Meet the Reviewers
Below are the independent expert reviewers who have helped shape the Agile Business Awards 2023.
Alistair Corrie
Alistair is a Professional Member of the Agile Business Consortium (Catalyst) and a Qualified Chartered Accountant (FCA). He has a keen interest in emotionally intelligent leadership, the neuroscience of problem solving, the psychology of human motivation, and the Inner Game approach to performance. Alistair is a hands-on agile consultant with extensive experience in business transformation and agile product delivery. He helps leaders and teams bridge the gap between traditional and agile thinking. He believes that governance is built into Agile, and that Agile is the Trojan Horse for delivering positive change in an organisation, and that Finance and HR can be the Trojan Horses for delivering that Agility by stealth.
- Email:
- [email protected]
- Website:
- corriepartnership.com/
Andrea Fryrear
Andrea Fryrear is CEO and co-founder of AgileSherpas. She specializes in organizational design and executive coaching, but now spends most of her time focused on the vision, culture, and strategy of AgileSherpas.
Prior to co-founding AgileSherpas, Andrea spent over a decade in marketing. Her roles included content strategist, content marketer, project manager, and editorial assistant for both brands and agencies. Once she discovered Agile ways of working, however, she dove in and has never looked back.
Andrea is one of the co-authors of the ICAgile Marketing Agility curriculum, as well as two books on marketing agility: Mastering Marketing Agility and Death of a Marketer. She holds numerous Agile certifications, including Certified Agile Leader (CAL-1), Certified Professional in Leading with Agility (ICP-LEA), Certified Agile Coach (ICP-ACC), Advanced Product Owner (A-CSPO), Scrum@Scale Practitioner, Certified Professional in Marketing Agility (ICP-MKG), ICAgile Certified Instructor, and Certified Scrum Master (CSM).
Her non-Agile achievements include a Bachelor’s degree in English from Austin College and a Master’s degree in Women’s Studies from Oxford University.
Although once referred to as “The Beyonce of Agile Marketing,” Andrea does spend time away from her kanban board occasionally. Her favorite pastimes are camping, skiing, and hiking in her adopted Colorado home, ideally followed by a local microbrew and a British mystery novel.
- Website:
- www.agilesherpas.com
- LinkedIn:
- https://linkedin.com/in/afryrear
Colleen Dunn Hartoonian
Colleen Dunn Hartoonian is the Agile Coaching Capability Lead at AgileSherpas, specializing in team coaching and training.
With 15 years of marketing experience under her belt in both large corporate organizations and boutique agencies, Colleen is a Swiss Army knife of Marketing Agility. Throughout her coaching career she has worked with Agile teams in finance, pharmaceutical, entertainment, communications, security and advertising industries.
She holds numerous Agile certifications, including, Certified Professional in Marketing Agility (ICP-MKG), Certified Professional in Agile Coaching (ICP-ACC), Certified Professional in Agile Team Facilitation (ICP- ATF), Certified Professional in Enterprise Agility (ICP-ENT), Certified Professional in Coaching Agile Transitions (ICP-CAT) and Certified Professional in Business Agility Foundations (ICP-BAF), Certified Professional in Leading with Agility (ICP-LEA), ICAgile Certified Instructor, and Certified Scrum Master (CSM),
Her non-Agile achievements include a Bachelor’s degree in Communications from Simmons University and spotlighting as a guest lecturer at Northwestern University.
Her favorite hobbies are baking, wood working, and gardening in her Nashville home, ideally followed by a good Netflix binge on the couch with her husband and rescue dog, Scout.
- Email:
- [email protected]
- Website:
- www.agilesherpas.com/
Dragan Jojic
As a seasoned consultant, trainer and coach with more than 30 years of experience, Dragan has worked with many organisations in retail banking, insurance, engineering and product development. Organisations like these often talk a good story but fail to evolve in a meaningful and lasting way. Dragan’s approach is to start by helping them to articulate the impact they would like to have. With that clarity, he then guides and supports them to experiment with potential paths to success.
Dragan is a founding partner of BeLiminal (www.beliminal.com), an organisational design and continuous learning consultancy.
- Website:
- www.beliminal.com
Elizabeth Venter
As a passionate agilist, Elizabeth guides organizations and teams in adopting agility to support the delivery of measurable business outcomes. As a marketer and strategist by trade, with global work experience on both the agency and client sides, Elizabeth understands the full marketing environment and the constant demands being placed on all levels of the marketing organization.
During her time as the Global Digital Marketing Manager for Ford Motor Company, Elizabeth and team took a more Agile approach to designing and delivering a Global User Experience in only nine months. This experience taught her the value of taking a prioritized, iterative approach allowing for experimentation, testing, and fast feedback from markets and customers.
2017 was a key turning point in Elizabeth's Agile journey. While leading an enterprise-wide Lean-Agile implementation at Mercedes-Benz South Africa, she decided to certify as a Scaled Agile Program Consultant (SPC) in 2018. Elizabeth is an energized and engaging change agent, coach, and trusted advisor, with several successful Agile implementations under her belt.
