Lauren leads Microsoft’s Global Talent Acquisition team responsible for university, industry, and executive level hiring for the company. She has been with Microsoft since 1991 and has held various leadership roles including HR GM for Microsoft’s Marketing & Consumer Business and HR leader for the U.S. subsidiary. She also currently serves as the HR Executive Sponsor for the Blacks@Microsoft employee resource group.

Lauren is a proud graduate of the University of Washington with a B.S. in Psychology and an MBA with an emphasis in HR. A life-long learner, Lauren enjoys spending time with her family and supporting local charities.

Dr. Deborah Everhart serves as Chief Strategy Officer at Credential Engine, leading credential and competency transparency initiatives that enable more effective connections between education and career opportunities. Deborah has pioneered open technology standards for competencies, learning and employment records, and open badges. She led nationally-recognized experts authoring the American Council on Education publications “Quality Dimensions for Connected Credentials” and “Communicating the Value of Competencies.” Her business expertise includes leadership roles in technology architecture and product strategy at Cengage and Blackboard. Deborah holds a Ph.D. from the University of California, Irvine. 

Dr. Rick Goldgar, Ph.D. is the IBM Associate Partner for Digital Credentials in the IBM Talent Transformation Service Line. He was responsible for the original architecture of what is now the IBM Digital Credentials product and currently leads efforts for the Learning and Employment Records (LER) marketplace. He is also instrumental in the worldwide credentials market business planning, client relationships, partnerships and supports business and financial modeling. Dr. Goldgar participates in education credential efforts with numerous organizations, including IEEE and the Ed. 3.0 efforts.

Dr. Goldgar has been with IBM more than nine years, previously working in IBM Watson Research, Watson Education and in the IBM Center of Competency.  He has supported numerous key education initiatives at IBM in both k-12 and higher education and has worked directly with clients worldwide.

Dr. Goldgar was formerly the CIO and CTO at the Texas Education Agency, a $27B state agency responsible or over 1200 K12 districts, over 6M students and over 500,000 teachers in public and charter schools. In this role he was responsible for operations, contracts, innovation in the IT department.  Dr. Goldgar built and managed award-winning organization of over 200 staff, over 80 applications, with a $45M budget for functions including project management, operations, security and data systems. Mr. Goldgar is considered the Father of Texas Student Data System (TSDS), a state-wide data warehouse and reporting system for all schools.

Award-winning author Ed Muzio is one of very few practitioners worldwide doing systems-level intervention with CEO and staff simultaneously, shifting culture quickly and significantly enough to improve how the company is run at executive and subordinate levels.  To accomplish this, he pulls from over 70 years of research and experience spanning multiple academic disciplines and industries.  Leaders and managers – especially those overseeing complex work constrained by competing requirements and influenced by unpredictable external forces – consistently endorse Muzio’s latest bestseller, “Iterate,” in which he lays out a methodology for making organizations of all kinds more agile and adaptable in real life.