Digital Asset Management (DAM) for education organizations:
June 22, 2026
Company: Cognia
Industry: Education, accreditation, certification, assessment, and professional learning
Company Size: Global nonprofit education organization
Location: United States
About Cognia
Cognia is a global nonprofit organization that works with schools, systems, and education providers to advance learning through accreditation, certification, assessment, professional learning, and continuous improvement services.
For Cognia, video, photography, audio, and other creative assets play an important role in supporting internal communications, events, online learning, certification projects, and storytelling across the organization.
The challenge:
Before Stockpress, Cognia relied on network-attached storage to manage large video, audio, and photography files. While this worked as a place to store content, it made collaboration difficult.
Access was limited to people with specific permissions. If someone needed a file, Kris Richard, Senior Media Production Specialist at Cognia, often had to download it from the network drive, re-upload it somewhere else, and then share it manually with the right team member or contractor.
That process became especially challenging for large video projects. With 4K files, multi-camera footage, keynote recordings, classroom footage, and B-roll, file sizes quickly became difficult to move, share, and review.
“It was really ancient and not very efficient.”
– Kris Richard, Senior Media Production Specialist, Cognia
The solution:
Cognia needed a cloud-based digital asset management platform that could handle large files, support remote collaboration, and make it easier for internal teams and external collaborators to access the right assets.
After exploring other DAM options, Kris found that many platforms were too expensive, too complex, or lacked transparent pricing. Then he discovered Stockpress.
Stockpress gave Cognia a more practical way to upload, organize, share, and manage large creative files in the cloud — without the enterprise-level cost or technical overhead.
“The pricing was amazing. The functionality was amazing. It almost felt too good to be true. But then we got in there, and I was like, ‘Oh, this is awesome.’”
– Kris Richard, Senior Media Production Specialist, Cognia
Results:
With Stockpress in place, Cognia now benefits from:
- Easier collaboration on large video projects: Large collections of footage can be uploaded once and shared with remote collaborators without shipping hard drives or creating complicated workarounds.
- Faster access to creative assets: Team members can be invited directly into the right collections, making it easier to browse, review, and request the content they need.
- Reduced manual file handling: Kris no longer has to repeatedly download, re-upload, and manually distribute files for every project.
- A practical alternative to expensive DAM platforms: Cognia found a budget-friendly solution with the functionality they needed.
- Simple onboarding: Kris was able to get started, add team members, upload content, and share collections within 24 hours.
- Friendly, responsive support: When questions came up, the Stockpress team responded with patience, warmth, and helpful guidance.
Q&A with Kris Richard
Interviewee: Kris Richard, Senior Media Production Specialist, Cognia
Interviewer: Veronica Sierra, Stockpress
Introduction
When your work involves video, audio, photography, events, and large-scale content production, file management can quickly become more than a storage problem.
For Kris Richard, Senior Media Production Specialist at Cognia, the challenge was not just keeping files safe. It was making sure large video and photo assets could be accessed, reviewed, and shared by the right people, wherever they were working.
In this conversation, Kris shares how Cognia moved from network-attached storage and manual file sharing to Stockpress — and how that changed the way he collaborates with internal teams, remote contractors, and creative colleagues.
“I manage the video, audio, and photo production internally.”
Veronica Sierra, Stockpress: Can you briefly describe your role and responsibilities within Cognia?
Kris Richard, Cognia: My name is Kris Richard. I’m the Senior Media Production Specialist for Cognia, and I handle a lot of the video, audio, and photo production internally for our company.
That can include video projects, large-scale projects, small-scale projects, event photography when we have special events inside the building, and things like that.
“For the last 10 years, it’s been my job to manage the photos and videos we’ve taken.”
Veronica: What kind of content or digital assets do you manage regularly?
Kris: For the last 10 years that I’ve been at Cognia, it’s been my job in various shapes and forms to manage the photos and videos that we’ve taken over that last decade.
That means making sure we’re backing up all of those precious video clips and videos from big company meetings, internal events, external events, and all that kind of stuff.