She exhibits a spirit of constant learning and holds several accreditations including ICAgile's Certified Professional in Business Agility designation, along with an Enterprise Business Agility Strategist qualification through Agility Health.
- Website:
- www.agilesherpas.com/about/elizabeth-venter
- LinkedIn:
- https://linkedin.com/in/lizventer/
Frederik Schukken
Frederik Schukken is an agile consultant with 15+ years of experience helping organizations, management and teams. He is passionate about establishing change and growing towards high performance. Frederik has been at the forefront of large and small transformations while working for Rabobank, Quint Wellington Redwood and Pink Elephant. He’s a board member of the Agile Consortium and organizer of the annual consortium conference in the Netherlands.
- Website:
- www.agileconsortium.nl/
Jason Wright
Jason is an Agile Trainer, Coach, and Consultant, and he is passionate about bringing together his extensive and diverse business experience with hands-on agile transformation expertise to help individuals, teams, and organisations on their agile journey. He has been a director of the consortium for seven years, and he feels fortunate to be able to apply this experience to supporting and influencing the evolution of business agility worldwide. He is particularly excited to be a part of the next stage of the Consortium's journey to becoming the Professional Body for business agility professionals.
Jeroen Venneman
Jeroen has made it his mission to bring agile to the organisational level. He has a lot of experience in taking agile out of the ICT domain and making the connection with business and transforming departments like HR, finance and risk. He is the chairman of the Agile Consortium in the Netherlands and examiner for the Agile Master Certificate. With more than 25 years of experience in consultancy, training and coaching, no challenge is too big for Jeroen.
- LinkedIn:
- https://linkedin.com/in/jeroenvenneman/
Jim Ewel
Jim Ewel is one of the authors of the Agile Marketing Manifesto and the co-founder of the Agile Marketing Alliance (www.agilemarketingalliance.com ). He is also the author of the essential guide to implementation of Agile marketing, The Six Disciplines of Agile Marketing.
He is frequently asked to speak on the topic of Agile Marketing at industry conferences, and he has helped over 80 companies adopt Agile marketing, including organizations as diverse as T-Mobile, Salesforce, Best Buy Canada, Thales, Doxy.me, EQ Bank, Boston Private, CUNA, NAIT, Deseret Digital, SpaceSaver, Great Dane Trailers, Northern Arizona University, Netskope, Sprinklr, and Zenprise.
Earlier in his career, Jim spent 12 years at Microsoft in various roles including GM of SQL Server marketing and Vice President of Server Marketing. Jim was also CEO of three startups in the Seattle area, all of which grew rapidly and were eventually sold to Oracle, Google, and Stratus Video.
- Email:
- [email protected]
- Website:
- www.agilemarketingalliance.com
Katie Taylor
Katie has been a director of the Agile Business Consortium for 16 years and now leads this professional body as Chair. Through her background as a consultant and in academia, she launched the UK’s first Masters in Agile Leadership, and co-founded the Agile Research Network.
Liviu Mesesan
Liviu Mesesan is working as a Scrum Trainer and Agile Coach, investing his passion into helping others work better, efficiently, and effectively every day.
Being the first Registered Scrum Trainer by Agile Education Program, in Central and Eastern Europe makes him responsible in delivering the correct message, as it was originally created and put into practice by Jeff Sutherland himself, co-creator of Scrum Framework.
With two decades of experience working with individuals and teams from small startups to global enterprises makes him eager to help others succeed. He holds degrees in Economics, Computer Science Engineering, and Software Product Management. Having spent time in the roles of Scrum Master, Product Owner, Director of Projects, CTO, and CEO.
His mission is to leave a positive impact to individuals’, teams’ and organizations’ way of working, by training and coaching them into working with Agile and Scrum.
- Website:
- liviumesesan.com/
Melissa Reeve
As co-founder of the Agile Marketing Alliance, SAFe contributor and Agile marketing thought leader, Melissa has over 25 years of experience leading marketing teams in the high tech, education and agile spaces. Prior to co-founding the Alliance with Jim Ewel, she created the Agile Marketing with SAFe course, founded the SAFe Business Agility podcast, and helped lead the evolution of the Agile Marketing Manifesto in 2021. An active speaker and thought leader in the Agile marketing space, Melissa lives in Boulder, Colorado, USA with her husband, chickens and dogs, where she enjoys hiking and gardening.
- Email:
- [email protected]
- Website:
- www.agilemarketingalliance.com/
- LinkedIn:
- https://linkedin.com/in/melissamreeve/
Myles Hopkins
Myles Hopkins is a business agility influencer and leads the business agility community in Africa. He is the founder of Be Agile and has been a globally respected consultant for the past 20 years.
Myles is a strategic systems thinker whose strength lies in seeing the bigger picture and understanding how that will translate across the full internal and external ecosystem that a client operates within.
He guides organisations to place the customer at the centre of everything they do whilst, simultaneously, enabling this through winning market strategies, focussed innovation, seamless and timely delivery, digital solutions and real-time business intelligence.
