James Gray

About the speaker

James is the founder and CEO of Kortext. Prior to Kortext, James was the founder and CEO of Coutts Information Services, which became the leadingglobal supplier of content and services to university libraries across the world,and now a part of the Proquest / Clarivate organisation. While at Coutts James launched a sophisticated online content management and ordering system, OASIS, now the most widely used such system by universities around the world.He also launched,with both Stanford University and the University of Toronto,the MyiLibrary eBook platformwhich was adopted by thousands of universities and is now also part of Proquest/Clarivate.

On selling the Coutts business, James lived and worked in the US for 6 years principally for Ingram, the largest distributor of books in the world, as CEO of Ingram Digital,focused on the early eBook market, setting up Amazon’s eBook store and working with Google, Microsoft, Barnes and Noble, Apple, and others on their eBook and content ingestion, scanning,indexing and salesinitiatives.

James returned the UK in 2013 and set up Kortext, with the purpose of aggregating access to digital learning resources and providing the engagement tools for both academics and students to access and utilise this important content, integrated into their course, to support improved teaching and learning experiences and engagement. Kortext is used by some 2,300 universities around the world, supporting millions of students,and has over 4m eTextbooks and educational video’s aggregated into a single student learning space, directly connected into the university’s Virtual Learning Environment (VLE).

Kortext is based in Bournemouth, UKand James lives in Poole with his family and enjoys lots of sports including sailing with his 2 young boys.