Bridging DAM Education and Leadership: How Eric Appell Has Leveled Up His Digital Asset Management Career
A decade ago, when Eric Appell digitized recordings for Universal Music Group in Los Angeles, he learned one of the first and most important lessons of his career. "It doesn't matter how legendary an asset is if it can't find its way to an audience," Appell said. "Moving an asset from the vault to the listener requires strategic metadata development, adoptable workflows, and cross-functional collaboration."
Appell has carried that insight with him throughout his career, as he has built DAM programs for consumer-packaged goods (CPG) brands, retail, life sciences, and manufacturing. Today, Appell leads the DAM practice at Ntara, and he was recently able to confirm and expand the lessons he learned at Universal Music Group by earning a Digital Asset Management Bronze Certificate from Rutgers University.
In our Q&A, Appell explains the reasons he chose to enroll in the Rutgers DAM certificate program, how the knowledge he gained has helped him develop his skills, and why earning the certificate continues to benefit him in multiple ways.
CPS: How has earning the DAM Bronze Certificate from Rutgers impacted your career path?
EA: I can put it simply: during a job interview, I was asked, “And you have a DAM certificate from Rutgers, right?”
That moment showed me that the industry respects the program. It provides a level of credibility that is hard to get otherwise. Beyond the recognition, Rutgers leveled up my ability and connected me with a community I’m proud to be part of.
I chose Rutgers for its reputation. I wanted to learn from and speak to active practitioners navigating the same implementation and adoption hurdles I was seeing. I also wanted the chance to sharpen how I talk about DAM and receive feedback from peers in the cohort whom I was learning alongside.
During a job interview, I was asked, 'And you have a DAM certificate from Rutgers, right?'
Eric Appell
CPS: How has earning the certificate impacted your current role?
EA: Earning the certification was a major milestone. Before Rutgers, I relied on expertise built through years of work experience. The program anchored that experience in education, providing the context I needed to continue navigating a shifting professional ecosystem.
It's positioned me to lead on AI by enabling me to better drive the process improvements required for systemic automation, as we've seen that applying automation before it is truly mature can turn a potential efficiency gain into an operational liability.
Ultimately, the program ensured I remain in rooms with people who know more than I do and gave me the confidence to not have the answer at that specific moment, but to know I have the ability to solve it.
That shift changed how I approach my work, how we grow as a team, and how we solve complex global challenges—ensuring a client’s foundation is ready for the future, whether the assets are long-lost solos from the vault, omnichannel campaigns, or anything in between.
CPS: Did any specific instructors or classes influence your learning experience?
EA: Early in discovery sessions, I felt pressure to quickly solve problems that had developed organically over years. As if I could wave a magic wand, or, to frame it for today, upload an image of a diagram and prompt an LLM to, "Fix this, it's broken."
In reality, you have to be immersed in digital whiteboards full of process maps, dictionaries, and tangled swim lanes resembling a NYC subway map because attempting to fix a system before fully digesting and living in it with stakeholders usually ends up counterproductive at best.
Earning the certification was a major milestone. Before Rutgers, I relied on expertise built through years of work experience. The program anchored that experience in education, providing the context I needed to continue navigating a shifting professional ecosystem.
Eric Appell
Thomas Stilling, in his course on Governance, completely changed my perspective. I remember specifically when he hosted additional virtual hours late in his workday to help our cohort work through a process diagram required for the coursework. Thomas reinforced that complexity isn’t solved by force; it’s broken down by asking intentional questions. That reassurance, that it is normal not to have every answer on the first pass, has stayed with me and continues to shape how I approach discovery today.
CPS: What advice would you give to someone who is considering this program?
EA: Reach out to the DAM community via LinkedIn, Discord, or at a Henry Stewart event. Most people who have completed the Rutgers program are very open to sharing their experiences. It’s honestly one of the most supportive professional groups you can find.
In numbers, we might seem small and hyper-focused, but the problems we solve are big. Consider the stakes of a content delivery network (CDN) feed going offline for even one day of sales during the holiday season, the risk of an AI agent taking ungoverned actions against your rights-managed talent imagery, or the cost to an organization lacking the maturity to reap the benefits of AI and losing out on clicks and conversions to competitors.
At each industry event for DAM practitioners, I look out at the audience, and I am reminded that we are tackling challenges far larger than our numbers suggest.
