transformation. At Cengage, he launched initiatives in K–20 sales-talent acquisition and development, sales learning, and sales optimization. As VP Sales Strategy, Learning and Development, he introduced a competency-based talent acquisition culture and process, launched a sales onboarding program, created industry-unique leadership development and career-planning initiatives, and served as a strategic advisor for senior leaders of sales, marketing, and product development in all aspects of recruiting and retention, talent development, and sales effectiveness. In 2014, he co-founded OceansThree, and helped run the day-to-day business through 2016. In 2015, David co-founded and still leads The River, an organization in Atlanta whose mission is to transform the way people respond to and view homelessness. He has continued to advise leading ed-tech companies of all sizes in areas of sales optimization and effective sales leadership, with an emphasis on creating winning sales cultures. Most recently, David brings his expertise as an Authorized Partner for Everything DiSC® and The Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team™ to his work with OceansThree.
He is a native Texan, now living in Atlanta Georgia, and has a BBA from Texas A&M University and a M.Ed. from the University of Georgia.
Gary June, Founding Partner & Advisor
Gary June is a co-founder of OceansThree, continuing to serve as an advisor to the company. He is a media and education professional with 15 years’ C-level experience, including CEO of Pearson Technology Group and Dorling Kindersley, and five years as the Global CMO for Pearson Education. These roles were during a period of the industry’s significant transformation from print to digital, and roles in which Gary’s creativity and innovation made lasting impressions on his peers and his competitors. Gary’s keen eye for talent — how to both recruit it and keep it — have been keys to his success. He is an advisory board member of five ed-tech and media companies, an active investor in both spaces, and is currently head of sales and marketing at Jones & Bartlett Learning/Ascend Learning.
A West Coast native and a graduate of Stanford University, Gary currently resides in Boston.
Kathy Berlowe, Partner
Kathy Berlowe brings to OceansThree nearly three decades of experience in sourcing, identifying, and placing high-performing talent for a wide variety of companies across learning, media and information industries in the US and International markets. After starting her career in publishing for consumer books, she moved into the education and professional arenas as a marketing and sales professional for such companies as Houghton Mifflin, Scholastic and John Wiley, to name a few. After years building a strong foundation in the business of marketing and selling content of all kinds, Kathy joined Bert Davis Executive Search, where she began her 20-plus-year career in the retained search industry. Kathy has deep familiarity with multiple profiles and backgrounds from director level on up to the C-Suite in all types of cultures and environments, from startups to multi-national organizations, and has provided years of service for clients and candidates seeking to improve their organizations and careers.
She has lived in New York City her whole career and cannot envision a more stimulating or educational environment to support her desire to learn and grow.
Regan Caruthers, Partner
Regan Caruthers has been an executive recruiter and coach at OceansThree since its inception. She brought over 20 years of top performing sales and business development experience in the education industry to her role, including leadership positions with both the California State University and California Community Colleges’ Office of the Chancellor. Regan understands the talent needs of both mature and early stage companies having excelled in both environments for companies such as McGraw-Hill, Kno, CourseSmart, and as Vice-President Sales and Strategic Alliances for Pathbrite. In addition, her innovative work experience with both the Institute of HeartMath and the Society for Organizational Learning provides her with a unique and holistic perspective on how best to coach talent to thrive in complex and demanding organizational environments. Her transformative coaching has been widely praised by a variety of education industry leaders and she is passionate about bringing her clients tools to navigate change and complexity with more ease.
A native of St. Louis, Missouri, Regan has called Santa Cruz, CA home for the last 20 years. Her husband Jim Kelly and her two sons, Connor and Ian, bring her great joy!
Katie Wainwright, Partner
Katie Wainwright brings to OceansThree a range of experience in public relations and communications, executive recruiting, and coaching. Katie spent two decades in the trade-publishing industry, where she was VP, Executive Director of Publicity for the Crown division of Random House, Associate Publisher for Paperbacks and Executive Director of Publicity at Hyperion, and held various publicity roles at Little, Brown and Simon & Schuster. Prior to joining OceansThree, Katie worked as a recruiter at Bert Davis Executive Search, Spencer Stuart Associates, and Blinkhorn Executive Recruiting. She has also been a certified nutritional health coach for the past three years.
Katie currently specializes in recruiting for senior management positions in learning, media, and information. She is a graduate of Middlebury College and has a Masters in English Language and Literature from Middlebury’s Breadloaf School of English. She is based in New York City, where she lives with her family.
“OceansThree’s extensive network in the industry assured we were able to see a broad spectrum of excellent candidates. And, their experience as hiring managers brought a unique perspective to our recruiting process, which was invaluable in filling these roles. The candidates they presented were exceptional as was our partnership with them.”
Liz Rockhold, former SVP of Sales, Turnitin