CHALLENGE - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Vice President at Shamrock Capital Advisors
- Vice President, Shamrock / Board Member
Alicia is a Vice President at Shamrock Capital Advisors. She currently serves as a director of Skillable. Alicia helps analyze new investment opportunities and is actively involved with Shamrock's investments in Ad Results Media and Pixellot. Prior to joining Shamrock in 2019, Alicia was a member of the Corporate Strategy group at The Walt Disney Company and focused on M&A and long-term strategic initiatives for the company.
Alicia graduated cum laude from Harvard University and earned an MBA with honors from Harvard Business School.
Job Titles:
- Executive Vice President
- Executive Vice President, Platform Infrastructure and Cloud
As Executive Vice President of Platform Infrastructure and Cloud for Skillable, Barry oversees the software development efforts and our cloud and data center lab fabrics, ensuring they deliver industry-leading features. Barry has spent his career leading teams and companies in how to leverage technology to help solve the most complex business challenges. Before joining Skillable, he founded an IT consulting and training firm where he led the company's technical vision as CTO and later led the company as CEO. Most recently, Barry served as the Director of Product Solutions at Axellio, designing complete solutions around the company's unparalleled converged hardware platform.
Barry's goal has always been to provide customers with amazing service that goes above and beyond expectations, while implementing the best and right technology solutions to help businesses achieve their goals. He lives in Missouri with his wife, two boys and dog where they love to explore the outdoors while traveling in their RV.
Ben Watson - Chief Strategy Officer
Job Titles:
- Chief Strategy Officer
- Chief Strategy Officer for Skillable
Ben Watson is the Chief Strategy Officer for Skillable and oversees global product strategy and marketing. He loves to have a positive impact on people's lives by getting hands-on with customers' challenges, incubating solutions and then driving to scale through solutions and services. Prior to this role, Ben served as Chief Revenue Officer, where in addition to the Product and Marketing teams, he also managed the Sales, Services and Customer Success teams.
Prior to joining Skillable, Ben was the Global Senior Director, Partner Portfolios at Global Knowledge, the world's largest IT training company, where his award-winning teams managed a $150M+ portfolio of multiple partnerships, including Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Red Hat, SAS, Docker and Salesforce.
His previous roles included Senior Director, Product Management Group at Microsoft, managing a $100M+ portfolio of Microsoft Press books, official courseware and certifications with over 35 product managers; Vice President roles at Thomson NETg and Skillsoft; and CEO and Founder roles at scholars.com (acquired by Skillsoft) and Ensemble Collaboration.
Job Titles:
- Operating Partner, Shamrock / Board Member
Job Titles:
- Chief Financial Officer
- Chief Financial Officer at Skillable
As Chief Financial Officer at Skillable, Brian Clarke is focused on streamlining operations while designing new systems for our customers' evolving needs. With more than 20 years' experience as a finance and operations executive with leading technology and media companies, Brian has a rare combination of financial management, operations, product and marketing expertise. He has a wealth of experience building high-scale SaaS organizations and finance systems, and he has worked with private equity-backed organizations, nurtured and grown startups and managed strategic acquisitions.
Before joining Skillable, Brian was the CFO of ForeFlight through its acquisition by Boeing.
Brian lives in Texas where he likes to be outdoors as often as possible enjoying skiing, biking, hiking and yoga.
Job Titles:
- Chief Software Architect
- Member of the Board
- Chief Software Architect for Skillable
Chris Sears is Chief Software Architect for Skillable and oversees development of the lab development platform. Chris takes immense pride in building software that is powerful and feature-rich, yet also intuitive, elegant and easy-to-use. Chris got his start in software engineering in 1999 to supplement his budding music career. He quickly realized his passion for building great software equaled his passion for playing music. Chris's non-musical gigs spanned the private and public sector, including projects with Dell, Northrop Grumman and the Department of Defense.
Chris got involved in the training space in 2003 while developing systems for the U.S. Army in Europe. While there, he first met Phyllis and Clay Scott. In 2007, Chris, Clay and Phyllis formed Terillian Technologies Inc., with Chris overseeing all software development duties.
Chris holds a liberal arts degree from the University of Texas at Austin. He graduated from the Plan II Honors program and is a member of Phi Beta Kappa Honors Society.
Job Titles:
- Chief Executive Officer
- Managing Partner
- Member of the Board
- Managing Partner and CEO of Skillable
Corey J. Hynes is the Managing Partner and CEO of Skillable. Since its launch in 2014, Corey has led the 100% work from home company through sustained annual growth exceeding 30% in the Education and Technology sector by focusing on product and industry innovation and a culture of first-class customer service. Corey has worked in the IT Education and Certification industry since 1995, beginning as a technical instructor and designer before moving on to manage IT training centers and practices. He is a pioneer in designing solutions for hands-on and challenge-centric learning, performance testing, and global technical training delivery.
A transplanted Canadian, Corey now lives in Florida with his wife (Melanie) and two daughters (Abigayle and Brooklyn) where he can be found spearfishing in the Gulf of Mexico, snowboarding in the Wasach, or on the sidelines of the Florida Premier FC soccer league.
Job Titles:
- Executive Vice President of Product Management for Skillable
- Executive Vice President, Product Management
As Executive Vice President of Product Management for Skillable, Frank Gartland oversees our transformation of training to skilling through challenge-centric learning (read his whitepaper!), hands-on skill development and performance-based validation. Frank challenges teams, partners and customers to create better methods to scale learning. He thrives on helping people reach their potential and loves building businesses that enable people to make a positive impact.
