The IT Certification Council (ITCC) is a nonprofit organization committed to growing and promoting professional IT certifications.
Our core purpose is to support the industry and our member companies by marketing the value of certification, promoting exam security, furthering innovation, and establishing and sharing industry best practices.
Founded in 2007, ITCC is a community of 50+ of the most respected companies in the IT certification industry.
Jedi Hammond is the Certification Product Manager and leads certification strategy for Dell Technologies. He is responsible for customer and partner certification offers and helping to set the overall strategic direction under the Dell Technologies Proven Professional Certification program. The Proven Professional program is a large global program that consists of certifications ranging from product and technologies to technology independent roles like data engineer and enterprise architects.
Jedi has over 20 years of experience in information technology in various roles, including over 10 years in learning and development including certification program development, certification framework and architecture, technical training, and content development.
Having worked in technical education as well as customer consulting and business development, Jedi applies his broad and deep understanding of IT to design business, technical, learning and validation solutions that meet the unique needs of customers and partners to help them realize the full potential of their digital transformation.
Susan Farago is a Portfolio Manager for MuleSoft Certifications at Salesforce. She is very active in the certification industry and is currently Vice-Chair for the Information Technology Certification Council (ITCC), a member at the Association of Test Publishers (ATP), and keynote speaker for the 2021 International Personnel Assessment Council (IPAC).
Early in her career Susan worked at IBM as a technical trainer and was introduced to exam development as a subject matter expert. Since then she has spent 25 years in the IT credentialing industry and has extensive experience in low and high-stakes exam development and delivery, global program creation and management, test security standards and policy setting, skills measurement, and digital badging. She has presented at conferences, written articles for print and online publications, and has served on committees including ITCC, Performance Testing Council (PTC), CompTIA Security+, and the Credly Client Advisory Board.
Being a lifelong learner, Susan is currently exploring ideas around Agile exam development. She worked with other ITCC members to create the white paper “Considerations for Exam Development in an Agile Product Development Environment” (2020), and she has co-created and presented at ATP “Lean-Agile Mindset: A Framework for Innovation” (2021) and “Design Thinking for a Customer-Centric Approach to Credentialing” (2022). In addition to her full time job at MuleSoft, Susan completed a data analytics program through the University of Denver and is combining her certification experience with big data to develop innovative and predictive data insights within the credentialing industry.
Sharelle Patterson is VMware’s Certification Business Partner. Her role focuses on expanding and increasing efficiency with key stakeholders, prioritizing roadmap decisions and resource allocation. Sharelle also manages VMware’s Education Contributor (Subject Matter Expert (SME)) program and the integration of certification programs acquired through mergers.
Sharelle’s career in education began as a high school English teacher in Australia and Singapore. After relocating to the US, she joined Hewlett Packard’s training organization supporting new product introductions and certification releases. Over the 10 years working with HP/HPE, she managed partner enablement training and certification tools and databases, focused on understanding education system infrastructure, and automating program needs. She also provided program management, operational process improvement, efficiency, and product life cycle services.
Kristin Wall Gibson is IBM’s Certification Strategy Lead. She is responsible for developing IBM’s Solution Based Certifications and for helping set their certification program’s strategic direction.
In 2005, Kristin joined the IBM Tivoli Certification Team. In 2009, she became the IBM Tivoli Certification Team Program Manager. As an integral part of the IBM certification team, Kristin has participated in the IBM Certification Security Council and in the migration of IBM’s certification program to PearsonVUE.
Since 2012, Kristin’s leadership role has included presenting at the Domestic and European Innovation in Testing Conferences. At these conferences, her areas of expertise focused on exam security and remote exam development.
In 2014, Kristin joined the Information Technology Certification Council (ITCC) where she participated on the Security & Education Subcommittees. In 2015, Kristin became the ITCC Vice-Chairman. Kristin served as the council’s Chair from 2016 – 2020.
Steve Addicott is one of the founders of Caveon Test Security, and currently serves as Senior Vice President. He is an experienced technology professional and self-proclaimed test security evangelist. With 25 years of industry experience, Steve’s career has focused on growing companies in the technology and measurement arenas. In addition to driving Caveon’s growth, Steve is deeply involved in the delivery of Caveon’s proprietary security services to myriad testing companies. Through hundreds of client engagements, Steve has gained a close perspective of the security challenges faced by testing organizations, and recognizes the most effective means of confronting those challenges.
