Rebekah Sotillo earned her Bachelor of Science in Astrophysics from the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD, and was commissioned as a Surface Warfare Officer in the United States Navy. While in the military, she drove the aircraft carrier, USS ABRAHAM LINCOLN (CVN-72), across the Pacific Ocean to port in locations such as Guam, Manila, and Japan. After driving aircraft carriers, she studied to become a meteorologist for the Navy.

With over nine years of leadership experience as a Naval Officer, she works as a Leadership and Interpersonal Communication Instructor for AWA. One of her favorite pastimes is mastering the art of sourdough bread baking. A native of Southern California, she loves the outdoors and spends most of her weekends hiking. Mrs. Sotillo is the Instructor Access one-on-one mentor/grader for Leadership and Interpersonal Communication.

Check the current Recorded Course catalog to see Mrs. Sotillo’s course offerings and sign up for her courses.

Maureen Ryan is a professional writer with more than twenty-five years of experience writing articles and creating content for a wide variety of news outlets, magazines, websites, and book publishers. She has taught writing across grade levels in classrooms and online for more than twelve years. Mrs. Ryan has a Bachelor of Arts in English and studied interactive learning at Teachers College, Columbia University.

As the executive editor for Scholastic.com, she helped refine the educational publisher’s interactive teaching tools and web-based lesson plans for grades PreK-12 and relaunched the site’s online writing tutorials hosted by award-winning authors. In addition to writing and mentoring, Mrs. Ryan has homeschooled her three children for more than 12 years. Having graduated her oldest, she continues to teach her younger two.

“I feel extremely blessed,” says Mrs. Ryan, “to be able to combine my love for teaching and writing with an opportunity to serve homeschool families.”

Mrs. Ryan is the Instructor Access one-on-one mentor/grader for the 6/7 Series Foundational courses (6/7-1, 6/7-2, 6/73, and 6/7-4); the 12-1 and 12-2 Advanced Rhetoric and Writing; the 11-9 course, Business Writing 1: Professional Writing Essentials; and the COLL-1 Essay Test Mastery course.

Check the current Recorded course catalog to see Mrs. Ryan’s course offerings and sign up for her courses.

Russell Davis, MFA, has written and sold numerous novels and short stories in virtually every genre of fiction, under at least a half-dozen pseudonyms. His writing has encompassed media tie-in work in the  Transformers universe to action-adventure in The Executioner series to original novels. He’s published short fiction in anthology titles like Under Cover of Darkness, Law of the Gun, and In the Shadow of Evil. In addition to his work as a writer, he has worked as an editor and book packager, and created original anthology titles ranging from westerns like Lost Trails to fantasy-like Courts of the Fey. 

He was the president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) from 2008–2010, and has been a member of numerous other writing organizations including the Western Writers of America  (WWA), Mystery Writers of America (MWA), and the Romance Writers of America (RWA). 

His most recent releases are a re-issue of the four-book Jenna Solitaire series (WordFire Press), and he’s currently working on a new collection, Written in the Scars on Our Hearts, and a middle-grade novel with well-known author Fran Wilde. Mr. Davis co-developed the science fiction and fantasy short story course here at Aquinas Writing Advantage.

Check the current Recorded Course catalog to see Mr. Davis’ course and sign up.