About Feola

Christopher J. Feola is President of Nithyananda Solutions, a software company that uses its proprietary, patent-pending data entity ecosystems to create knowledge and understanding out of the chaos of unstructured data. 

Previously, Feola was Executive Vice President/CIO of askSam Systems, the leader in free-form databases since 1985. He designed and built the nextPression systems; and Vice President/Technology for Belo Interactive, the wholly owned subsidiary of the Belo Corporation that specialized in building interactive versions of Belo properties, such as the Dallas Morning News, the Providence Journal and WFAA.

Before that, Feola was the Founding Director of The Media Center at the American Press Institute. He lectures widely on new media, computer-assisted journalism and system design, and has twelve patents granted, allowed and pending for content and business information systems.

Feola has led technology groups to: the 2002 The RealWare Award for Best Enterprise Content Management Application, over IBM and Interwoven, among others; Number 13 on the InfoWorld 100; an Honorable Mention in the 2003 CIO Magazine Enterprise Value Awards, recognizing contribution to business value and results; honoree at the 2002 Wharton Infosys Business Transformation Awards for IT solutions; and the 2002 New Media Award (Newspaper Association of America) recognizing special achievement in creatively solving newspaper production issues

Feola’s technology industry leadership positions include membership on the CIO Magazine Executive Programs Advisory Board; Editor, The Society for Information Management’s SIMNews; member, STARTech Early Ventures Industry Advisor; and chairman, Marketing Committee, SIMPosium 2006.

Feola was named one the 50 most influential people in new media by Online Journalism Review.  He has appeared as a new media expert on The News Hour with Jim Lehrer on PBS and Talk of the Nation on NPR, and been written up in Business 2.0 and The New York Times.

He has been a featured speaker at Medios Interactivos in Costa Rica; hosted the technology day for Editor & Publisher Interactive Newspapers in Seattle and Atlanta; hosted the technology panels for Connections; addressed a joint session of the World Newspaper Congress and the World Editors Forum in Kobe, Japan; and hosted seven Media Center conferences.

He wrote about technology regularly for more than a decade for The Cole Papers, NewsInc, Presstime and the NAA's TechNews magazine.

He was a member of the Board of Advisors for the University of Miami, Ohio, Center for Interactive Media, and sat on the Board of Visitors for the New Media Program at Indiana University Purdue University at Indianapolis.  He sat on the Newspaper Association of America Technology Committee.

Feola has been a member of the adjunct faculty at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, the IUPUI School of Journalism, and Miami (Ohio) journalism department, teaching new media and computer-assisted reporting. He has worked at seven papers in 18 states and five countries on a couple of continents, including a two-year stint covering Asia as a foreign correspondent for Stars & Stripes. He has more than 4,000 published articles to his credit.  He lives in Grapevine, Texas with his wife, two daughters, one son and rather more luck than he deserves.