It also means making sure those assets are organized in a way that, if we have to retrieve them, I can share them out with team members to use for different projects and collaborations.
“Before Stockpress, we basically just used network-attached storage.”
Veronica: Before using Stockpress, what tools or systems did you use to manage those assets?
Kris: Before Stockpress, we basically just used network-attached storage. It was like a network drive that was connected internally.
I could go in and throw stuff up there, but unless you had permission to that drive — which you had to specifically request — you couldn’t access that stuff.
So I was always taking things, putting them up there, and if somebody needed something, I had to pull it down and re-upload it somewhere that was shareable with other people on the team or whoever I was collaborating with.
It was really ancient and not very efficient.
“We had looked for DAM solutions before, but they were all too expensive.”
Veronica: It sounds like that created a lot of work.
Kris: Lots of work.
Before Stockpress, we had looked for digital asset management solutions, but they were all like, “It’s going to be $100,000. It’s going to be $80,000.”
For my company, it was like, “We can’t afford that.” We’re trying to put money into salaries and other large, revenue-generating projects. Just for a digital asset management system, it seemed like a lot.
When it came up again because of a big project, I found Stockpress and spoke to Ian. The pricing was amazing. The functionality was amazing. It almost felt too good to be true.
But then we got in there, and I was like, “Oh, this is awesome.” It’s been great ever since.
“File sizes were really killing us.”
Veronica: What were the biggest challenges you faced with your previous file management system?
Kris: File sizes.
If you’re a video person like me, and any modern video person, you’re going to be dealing with at least 4K files on a regular basis. Those things get huge.
If you’re recording an hour-and-a-half keynote speech, or taking a bunch of B-roll, all those file sizes add up. It’s really hard to share that stuff with remote contractors, remote team members, collaborators, or whoever needs it.
It was super cumbersome. File size limits were really killing us, and Stockpress got us around that.
Now I can have these huge collections of files to share with others almost effortlessly. The only pain is uploading it, but once it’s uploaded, it’s good to go.
“Video collaboration was really cumbersome before.”
Veronica: How did those challenges impact your team’s productivity?
Kris: The challenges we experienced before made video collaboration really cumbersome because of the lack of ease of access.
A lot of our less tech-savvy folks weren’t really able to contribute in a meaningful way because they didn’t always have access to the assets that I had access to.
Now that has definitely changed.
“I wanted to improve the way we collaborated internally.”
Veronica: What were you hoping to improve when you started looking for a new solution?
Kris: I really wanted to improve the way my team members and I collaborated internally with photos and videos.
I work directly with the graphics person, the website person, the social media person, and our communications team. They all want different things from me at different times, and before, it was really hard to do that.
I wanted a solution that would let me click a button and invite someone into a collection I had already built. They could browse through it, let me know what they wanted to use, and let me know what they wanted to do.
It’s so much easier now. It’s such a huge time-saver.
“Stockpress saved me countless hours.”
Veronica: What initially drew you to Stockpress?
Kris: We had a very large project coming up.
One of my first big video projects over 10 years ago was a series of more than 30 five-to-seven-minute videos for a certification course we were doing for one of our online products.
Back then, I worked with a team that did a lot of video work, and we were physically together. There wasn’t as much need to share files out. I could just pass someone an external drive.
Times have changed. I’m a smaller shop now, and the people I was working with on the update to that project 10 years later lived in different states.
I’m on a Mac. Other users were on Windows machines. I use Final Cut, and they don’t make Final Cut for Windows.
The reality was, if we didn’t get some kind of solution, I was going to have to send out loaner MacBooks to people who had never used a MacBook before, give them Final Cut licenses, ship them hard drives with all the clips, and then train them just to review the footage.
We were talking about almost two terabytes of footage — several days, multiple cameras, classroom footage — that they were supposed to go through.
I thought, “We have to find something better.” Otherwise, we were going to spend more time getting people up to speed than actually starting the editing.
I looked at a couple of options and hit the same wall as before. Everything was super pricey, or they wouldn’t even tell you the price because you knew it was going to be up there.
