Jeff Sutherland

CEO, Principal Consultant, and Trainer

“Scrum is an Agile method designed to add energy, focus, clarity, and transparency to project planning and implementation. While some say Scrum is not a silver bullet, it can be a heat-seeking missile to outmoded business practices.”

Jeff is the inventor and co-creator of Scrum. He is a West Point graduate, former fighter pilot, and cancer researcher, as well as, CTO of eleven different software companies. He launched the first Scrum team in 1993 and has shepherded its growth into almost every industry: finance, healthcare, higher education, and telecom. His most recent book is Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time.

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Nigel Thurlow

Transformational Lead, Trainer & Coach

Nigel is a Lean and Agile Coach for Scrum Inc.  A Continuous Improvement Leader, Quality Advocate, and ex-member of “The Machine That Changed the World”, he holds many certifications in most Scrum approaches.

Nigel’s background is in grassroots IT solution delivery across networking & telecoms, infrastructure, and software development. A member of the Toyota Alumni, he is focused on systems thinking and the use of problem-solving.

Citizen Sigmund

Scrum Master, Communications, Trainer & Coach

Citizen teaches Scrum Master and Product Owner classes and provides Agile transformation coaching to Fortune 500 companies. She also has worked as an internal Scrum Master for Scrum Inc. and has helped to refine our teaching materials and coaching process.

Prior to becoming an agile coach, Citizen worked in commercial publishing. As a publicist with Penguin Random House in London, Citizen contributed to the successful launches of numerous Sunday Times Bestsellers and helped promote Jeff Sutherland's book, Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time.

Arline Sutherland

Chief of Operations, Trainer

"If you find that the meetings you attend are not productive, if projects come in late despite working overtime, and if your clients aren’t satisfied  — you’ll want to learn about Scrum."

Arline brings her unique perspective as a Unitarian Universalist Minister to the Scrum Inc. team. She joined Scrum Inc. in December of 2010 as Product Owner, setting strategic priorities, ordering the backlog, and expanding the team. She is the co-author of Scrum Inc.’s Product Owner course.

Jess Jagoditsh

Scrum Master

“Human beings have an innate inner drive to be autonomous, self-determined, and connected to one another. And when that drive is liberated, people achieve more and live richer lives.” - Daniel Pink

A Yooper by birth (Google it!), Jess has always been a bit of an adventurer. Her Dance/Russian majors and itchy heels landed her as a linguist in the Army. Post military, she landed as a project manager in a software company, which led to a scrum master role in a fun startup. There, she helped the entire organization think and work in an Agile way. Post-startup, she landed in Boston at NPR, scrumming with dev teams there. This led to her to Scrum, Inc, where she is an internal Scrum Master - protector of process and seeker of ways to help humans be happy at work and in life.

Erin Marlor

Client Success Manager

Erin is the manager for Scrum Inc’s public classes and leader of business development. She is committed to exceptional and premier Scrum training for all. Erin believes that dynamic immersive training is the foundation for implementing the Scrum framework in unique business environments beyond software. Erin collaborates with industry leaders to customize training programs for executives and their teams. When Erin is not at work you can find her riding bikes that go nowhere by candle light, taking in a baseball game at Fenway, climbing rocks in an adult jungle gym or enjoying musical theater.

JJ Sutherland

Chief Product Owner

"Scrum is a universal accelerator of human effort. Writing, making, creating, or innovating all move faster."

As Chief Product Owner of Scrum Inc., JJ is responsible for the strategic direction of the company. He is also the co-author of Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time. JJ is a Certified Scrum Trainer as well as a consultant focusing on Scrum in defense, journalism, and services organizations.

JJ's background is a former journalist for NPR, where he covered in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Arab Spring for which he won every award in broadcast journalism.

Veronica Ruiz

Director, Marketing and Communications

Veronica Ruiz leads our outreach and branding strategies, including our online learning resource ScrumLab, our Monthly Webinar Series, our Social Media channels and our Newsletter. She keeps the Scrum world up-to-date on the latest developments on Scrum.

Veronica has 10+ years of Marketing experience, with a specialty in Hispanic Marketing and in the Telecom Industry.

