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Management Team

Ordinate Corporation, creator of the Versant tests, has been combined with Pearson's Knowledge Technologies group.

Jared Bernstein, Senior Scientist and Consultant

Jared is a recognized leader in the field of spoken language testing. He has a PhD in Psycholinguistics and an MA in Linguistics. He founded Ordinate with Dr. Brent Townsend in 1996 and developed the patented Ordinate testing technology. Jared has led commercial system developments in both text-to-speech synthesis and speech recognition. He has extensive experience in speech processing and voice interactive system design at SRI International, MIT and Telesensory Systems, as well as editorial positions in linguistics and speech processing. He is a Consulting Professor of Linguistics at Stanford University and has taught English and linguistics in the Middle East and South America.

Jian Cheng, Research and Development

Jian has a PhD in Artificial Intelligence and has been instrumental in the development of the automated machine scoring part of the test development cycle for several different test projects. He has been developing automated speaking tests with the Ordinate team for more than 6 years and brings practical and proven experience implementing automated machine scoring and test validation. He has expertise in automatic speech recognition, machine learning, statistical modeling, natural language processing, data analysis, psychometrics and testing theory.

Mark Engelter, Marketing and Customer Care

Mark has 15 years of experience in the corporate training, e-learning, and HR industries. Prior to joining Ordinate, he worked with LRN, a leader in corporate ethics and compliance training, and headed up marketing at GlobalEnglish, an online English learning provider. Before GlobalEnglish, he held leadership and marketing positions with Gartner Group (GartnerLearning division), Informix, techies.com, and Relational Courseware. Mr. Engelter earned his BA and MBA from Boston University.

Larry Rothenberg, Business Development and Custom Testing

Larry is a veteran in the language business. In 1991, Larry was a co-founder of Syracuse Language Systems, a language training software company. He led business development and then became President and CEO, selling the company to Cendant in 1998. After Cendant acquired Syracuse Language Systems, he continued on as division President. After leaving Cendant (which later became part of Vivendi Universal), he was the co-founder, President and CEO of AdvanceWork, Inc., a software start-up which developed and marketed software and services for handheld devices. Before Syracuse Learning Systems, Larry got his JD from Georgetown Law School and worked as an intellectual property and patent attorney for Fulbright and Jaworski in Washington, DC.

David Rubin, Technology and Operations

David has a PhD in Education Policy, an MA in Communication, and brings 25 years of experience developing technology based solutions for learning and assessment. Before joining Ordinate to lead the engineering team, he was Vice President of Product Management at Saba, a learning management system enterprise software company. He founded and was the CEO of Ultris, Inc., a web-based collaboration technology company that was acquired by Saba. Prior to Ultris, David was the Senior Vice President of Research and Development at The Learning Company, the leading producer of consumer educational software.

Matt Serrano, Engineering

Matt has eight years of experience in high technology. After receiving his BA in English from Santa Clara University, he became an early member of PeopleScape (later Angami Systems), the first automated enterprise recruitment referral engine. Since then Matt has held Senior Engineering positions in consulting and startup companies in the Bay Area, primarily focused on enterprise web technologies. He is currently Director of Engineering and IT and is the founder of Menlo Labs, a technology incubator located in Menlo Park, California.

Alistair Van Moere, Test Development

Alistair has a PhD in Applied Linguistics, an MA in Linguistics and Language Teaching, and brings over 12 years experience in language training and assessment. Before joining the Knowledge Technologies group of Pearson to lead the test development team, he worked as lecturer at Kanda University, Japan; Director of Studies in language schools in Japan and the UK; EFL teacher in Thailand and Indonesia; and academic tutor at the universities of Warwick and Lancaster, preparing overseas students for studying in the UK. He has consulted on numerous language assessment projects, including: Kanda University's English Proficiency Test (KEPT); Trinity College London's Graded Examinations in Spoken English (GESE) and Skills for Life; and Lancaster University's validation of the English Language Proficiency for Aeronautical Communication (ELPAC) test.