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.

Tara Noonan Amaral is a Principal Consultant at Riviera Advisors. Tara brings several decades of talent acquisition and leadership strategy expertise to Riviera Advisors. Tara has had an impressive career in recruitment, diversity and strategic talent acquisition for some of the most successful organizations in the world including: Marsh & McLennan, Fidelity Investments, New York Life, ADP and AON/Hewitt. She has more than 20 years of experience developing, implementing, and operating both Corporate and RPO talent acquisition and recruiting functions where she has inspired innovation, and integrated emerging technologies and practices into the talent acquisition function. Prior to her talent acquisition career, Tara held banking and financial services leadership positions at JPMorgan Chase in retail and institutional client management and Six Sigma and Agile project management.

In addition to her corporate leadership roles, Tara has been a frequent industry speaker, well-travelled industry advocate and has participated in leadership roles with the Association of Talent Acquisition Professional (ATAP), the Conference Board Global Labor Advisory Council, and the Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM). Tara also serves as an HR Venture Advisor with SemperVirensVenture Capital.

Tara’s passions include working on the continued importance of a strong talent acquisition and retention ecosystem, the future of work(ers), Diversity & Inclusion solutions, and cross-cultural and multi-generational talent strategies. Tara holds a Bachelor of Arts in Organizational Behavior from Brown University. Tara is based in Charleston, South Carolina.

Ryan is the Founder and CEO of ApplicantPro, a hiring software company founded in 2006. Ryan and his team have grown the small startup into a leading provider of hiring software for over 7,000 companies around the nation. Ryan's mission is to help companies, managers, and HR teams improve their hiring results. To do this, he and his team strive to create educational content, tools, integrations, and software to help businesses drive their hiring results. In addition, he is an HRCI and SHRM-CP Approved Provider and conducts weekly, free webinars and presents at SHRM events around the country. 

Dr. Melody Rawlings is Director of the Center for the Advancement of Virtual Organizations, Lead Faculty for Managing Virtual Organizations specialization, and doctoral chair at Northcentral University. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Education, an MS in Technology specializing in business management, and a doctorate in leadership. Melody has led remote teams for 10+ years, developed partnerships between corporations and higher ed, and managed her own businesses. She has authored peer-reviewed publications and presented internationally on business topics such as leadership development, emotional intelligence, ethics, and conflict management. Melody has taught internationally in Europe and Asia.