ATP Board of Directors Looks Forward to 2019 and Beyond

Directors and Chairs Selected for 2019 - 2020 Board

The ATP Board of Directors, will be Chaired in 2019 by Cicek Svensson, Senior Vice President of Business Development and Marketing at Comms Multilingual. She is an Industrial/Organizational Psychologist and is responsible for international business development. Her main responsibilities include managing North American market growth by supporting multinational partners with their translation and localization services. Prior to joining Comms, she worked at Assessio, a Swedish test publisher company and the Nordic distributor of Hogan Assessments and OPP’s products. During her time at Assessio she learned the craft of test development at the R&D department. She managed and led the development of Assessio’s biggest five-factor assessment called Managing and Assessing individual Potential, MAP. At R&D, she also worked with forming and creating the training material for Assessio’s products as well as the Hogan products for the Nordic market. She later moved on to Project Management and International Business Development where she gained extensive experience within business, sales and marketing strategy. During her time at Assessio, Cicek implemented foreign tests into the Nordic market (including the Hogan assessments HPI, HDS, MVPI), as well as adapted Swedish tests for the international market. In addition, she managed and developed the translation and quality processes of Assessio’s assessments and led translation projects across Europe, Asia, United States and the Baltic countries. Her experience also includes HR-consulting, Succession Planning, Change Management, Marketing and Strategic Sales. She has comprehensive international experience and is fluent in several languages. She has lived and worked in Sweden, Turkey and the U.S.Cicek began her volunteering commitment with E-ATP in 2012. Soon thereafter, she was appointed to lead the I/O Division of ATP. During her time as Chair for the I/O Division, she also served as the Vice-Chair for the European Division. Cicek currently represents the European Division from the Regional Board of ATP and serves her second term as Chair. She has excellent skills in building and maintaining long-term relationships, which has been very useful in her leadership role of growing and marketing the I/O Division as well as E-ATP. Besides ATP, she is also an active member of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology where she volunteers for the International Affairs Committee, the Awards Committee and the Membership Committee. She regularly attends conferences and has presented at both national and international conferences. She is also a member of the International Test Commission and the International Society for Performance Improvement.

Elected as Chair for the 2020 ATP Board of Directors is John Weiner, Chief Science Officer at PSI where he serves as the executive leader of assessment product strategy and research. As CSO, he is an advocate for measurement quality and innovation in guiding solutions for Talent Assessment, Certification and Licensure. With over 30 years in the testing industry, John brings a passion for testing and a broad perspective spanning various testing markets. As a seasoned testing professional, he understands the many challenges that test publishers face. John is a current ATP board member and enjoys the collegial atmosphere among industry professionals who collaborate to serve the assessment community.  He has served on committees in several testing organizations, including ATP, SIOP, ICE and CLEAR. John is past chair of ATP’s Industrial/ Organizational Division and has participated in ATP initiatives, such as strategic planning and the test security survey update. He also served on the SIOP Professional Practice Committee, ICE R&D committee, and CLEAR Exam Resources Advisory Committee. John is an active contributor to the testing community as a presenter and author. He frequently speaks at conferences, addressing topics such as technology-enhanced assessment, psychometric issues, and legal issues in test validation and use. He recently co-authored a book on Online Recruitment and Selection (Wiley-Blackwell), and has two book chapters in press on topics related to International Applications of Web-based Testing (Cambridge University Press). John’s areas of expertise include assessment for selection, development, certification, licensure and training. His executive experience includes strategic planning, management of a corporate division, resource stewardship, and budgeting.  His graduate training in psychology emphasized quantitative methods and measurement. 

Re-elected to the 2019-2020 ATP Board of Directors is  Rob Pedigo, CEO of Pedigo & Associates and Ashok Sarathy, Vice President Product Management at the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC).