Myles believes that the organisations that thrive in the future are those with the best talent and drives a strong people agenda within his clients.
- Website:
- www.beagile.co.za/
Peter Coesmans
Peter has been involved in agile working and its predecessors since 1997. He has helped to forward professionals in agility (co-authoring Agile Portfolio Management), project/programme/portfolio management (co-authoring IPMA’s ICB4 standard), and facilitation (setting up the international CPF assessment for IAF international). Peter often gets the opportunity to speak at professional conferences worldwide, on a myriad of topics. He is always looking for sustainable improvements and believes true change is brought forward in small steps, through learning and experimenting, and by collaborating with people with a common goal.
- Email:
- [email protected]
- LinkedIn:
- https://linkedin.com/in/petercoesmans/
Pia-Maria Thorén
Pia-Maria is the founder of Agile People and author of Agile People - A Radical Approach for HR and Managers. Agile People is a global network of people who work to improve workplaces by helping HR and leaders to attain an agile mindset for the future of work by using agile tools, methods, values, and principles. Pia-Maria specializes in helping companies move towards a culture of increased agility through agile HR, agile leadership, and motivation. Her main focus is to contribute to creating organizations where people perform better and feel engaged. Her main drive is to see the movement from one state to another in a company, contributing by making that change successful both from a financial and human perspective.
- Website:
- agilepeople.com/
- LinkedIn:
- https://linkedin.com/in/piamia/
Priti Vyas
Priti Vyas is an Enterprise Agile Coach, Senior Growth and Transformation Consultant, Trainer and mentor at Tata Consultancy Services. Her agile expedition started in 2009. She has worked with diverse industries like Telecom, Banking, Pharmacy, Technology, Travel Tourism and Hospitality across geographies, working with CXOs for their enterprise’s agile transformation journey. She has contributed to TCS’s signature leadership and agile programs. She has groomed and mentored 2000+ people from different organizations.
She has done M. Tech from BITS Pilani – Specialization in Data and Analytics and has a B.E. in Electronics and Communications. She is SAFe Program Consultant, Lean Portfolio Management Certified, Scrum Certified Professional, Google’s Digital Cloud Leader, Professional Agile Leadership certified.
She has been a speaker in external conferences including Agile India, Agile Network India, written articles, and has been reviewer for external agility awards.
She is an avid reader and globetrotter, travelling; getting to know culture, heritage, language of various countries is some of her interest areas.
Rachel Chapman
Rachel is a strategic marketing leader with over 20 years’ experience in a wide range of marketing disciplines. Her marketing career started at Abbey National where she ran the Customer Insight team, setting up customer measurement frameworks ranging from brand perception through to customer satisfaction surveys. She went on to lead the B2B and B2C Marketing teams at Santander, launching the iconic ‘Bank of Antandec’ campaign.
Rachel left Santander in 2019 and set up her own Marketing Consultancy business, RBC Future Focus. She specialises in helping marketing departments become more effective, efficient and adaptable, with a focus on implementing agile ways of working. Rachel is an accredited ICAgile instructor, running their Agility in Marketing course, and co-founder of the hugely successful Meetup group, the Marketing Agility Community.
- LinkedIn:
- https://linkedin.com/in/rachchapman
Tuukka Smolander
Tuukka is a lean-agile advocate, change agent, program manager, leader and advisor with 20+ years of experience in the digital transformation and B2B space. With an engineering background and a diverse history of line organization and consultant positions, from early-stage startups to multinational corporations, Tuukka draws from a deep analytical understanding of lean-agile theory and principles combined with an abundance of practical hands-on experience from the trenches.
In addition to delivering change as a hands-on consultant and advisor, Tuukka is a coauthor of the Kokonaiskettera.fi lean-agile framework for 21st century service organizations by Triari Consulting.
Vikram Jain
Vikram is an award-winning entrepreneur with a passion and proven track record in complex business turnarounds and performance improvement projects in a broad range of industries including financial services, the public sector and the energy sector. He is skilled in developing robust strategies to drive business performance balanced with an even stronger experience and passion for delivering results through inspiring others to help themselves, sheer hard work and pride in quality. Vikram is also the founder of JCURV, a consultancy with the sole focus of increasing the agility of the UK.
- Website:
- www.jcurv.com
- LinkedIn:
- https://linkedin.com/in/vikramjain/
Zoë Merchant
Zoe Merchant is the founder and managing director of Bright, a strategic B2B marketing consultancy that gives marketers the power to do great work and deliver business results. With over 20 years of experience in agile marketing, she helps clients reinvent their marketing operations, align with business goals, and deliver tangible value.
As a leader and innovator in her field, Zoe has been recognised as a top 10 women leader of 2020, a 3x #40overforty advertising and marketing leader, and a #CannesLions70 Creative B2B juror in 2023. She is also a certified Agility in Marketing professional and a member of the Bank of England Decision Maker Panel.
Zoe is passionate about investing and reinventing marketing teams, promoting diversity and inclusion, and championing marketing's role in business transformation.