ABOUT ME:

For those of you who aren't familiar with me, here's a bit of context on my background...

I've spent the past three decades working with teams to achieve quality outcomes. I've had the opportunity to work in startups, Fortune 500 corporations with teams spread across the world and everything in between including leading the Quality & Automation practice for a large technology consulting organization with over 100 engineers across multiple technical disciplines. I've let quality efforts in a diverse set of domains including Financial Services, Global eCommerce, Education and Healthcare. I even had the honor of leading IT operations for the 2002 Olympic Games here in Salt Lake City, Utah. I am also the Founder and CEO of a fractional technology strategy and implementation company called AthenaIQ and one of my favorite ongoing projects with that has been to train IT, Networking and CyberSecurity to Moms re-entering the workforce as part of a local non-profit TechMoms.

One thing has always remained no matter what domain, company, team or role... My passion for continuous improvement and achieving quality outcomes. It's a core value that has been with me since childhood and I make every decision from that core.

I'm also a single Mom of two adult kids, 2 large rescue pups and a Mustached Parakeet named Matisse. I became an empty nester this year which was a life related milestone I have still not really adjusted to. I love to read, garden, hike, travel, dabble in photography, activism, writing, and although it probably sounds cliche', my newest favorite past time is sourdough baking (though I'm on a break for the Summer months because I loathe the heat). I also find it incredibly difficult to communicate who I am through the things I do as it never quite really hits the mark in giving you a picture of who I am as a human.

I have been associated with AST for over a decade and have been serving on the board the past 2 years, both as your Treasurer, and now the sitting President. I have to admit that, last year, when the board presented the idea of me taking over the President role I was a bit hesitant. Running a non-profit of any kind is a lot of work and my neurospicy brain has this quirk that makes it damn near impossible to go half in on anything I care about. I knew that taking on AST this past year would be a challenge. We've struggled to come back after COVID and with the never-ending evolution of our industry, technology and yes, even us individually as quality professionals... and the reality is, AST has had a bit of an identity crisis that's been growing for some time.

This past year has had a single theme... Reinvention and Preparation for Evolution. We've re-engaged... had conversations around who we are today and what we need to be for our community in order to add value. We've built new partnerships and streamlined CAST this year in a way that has allowed us to make it more relevant than ever. We've even launched a regular opportunity or our community to come together to tackle challenges in an open forum available to all with Caffeinated Quality Roundtable.

I can honestly say that I'm incredibly proud of what we've accomplished this past year... we've focused on strengthening our foundation for this next era of evolution, all while remaining true to our core mission of advancing the craft of Quality and context driven testing techniques and methods. I can say without hesitation that this past year I've been honored to serve as President of this community. I haven't been a perfect President and have made plenty of mistakes along the way, but this opportunity has pushed me to a place of discomfort.. and I find myself learning new things every day. I'm excited about the progress we've made this past year and I have a clear vision of where I want to see us go this next year which includes revisiting our engagement model, looking at bigger opportunities to advance research and competency building efforts as well as tackling how we approach credentialing skills and capabilities within this space. It's been a wild ride and I am hopeful to have another term to advance the efforts we launched this past year. Regardless of the outcomes, I am more committed than ever to AST and its future in leading this incredible global community and can't wait for the next phase of that. Let's get to work!