Former Maven Wave and Atos design leader and veteran enterprise intranet and search product leader reunite with founder Misha Zubarev to lead ADC’s growth in end-to-end LumApps implementation, AI adoption and change, and employment branding
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 5, 2026 — Ariella Digital Consulting (ADC), a certified LumApps Implementation and Technology partner, today announced two additions to its team. Mike Biersma joins as Director of Customer Experience, and Colin Ryan joins as Workforce Technology & Collaboration Manager.
Mike brings 30 years across brand, design and enterprise technology, including more than four years dedicated exclusively to LumApps implementations. Colin brings 20 years running the platforms employees use to communicate, collaborate and find information, including leading one of the earliest enterprise LumApps rollouts in the US.
The hires reunite three of the earliest LumApps practitioners in North America. While Misha Zubarev, ADC’s founder, was one of the first LumApps deployment consultants in the US, Mike was leading LumApps implementation teams at Maven Wave, and Colin was leading one of the earliest enterprise LumApps programs from the customer side. Misha and Mike worked side by side on major deployments for Ascension Health and Capital One. All three have worked together on enterprise LumApps programs.
Mike Biersma, Director of Customer Experience
At Maven Wave and Atos, Mike shaped solution approaches and led teams through full LumApps implementations and complex SharePoint and Jive migrations. His teams brought together information architecture, UX and visual design, branding, and front-end development, as well as program and change management. His clients included Capital One, Ascension Health, Verizon Media, Irvine Company, Match Group and National Geographic.
Over 13 years at Maven Wave and Atos, Mike led digital experience and design for Fortune 500 clients, most recently serving as Atos’s Director of AI Experience for North America. Before that, he founded and ran a Chicago branding and marketing agency for 15 years.
Colin Ryan, Workforce Technology & Collaboration Manager
In previous roles, Colin has worked in technical support, learning and instructional design, and eventually into IT as a product manager for an enterprise intranet and search platform serving a large enterprise workforce. In 2018, he also led the company’s LumApps implementation strategy and migration.
He later focused more on search and AI, scaling enterprise AI tools from a small pilot to the full workforce and building AI-powered enterprise search capabilities. Across intranet, community, search and collaboration migrations, Colin treats workforce technology as a product rather than a one-time project, drawing on his background in adult learning, change leadership and customer-driven innovation.
Leading ADC into 2027
“Mike and I worked together on delivering some of the largest and most challenging implementations, while Colin was on the customer side, running one of the earlier LumApps enterprise rollouts in 2018, while I was still a LumApps employee,” said Misha Zubarev, Founder and Managing Director of ADC. “Between them, they bring a branding agency’s eye, years of enterprise delivery, and hands-on AI leadership from both the consulting and the customer side. That is exactly the expertise we will be bringing to our customers as we head into 2027.”
In his new role, Mike will work with Misha on ADC’s leadership, marketing, brand and operations, and will partner with clients from pre-sales through delivery. Colin will guide clients across the full platform lifecycle: discovery and platform strategy, migration planning, information architecture and enterprise search, and adoption and change leadership. Together they will lead ADC’s growth into 2027 and beyond, focused on four areas:
End-to-end Implementations. Up until now, ADC’s implementations have centered on deep technical delivery: platform configuration, integrations and custom widgets, guided by strategy and design work along the way. With Mike and Colin, that practice now covers the full arc of the employee experience platform rollout program. Mike brings brand, UX and visual design, plus experience leading complex SharePoint and Jive migrations. Colin adds a dedicated discovery and vision phase, along with platform strategy, information architecture and enterprise search. Whether it’s a new rollout or a relaunch for an existing customer, clients now get one team from first conversation through launch.
Employment branding. Many intranets borrow the company’s external, customer-facing brand. ADC will help organizations build a unique internal brand and communications voice designed for their own employees, then carry it through every page of their LumApps platform.
AI and agents. Drawing on Ivo’s deep engineering insights, Mike’s AI leadership at Atos, Colin’s experience scaling enterprise AI and search, and ADC’s existing Agent Hub certification, ADC will help customers put LumApps’s Agent Hub and AI agent tools to work on real employee tasks.
Change management. Mike will build out a dedicated change management practice and offering within ADC, drawing on his work alongside Maven Wave’s change management team on large LumApps and Google Workspace rollouts. Colin adds the customer-side view: years of leading adoption for a large enterprise workforce. Together they will make sure new intranets launch with the communication, training and adoption plans that make them stick.
“An intranet is a brand experience your employees live in every day, and too often it’s treated as a CMS to configure,” said Mike Biersma, Director of Customer Experience at ADC. “Misha has built ADC into one of the most trusted names in the LumApps partner ecosystem. I’m excited to help customers get more from the platform they already own: a brand built for their people, learning in the flow of work, and AI agents that actually take work off employees’ plates.”
“I’ve seen LumApps from inside a large enterprise, and I know what separates an intranet people rely on from one they ignore,” said Colin Ryan, Workforce Technology & Collaboration Manager at ADC. “I’ve worked with both Misha and Mike before, so joining them at ADC was an easy yes. The next chapter is bringing AI into the digital workplace in a way employees actually trust and use. That starts with understanding the people before deciding what to build, and it’s exactly the kind of work I want to do with ADC’s clients.”
Organizations planning a LumApps launch, relaunch, LMS migration, search upgrade or AI rollout can book a discovery call with ADC at adc.dev/contact.
About Ariella Digital Consulting
Ariella Digital Consulting (ADC) is a boutique consulting and engineering firm and a certified LumApps Implementation and Technology partner, working in the LumApps ecosystem since 2017 with enterprise clients across the NORAM and EMEA. ADC’s core practice is end-to-end LumApps implementations, taking organizations from discovery and platform strategy through migration, launch and adoption. Its technology practice then extends what the platform can do, with integrations, AI and enterprise search, custom widgets, analytics and enterprise UI/UX design. Its mission is to make LumApps a simpler, happier experience for the teams who run it and the employees who use it every day. Learn more at adc.dev.
