Dr. Richard Sebastian is the Director of Achieving the Dream's OER Degree Initiative, an effort to support colleges across the United States in designing degree programs using open educational resources.

Before joining ATD, Richard was the Director of Teaching and Learning Technologies for the Virginia Community College System, providing vision, leadership, and support for effective use of teaching and learning technologies for the 23 colleges in the state. He also served as the Principal Investigator of the Zx23 Project, an effort to scale OER degrees across the VCCS, and was a founding member of the Open Virginia Advisory Committee (OVAC), a statewide committee investigating ways to reduce textbook costs for Virginia’s students.

Richard is a frequent presenter on open educational resources, OER degrees, and other educational topics. He received his doctorate in education from the University of Virginia