Rob Pedigo, CEO of Pedigo & Associates has more than 25 years of experience in the assessment industry. His career has centered on the creation, development, and executive leadership of top performing high stakes assessment programs. He served for 13 years as VP of Psychometrics for Castle Worldwide, responsible for the assessment design, test development, accreditation, and testing program policy and governance consulting practices. He also founded and managed the global testing programs for Adobe Systems, Oracle Corporation, and Sun Microsystems before leading the IT Certification Security Council as Executive Director. Rob has been a longstanding advocate for rigorous assessment design combined with respect and sensitivity for the interests of all stakeholders. His work experience spans workforce readiness, certification/licensure, clinical assessment, and industrial/organizational practices. He holds an M.B.A. in Organizational Development and has extensive graduate coursework in both clinical and Industrial/Organizational Psychology. Rob has served ATP for many years, most recently on the Board of Directors (since 2017) and as Chair of ATP's Workforce Skills Credentialing Division (since 2015) and as Vice-Chair (2014). He is currently Co-Chair of the ATP Awards Committee, Co-Chair of ATP's Interoperability Study Group, and has served on the Innovations Conference, Program, and Security Committees. He has presented at ATP, E-ATP, ICE, the Certification Networking Group, and the American Board of Nursing Specialties conferences. Rob also volunteered nine years of service on ANSI’s Personnel Certification Accreditation Committee (PCAC), in addition to leadership roles with the American Board of Nursing Specialties, the Credentialing Transparency Initiative, and WorkCred.

Ashok Sarathy has spent more than 15 years in the assessment industry enabling GMAC to transition the development and delivery of the GMAT exam to new partners and in the process redefined the digital user experience and established the test security and data management functions within the GMAT Program.  He implemented several innovations to improve the security of the GMAT Test.  Later he launched the Next Generation GMAT exam, adding a new “Integrated Reasoning” section to the exam with input from faculty at business schools.  He then assumed a product management role responsible for the P&L of the key products within the council’s assessment portfolio, launching new products and enhancements that fostered growth in revenues for the product line.   Ashok is currently a member of the Board of Directors at ATP.  In the past, he has chaired the Test Security Committee (2010-2011), overseeing initiatives such as Enforcement, Security Best Practices, and Messaging Practices to help establish, document and disseminate best practices in test security throughout the assessment industry.  He subsequently served on the planning committee for the annual “Innovations in Testing” conference for four years.  He was Chair of the 2017 Innovations Conference – delivering new programs around Design Thinking to deliver value to members and attendees.  He has also helped facilitate the Association’s international growth.  

Elected to the Board for the first time are Kimberly Swygert, Director of Research and Development at the National Board of Medical Examiners® (NBME®), and John Kleeman, Executive Director and Founder of Questionmark.

Kimberly Swygert has 20 years of experience as a psychometrician. She is responsible for directing NBME’s test development and test security research agendas, and is a relentless promoter of best practices for developing and scoring licensure exams. She is the direct manager of multiple cross-functional units, including those responsible for NBME exam construction and for overseeing the implementation of complex software applications supporting high quality item and test development. She has been a key player in research on item creation, scoring, and score reporting for multiple NBME examinations, and has presented and published research on performance assessments, examinee timing, and repeater performance in many medical education and psychometric journals.  She is the coeditor and coauthor of the most recent NBME item writing guidebook, Constructing Written Test Questions for the Basic and Clinical Sciences, the first of a series of best practices books intended to guide medical educators in applied psychometrics. In addition, Kimberly has taught graduate courses in biostatistics and psychometrics for Drexel University and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USUHS). She serves on technical advisory panels for organizations such as the Federation of State Boards of Physical Therapy.  She received her doctorate in quantitative psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and was recently selected to be a Fellow of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia due to her contributions to medical education.

John Kleeman brings an international perspective to the assessment industry and has substantial experience with testing and testing-related standards.  He lives in the UK and has a first-class degree in Mathematics and Computer Science from Trinity College, Cambridge. He wrote the first version of the Questionmark software and founded the Questionmark company in 1988.  John’s past roles at Questionmark include software development, product manager and chairman. He currently leads security, privacy, legal and compliance at Questionmark and evangelizes good practices in assessment. As well as his business experience, John worked on developing several assessment standards including technical standards like IMS QTI and good practice standards like ISO 23988 and ISO 10667, on which he coordinated with the ATP and other US participants. He is currently active in the revision of the ISO 10667 standard on workplace assessments, working with the ATP to ensure sound assessment practices are protected and enhanced in the update. John is an expert in privacy and helped review the recent ATP compliance guide on the GDPR, as well as contributing content to the Guide.  John has been asked to be an ATP reviewer on the joint ATP/ITC Guidelines for Computer-Based Testing.  John writes regularly encouraging good practice in assessment. Questionmark is a longstanding member of the ATP and was involved in the formation of Europe-ATP and India-ATP.  John's goal as a member of the Board will be to assist the ATP in international growth.