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PTC's Current Board of Directors

Here are brief biographical snapshots of the Board of Directors.

Melissa Tuite, Chair and President

Melissa Tuite currently directs all certification and accreditation activities at VMWare, Inc. Prior to VMWare, Melissa was the Director of Operations in Certification and Skills Development for seven years at CompTIA, an IT industry trade association. Specific areas of specialization are in exam development, intellectual property security management, contract development, vendor management, customer service and database administration. Melissa has worked in the IT Certification industry for over ten years and has significant experience in all aspects of certification management. She has previously launched healthcare distance education programs accredited by the Distance Education and Training Council and obtained college credit recommendations for her programs from the American Council on Education and DANTES. In these roles, Melissa was recognized as the Chief Managing Officer of NAMSS Vocational College by the Tennessee Commision on Higher Education and the Illinois State Board of Education. Melissa has Masters in Education Psychology and Educational Administration from Texas A&M University.

Charles Johnston Ph.D , Vice-Chair and President-Elect

Dr. Chuck Johnston is currently a consultant for companies and organizations looking for innovation and excellence in their testing programs. Chuck is a recognized leader in the computerized testing business with over 25 years of experience. He possesses a proven ability to shape a company’s future technical and business direction to maintain its position as an industry leader. Starting at Control Data with the PLATO system, Chuck led the development of computer-based testing systems including two national networks for major accounting firms. As a founding executive at Prometric, he directed the development and deployment of the first global computer-based test center network. Chuck has served as Vice President at Pearson VUE in a variety of capacities including technology development, customer relations, and business development. He directed the business development and operational launch of two of the world’s largest testing programs in the US and the UK. Chuck earned his Ph.D. in educational psychology at the University of Minnesota.

Jim Olsen , Treasurer

James Olsen is Vice President/Chief Scientist of Alpine Testing Solutions. He has pioneered innovations for computerized adaptive, e-testing and performance testing. He has served ATP as Certification/Licensure Chair and Secretary, three-term Board Member, Chair of the ATP Test Standards Committee, Co-chair for ATP Guidelines for Computer-Based Testing and Chair of the ATP Awards Committee. He is a member of the board of the Performance Testing Council. He gives technical guidance for Graduate Management Admissions Council, American National Standards Institute, Comprehensive Adult Student Assessment System, National External Diploma Program and Utah State Office of Education. He is an International Test Commission member and accreditation assessor for the American National Standards Institute. He was principal investigator for computerized assessment grants by NSF and US Department of Education. His invited presentations include US Armed Forces, Library of Congress, SCANS Commission, US Department of Education, NSF, US Office of Technology Assessment, International Test Commission, ACT, NCME, AERA, LSAC, CRESST, SIOP and NOCA. His Ph.D. in Instructional Psychology (1978) is from Brigham Young University. In 2005 he was an ACT Invited Scholar.

Sierra Hampton, Secretary

Sierra L. Hampton is the Manager of Exam Development for Citrix Education. Sierra obtained her undergraduate degree from Washington D.C.’s Georgetown University in Japanese and Linguistics and a Masters degree in International Business from Sophia University, located in Tokyo, Japan. She has been in the testing industry for more than 14 years now with her roots stemming in language testing for employment. In her eight-year career at Citrix, Sierra has been instrumental in increasing innovative item types such as simulations while simultaneously maintaining the security Citrix exams and certifications. She was the lead developer for the only lab exam for Citrix in 2005 and instrumental in increasing the number of performance-based items including system simulations and emulations as well as proprietary decision simulator item types. Sierra currently serves as Secretary on the board of directors for the Performance Testing Council (PTC) and is an active member of the ITCC Sub-committee for Security.

Randy Russell, Director

Randy Russell is the Director of Certification at Red Hat, Inc., the world's leading provider of open source solutions. He has overseen the development of the industry-leading Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) and Red Hat Certified Technician (RHCT) performance-based exams, as well as the performance-based Certificates of Expertise exams that lead to the Red Hat Certified Architect (RHCA), Red Hat Certified Security Specialist (RHCSS), and Red Hat Datacenter Specialist (RHCDS) credentials. He also oversaw the development of Red Hat's curriculum until 2007, at which time he had the opportunity to focus on certification. Prior to joining Red Hat in 1999, Randy was a system administrator, programmer, and economist at an environmental economics consulting firm.

Wallace Judd, Ph.D, Director

Wallace is a teacher and author who turned to the computer medium to implement training and testing materials. After stints developing training at Xerox PARC and Apple Computer, he formed his own training and testing companies to implement his ideas. Thirteen years of profitable operations resulted in the sale of both companies to Kelly Services, where he became the first corporate Research Fellow, as well as Vice-President of R&D. Wallace made Kelly a technological leader in the field of training and testing software. Upon leaving Kelly, Wallace became director of Training Development at Netscape, which later morphed into iPlanet in the merger between AOL and Sun Microsystems. Following his iPlanet experience, in 2001 he founded a startup named ASPtrain, Inc., which constructed a concurrent authoring system for the development of internet software training. Wallace is actively investigating innovations in the field of performance testing, adaptive testing and performance training.

Elaine Lopes , Director

Elaine has more than 15 years of experience in computer networking, 9 of them with Cisco networks, as well as 3 years of experience in project management in the IT performance certification field. She got CCIE certified in Routing and Switching in 1999 and in Service Provider in 2003, and has been working at Cisco since 1999 with the Cisco's performance, expert-level certification CCIE. From Sao Paulo, Brazil where she lives she is the content program manager for the CCIE certification program, working with exam design and validation, content creation, security and performance as well as innovation. She was certified as Novell Master CNI and Master CNE, and prior to joining Cisco taught the official NetWare curriculum.

 

Cristina Goodwin, Standards Review Board Chair (ex officio)

Cristina Goodwin is a test development professional with Alpine Testing Solutions, a company that provides innovative, superior-quality testing solutions with a genuine emphasis on customer needs, service, and satisfaction.  Cristina has many years professional experience in communications and exam development. Currently she is engaged on behalf of Alpine Testing Solutions with Scrum Alliance Inc., a not-for-profit organization focused on the worldwide successful adoption of Scrum principles, to help develop a new certification program. For six years she was responsible for the design and development of validated, performance-based exams for the world-wide Microsoft Office Specialist certification program.  Most recently, Cristina has facilitated domain analysis and item writing workshops for large Information Technology and health organizations, as well as numerous trades associations.  She has created an online training program for item writing, and created processes and procedures for developing valid, reliable and secure performance-based exams.  Cristina is a founding member of the Performance Testing Council serving her second term on the board of directors.