Steve has been instrumental in shaping test security policy around the use of data forensics in certification and licensure and in K-12 education. In this arena, his expertise has influenced test security policy at the state, district, and local levels. He spearheads Caveon’s ongoing work with many large international certification and licensure programs and several state departments of education, formalizing the use of Caveon services into their test result quality assurance processes.
An avid cyclist and skier, Steve resides in Park City, Utah with his wife and two children.
Peter Janzow is Vice President, Business Development for Credly. He works actively in the fields of workforce development, professional credentialing, and STEM education. Pete is a current board member of the IT Certification Council, as well as former Director of the University Professional and Continuing Education Association (UPCEA), and a former Director of the American Society for Engineering Education. Pete works closely with leading organizations to solve workforce development and human capital problems for professionals, employers, leading global brands, education institutions and training organizations through impactful digital recognition and credentialing programs.
Jim Lucari leads certification solutions enablement in Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s WW Sales Enablement organization. He is responsible for sales and technical certification exam development and program operation, certification course development, certification architecture and framework, translations, HPE Press publications, and remote lab operations.
Jim has been in IT technology work for many years with experience primarily in networking and storage technologies. He also has multiple years of experience in training development and delivery with many of those focused on certifications.
Jim has previously served on the ITCC board in Treasurer-Secretary and Vice Chair positions.
Kara Pritchard began her career in certification in 1999 as one of the first Red Hat Certified Engineers and as a published author of a certification study guide by Coriolis. She has worked with multiple publishers and multiple organizations building certification programs, spent 16 years running a retail computer service and training company, and now works with the Training and Certification team at The Linux Foundation.
Kara is a Certification Manager on the team responsible for everything (and everyone) needed to build globally accessible multiple-choice and performance-based exams aimed at growing the pool of open source technology professionals. She currently serves on the Community Advisory Board for the Open Source with Saint Louis University (SLU), on the Board of Directors for the IT Certification Council (ITCC), and is a member of the Association of Test Publishers (ATP).
Clarke is a life-long entrepreneur and has spent his career helping transform the learning and credentialing market. In 1977 he developed the first commercial computer-based testing system that randomly generated statistically fair exams from large question sets. This technology was a precursor to Linear On the Fly Testing. Clarke is also credited with helping to build the global infrastructure that spawned a multi-billion-dollar marketplace of credentialing services. In the late 1980’s he did the seminal work in partnership with Novell to establish professional certification for Information Technology professionals which is recognized as an important readiness signal both by employers and higher education. Clarke honed many skills throughout his career starting as a software engineer and progressing to business development executive, product leader, and well-rounded business executive with finance, operations, marketing, and board-level expertise.
Clarke is the co-founder of four global businesses in the credentialing space including Drake Certification Services (Prometric), VUE, Integral7, and Acclaim. Two of these businesses were incubated within larger companies and two were start-ups.
Chuck joined IBM in 1969. He initially held roles in program development and marketing of IBM’s database inquiry systems and document publishing systems. Chuck helped IBM develop a new business partner channel of web integrators (regional system integrators), and then moved into his role of Program Director of IBM’s Professional Certification programs. Chuck held the position until retiring in 2016. Chuck also served as one of the founders of the IT Certification Council (ITCC), and was vice-chair of the ITCC for six years. He also currently remains involved in the test security initiative for the ITCC.
Emily Hendershot is the Executive Director of the IT Certification Council (ITCC). She is responsible for operations of the organization including headquarters team oversight, financial management, and acting as the liaison to the Board of Directions and Committee Chairmen in moving forward key ITCC projects and initiatives.
As a results-driven community and operations strategist, Emily partners with associations and nonprofits to maximize their impact and achieve their missions. Emily has a successful history creating and executing strategic initiatives to drive growth for global associations and technology user groups with membership targets of 5K – 125K people. Prior to her work with associations, she developed national volunteer training programs for the American Cancer Society and led a disaster relief program for a nonprofit in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
