Not a lot shocks me anymore. Surprise, yes. Worry, more than I care to admit. But genuine shock — that’s a rarity. Until this afternoon.
Word reached me through a colleague: Nico Matthijs is stepping down as Chief Product Officer at Blackboard, and Dom Gore is stepping into the role as Executive Vice President of Product. I had to read it twice.
This one came out of nowhere, especially given the timing.
Those of us who’ve been watching the slow-motion separation of Blackboard’s Teaching and Learning products from the broader Anthology portfolio had reason to believe things were stabilizing. Leadership changes mid-realignment aren’t exactly a confidence booster. When you’re already asking institutions to trust a restructured product organization, the last thing you want is a familiar face walking out the door.
And Nico Matthijs was, without question, a familiar and trusted face.
For many of us in this community, Nico’s credibility goes all the way back to Ally.
Long before he held the CPO title at Anthology, Nico was building something genuinely valuable. An accessibility tool that actually worked, backed by a team that actually listened. When Blackboard acquired Ally, what clients noticed wasn’t just the product. It was the way Nico engaged with the community, took feedback seriously, and kept showing up. That kind of institutional trust doesn’t transfer automatically with an org chart change. He earned it.
As CPO for the broader Anthology organization, he carried that reputation forward. He managed to strike a balance that very few people in his position have been able to pull off: leading product innovation while remaining genuinely responsive to client concerns. In the ed-tech space, where vendor-client relationships can get adversarial fast, that’s no small thing. It’s actually quite rare.
Dom Gore is a known quantity. That matters.
I want to be clear: this isn’t a situation where an unknown is being parachuted in. Dom Gore has been part of this ecosystem since 2014, starting as a solutions engineer in the UK and building his career within the organization from the ground up. He’s participated in office hours, engaged in community forums, and put in the kind of time that earns you credibility before you ever hold a senior title. The community knows him.
That said, his style is different from Nico’s. Matthijs has a natural charisma — the kind that probably grew from years of building and leading his own company before the acquisition. It reads as polish, but it also reads as genuine. It’s a style that plays well in front of a room full of administrators who’ve heard every vendor pitch in the book. Now that Matthew Pittinsky will soon be back at the helm, this issue may be moot. If not, Dom will need to develop that presence, and he’ll have a high-profile opportunity to do exactly that come July in Dallas.
Building Blackboard Together 2026 will be an interesting moment. The room will notice if the new EVP of Product commands the stage with the same authority clients have come to expect, or if the energy has shifted. I’ll be watching, and so will a lot of my colleagues.
My final take: this hurts, but it doesn’t have to derail anything.
Nico Matthijs leaves behind real goodwill in this community, and I genuinely hope he does well in whatever comes next. He will be missed, not just as an amazing product leader, but as someone who made clients feel heard. That’s harder to replace than a job title.
But Dom Gore has the product history, the community relationships, and the institutional knowledge to lead effectively in this role. The foundation is there. I truly believe that the trust and credibility Nico carried will transfer to him.
Technically Yours,
The Blackboard Guru
Just in shock myself.