Then I found Stockpress. I thought, “Surely there has to be a cloud-based one,” and here we are.
The website looked great. The demo videos looked really good. I reached out, spoke to Ian, and he did a demo for me. I was sold.
I quickly pitched it to my team, and they were like, “Yeah, this is great.”
Stockpress saved me countless hours of creating hard drives, training people, and doing things the old Stone Age way of sharing files remotely. Now it’s just the click of a button.
“Within 24 hours, I was pretty much up and running.”
Veronica: What was the onboarding process like? Were you able to implement Stockpress easily?
Kris: The onboarding process was pretty easy.
Once I got access to it, the site itself felt pretty intuitive. The FAQs and quick tip videos were really helpful.
I didn’t require much help getting going. I was able to get in there really quickly, add some of my team members, and share certain collections with them so they could get to work.
Within 24 hours, I was pretty much up and running once we got everything squared away with our account.
It was straightforward, easy, and quick.
“I’ve always been met with patience, warmth, and kindness.”
Veronica: How has your experience been with Stockpress customer service and the team?
Kris: Fantastic.
I’ve only had to reach out a couple of times for real basic things, or maybe I had overlooked something on a page that already explained what I was trying to do.
Every time I reached out to customer service or anyone on the team, I’ve been met with patience, warmth, and kindness.
Everyone I’ve spoken to over there has been great so far.
“Stockpress has improved my workflow vastly.”
Veronica: How has your workflow changed since using Stockpress?
Kris: Stockpress has improved my workflow vastly.
The ease of now being able to say, “Oh, you need this? Click share. You need this? Cool, I’m inviting you to this collection.”
I can watermark it and be done. I don’t have to bring all this stuff into Photoshop to watermark it. It’s just done.
It’s been a huge time-saver.
“The uploading process is great when you have tons of files.”
Veronica: Which Stockpress features do you use and value the most?
Kris: I haven’t gotten into all the AI tagging stuff yet, but the custom tag fields are pretty cool.
At a base level, the ease of the uploading process when you have tons of files is great.
I can have 200 files uploading, and it might take 30 minutes, but I can let that run while I continue doing other work. I don’t have to babysit the window to make sure it functions or finishes uploading.
So far, I’ve used Stockpress for uploading, account creation, sharing, creating teams, and adding people to certain collections. Even using it in that base way has been really valuable.
“If anyone asked me for a good DAM solution, it would definitely have to be Stockpress.”
Veronica: If you were recommending Stockpress to someone, what would you say?
Kris: If anyone asked me for a good digital asset management solution, it would definitely have to be Stockpress.
It’s budget-friendly. It’s easy to use. The support is great. The site has a bunch of tutorials to show you quick things, so you don’t even have to call support most of the time.
It’s just easy to use. I would encourage anybody to use this solution.
What This Means for Education Organizations Managing Large Creative Files
Kris’s experience reflects a common challenge for education organizations, nonprofits, and content-heavy teams:
- Large video files are difficult to share through traditional storage systems.
- Network drives often limit access to only a few people.
- Remote collaboration becomes slow when files live on hard drives or internal servers.
- Creative teams spend too much time downloading, uploading, and resharing assets.
- Enterprise DAM pricing can feel out of reach for practical day-to-day needs.
For Cognia, Stockpress offered a different way to work:
- A cloud-based home for large video, audio, and photo assets.
- Simple sharing for internal teams and remote collaborators.
- Collections that make projects easier to browse and review.
- Budget-friendly pricing without unnecessary complexity.
- A support team that is easy to reach when help is needed.
Most importantly, Stockpress helped Kris spend less time moving files around and more time producing the work itself.
“Now it’s just the click of a button.”
For Cognia, digital asset management was not about adding another complicated system. It was about making large creative files easier to manage, easier to share, and easier to use.
By moving from network-attached storage to Stockpress, Kris and his team found a faster, more practical way to collaborate on video, photography, and creative projects.
“Stockpress saved me countless hours of creating hard drives and training people. Now it’s just the click of a button.”
– Kris Richard, Senior Media Production Specialist, Cognia
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