Prior to joining Skillable, Frank was CEO of Veeya, a managed service provider focused on serving K-12 with technology as a service, where subscription revenues increased more than 300% during his tenure. Frank has been innovating with virtual classroom technologies and content since 1999 when his team first delivered fully online, instructor-led training for Cisco, Microsoft, EMC and others. As Vice President of Products with iLinc, Frank led the transformation of the virtual classroom system used by Global Knowledge, Salesforce.com and more than 2,700 others, and he led Microsoft Virtual Academy to become an international learning community.
Frank lives in Arizona with the loves of his life: his wife, Rochelle, and four kids, whose ages span 24 to 10 years old.
Job Titles:
- Vice President of Marketing
- Vice President of Marketing for Skillable
Jenny Davis is the Vice President of Marketing for Skillable and has more than 20 years of communications, publishing and event management experience. Jenny has worked for very large companies, has owned a very small one and has provided project management for a variety of industries.
In her role, Jenny is responsible for overseeing marketing, communications and customer recognition programs for the company, most notably a badging program that has resulted in 36,000 badges issued to Lab Developers, Operations Managers and Instructors who work on and with our platforms to deliver hands-on skilling to unlock the potential of their teams.
Prior to joining Skillable, Jenny worked with a variety of Microsoft teams to project manage their conference involvement, partner programs and executive retreats, specializing in creating unique and memorable experiences. Jenny also owned and served as Managing Editor for The Partner Channel, Inc., which produced a magazine and annual events for the Microsoft Dynamics partner community and four magazines for the Dynamics User Group community, reaching 25,000 subscribers each quarter.
Jenny lives in North Dakota with her husband and five children. She enjoys spending time at her children's activities, gardening, playing the violin, practicing ballet and hanging out at the family's lake cabin.
Job Titles:
- Founder and Managing Director, Eaglehead Capital
- Founder and Managing Director, Eaglehead Capital / Board Member
John has a 30+ year proven track record of innovation, vision, and execution in creating successful businesses as CEO of five different companies, founder of two, and Chairman, Non-Executive Chairman or Director on more than 35 boards. John focuses on partnering with CEOs and management teams to address strategic and operational issues/opportunities associated with growth.
John currently is Founder and Managing Director of Eaglehead Capital, a venture capital focused family office started in 2018. He also serves as Senior Advisor to Bain Capital Ventures, Goldman Sachs Growth Group and Sixth Street Partners Growth Group as well as Co-Chairman or Board Member to presently five companies.
John founded two companies, Mainspring, Inc. and Course Technology. Mainspring was established in 1996, and under John's leadership it grew from a startup to a publicly traded company that was ultimately purchased by IBM in June 2001 where he then became General Manager of the IBM Strategy and Change Group. Prior to Mainspring, John founded Course Technology, which was sold to the Thomson Corporation. He has also been the CEO of Institutional Shareholders Services, The Princeton Review and MC Communications.
Job Titles:
- Senior Vice President, People & Culture
Lori Cummings brings more than 20 years of human resources experience to her Senior Vice President, People & Culture role at Skillable. Lori's passion for providing a workplace that fosters creativity and caring begins with candidates and is emphasized throughout the full employee experience. Prior to Skillable, Lori was part of growing technology organizations in a variety of markets, overseeing many HR and corporate operational programs that include recruiting, compensation and benefits, talent development, compliance and employee relations.
Originally from Connecticut, Lori lives in the Seattle area with her husband, two children and rescue dog, Macie. When not attending her children's dance and sport events, she enjoys spending time with family and friends. Ideally combining this social time with visits to the many amazing wineries Washington State has to offer! Lori focuses on giving back to the community and supporting others through a variety of charitable giving, including her continued work with a local non-profit, Washington Women in Need (WWIN) where she has served on the Executive team and as Board President.
Job Titles:
- Partner of Shamrock Capital Advisors
- Partner, Shamrock / Board Member
Mike is a Partner of Shamrock Capital Advisors. He currently serves as a director of Skillable. Prior to joining Shamrock in 2020, Mike was a Managing Director and Co-head of the Global Technology, Media and Telecom Group at Harris Williams. He has over 25 years of M&A and capital markets experience across the software, internet, and education technology sectors. Previous experience includes co-founding the TMT Group and serving as the Head of Internet & Digital Media at Sagent Advisors, leading the Internet & Digital Media practice at Wachovia Securities and the Communications & Multimedia practice at Wasserstein Perella. Earlier in his career, Mike worked in investment banking at J.P. Morgan and started his career as an Analyst at Goldman Sachs.
Job Titles:
- Executive Vice President, Operations
- Executive Vice President of Operations for Skillable
Ted Carter is the Executive Vice President of Operations for Skillable, focusing on operational efficiency and agility. Prior to this role, Ted served as the Director of Technical Operations, where he oversaw Help Desk and platform operations for Skillable Studio and Skillable TMS.
Ted has been with Skillable since the beginning, first managing and delivering rapid-scale labs at in-person events and then managing datacenters for virtual deployments. Ted loves to see how our platforms enable our customers to re-imagine their organizations through technology, and it inspires him to think about how the platforms have grown and scaled to meet such a diverse set of needs.
Ted, his wife, Emmy, and dogs live in Washington state where he enjoys hiking, skiing, mountain biking, playing with his dogs, motorcycle racing, running and triathlons (one down, more to come!).