White Whale Web Services

White Whale Web Services > Content management in higher education

Staff Biographies

White Whale was founded in Providence, RI in the fall of 2000 and has grown slowly and steadily since. The company was incorporated in 2004 and the main office moved to Oakland, CA in late 2006. Today, we are four, though we maintain relationships with talented freelance designers and writers whose skills we call upon as needed.

Jason Pontius, president

Jason has been designing and building Web sites since 1997, when he began exploring the field of interactive design as a complement to his graduate study in linguistics at the University of Chicago (where he now holds a master’s degree). Since founding White Whale in 2000, he has presided over the company’s growth from a no-job-too-small sole proprietorship to a full-service design-and-build shop doing exciting work for major institutions of higher ed.

A pathological multitasker, Jason is involved in pretty much every aspect of the White Whale development process. These days, his primary roles are as chief idea-man, lead designer, and prolific generator of all manner of strategic recommendations for clients.

Tonya Langford, vice president

Tonya’s background is diverse to say the least. After receiving her MA from Brown University in Political Science, Tonya managed a number of projects seeking to improve international response in peacekeeping operations. As part of this work, she consulted for the World Bank and United Nations in East Timor during the early stages of the UN’s Transitional Administration and published two articles on intervention in international peace operations. Tonya then moved into nonprofit arts management, first working with the Arts & Business Council of Rhode Island helping arts and cultural organizations throughout the state improve their business and organizational infrastructures, and then directing regional collaborative projects and fundraising for the Alliance of Artists Communities. She also served as board chair of one of the premier youth arts organizations in the country—and, somewhere in there, she owned an independent coffee shop. Tonya is a graduate of Wellesley College.

In addition to managing White Whale’s business affairs, Tonya serves as lead content developer: refining site navigation, hiring and managing copywriters, editing final copy for consistency, and working closely with client staff throughout the site development process.

Alex Romanovich, technical director

Though Alex is a graduate of New York University’s film program, he brings to White Whale over fifteen years of programming experience in fields as varied as healthcare and entertainment. He is proficient in PHP, MySQL, Javascript, and XML/XHTML. While Alex was indispensable to White Whale since its inception, he became a permanent full-time employee in 2004. To complement his professional work, Alex has created open source projects for the PHP community, including an aggressive PHP smart caching system; XPHP, an XML-based templating system; and XPresent, an extension to the PHP DOM suite of functions which brings added flexibility and rapid development/deployment of XML/XHTML related content. Alex is an active screenwriter and photographer.

As technical director of White Whale, Alex is in charge of backend PHP/MySQL development as well as serving as the primary coordinator and technical consultant to client IT departments.

Donald Tetto, developer

A longtime web hobbyist and standards geek, Donald joined White Whale shortly after his 2006 graduation from Brown University’s undergraduate program in creative writing. He is known to moonlight as a professional photographer.

Donald’s primary role at White Whale is as XHTML wizard and interface designer. He manages design build-out and Javascript code and serves as best practices and accessibility policeman.

Douglas Graves, designer

Douglas is the newest member of the White Whale team, bringing with him a breath of mixed-media air. Having gotten into art somewhat late in the game, he returned to academia after several long years of touring the country with various bands. Originally pursuing a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of Louisville, he transferred schools just prior to his senior year to continue said pursuit at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. After nearly five years, he has his fingertips firmly wrapped around his BFA in Computer Arts: New Media, deciding to scale his attendance back to half-time to focus on his design career.

He is sort of a jack-of-all-trades: beginning his studies in print design and fine arts, his thirst for knowledge and skill spread his artistry across several other creative endeavors: standards-based Web Design and Development (XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, MySQL, PHP), Digital Video Editing, Motion Graphics design, Flash Design and Development (ActionScript 2, XML, PHP, CSS), Digital Audio creation, as well as fleshing out his repertoire in fine arts mediums such as Photography and Printmaking. Despite his wide set of interests, Douglas' passion lies in web design/development, as it is a perfect complement to his interest in aesthetic problem solving.