Mark Rosania

Client Success Manager

"We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them."  - Albert Einstein

At Scrum Inc., Mark is the Client Success Manager and is dedicated to ensuring that organizations undertaking a Scrum transformation have the support they need throughout the program to achieve the best results. He partners with corporate leadership to identify and design the right transformation program for their business.

Mark has spent 10+ years helping large organizations become agile. Mark began his career as a mental health counselor and advocate.  After a shift into Business-IT, Mark was immediately drawn to Scrum, its values, and its ability to solve problems in society, not just in the world of business.

Steve Daukas

Principal Consultant

"A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves."   -- Lao Tzu

Steve consults with, trains, and coaches leadership and teams at all stages of their agile journey.  He has over a decade of experience in leading agile transformations and implementing Scrum in both the public and private sectors.

He is also a meteorologist and mineral collector, a life-long learner with training in engineering, management, and the geosciences. When not working, Steve can be found gardening, or hiking up one of the 48 4k footers of the White Mountains.

Alex Sheive

Scrum Master, Trainer & Coach

Alex is a Scrum trainer and coach who was first exposed to agile software development in 2000 at Thoughtworks, where he was fortunate enough to rub elbows with multiple future authors of the Agile Manifesto. Since 2008 he has used Scrum to build software both as a lead developer and entrepreneur. He has found Scrum to be transformative on projects ranging from financial risk systems to DIY gaming platforms. Alex is a digital nomad who has traveled literally around the globe, living in nine different countries while only getting food poisoning in three.

Heather Timm

Web Team Member

Heather helps define, measure, manage and improve digital experiences for Scrum Inc. She is a veteran digital strategy and customer experience professional. Her experience span numerous industries including automotive, education, entertainment, government, financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, music, nonprofit, philanthropy, professional sports, retail, software, and television, where she often found herself initiating skunk works projects. Prior to joining Scrum Inc, she was the Chief Experience Officer at her own firm and the Sr. Manager of Digital Media for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Joe Justice

President of Hardware

"The Agile Manifesto applies to all industries. When we read it and its 12 principles, and switch each mention of "software" with "customer visible value", we have an elegant methodology that applies to all business."

Joe consults and coaches teams and companies on implementing Scrum at all levels of an organization. A veteran software consultant, Joe has over a decade of experience building Agile teams and practices enterprise-wide. He is the author of the eXtreme Manufacturing framework and enjoys adapting Agile processes to research, manufacturing, and engineering teams.

Patrick Roach

Product Owner, Trainer & Coach

"Inspect and Adapt!"

As a Product Owner Patrick helps set strategic direction and is a servant leader to Scrum Inc.'s internal operations. With a background in educational publishing, he enjoys applying agile practices to improve team performance in all industries. Patrick leads Scrum Inc.'s Capability Assessment Team and has helped teams in manufacturing, banking, and operations to leverage Scrum.

Avi Schneier

Scrum Master, Sales, Trainer & Coach

Avi has decades of experience in both the public and private sectors. He brings his unique experiences as a former science educator, stock broker, and small business owner to each Scrum training he facilitates. Avi sees Scrum as THE key framework to be implemented in any business in order to increase sales and gain an advantage by innovating solutions in a rapidly changing marketplace. Avi lives in Brooklyn, long before it became cool. He also teaches Tai Chi.

Sean Hafferty

Director, Transformation Services

For 15+ years Sean has worked with organizations from startups to the Fortune 100 to help them to identify, evaluate and adopt emerging technologies and practices that will advance their business. In 2003 he began helping organizations to transition to become Scrum and Lean organizations. He has a passion for applying Scrum in non-technical contexts.

In his spare time, he likes to moonlight as a music photographer, with a focus on Indie Rock.

Yesim Taskor

Controller

Yesim helps organizations implement clear and consistent financial systems with the goal of helping stakeholders understand where added value is generated and with a clear focus on the bottom line. Her BS and MS degrees in Computer Science and Financial Economics enable her to interact with and integrate multiple perspectives inside high-tech enterprises.

Alex Sutherland

Product Owner

Alex is a serial entrepreneur with a decade of experience practicing Scrum both as a developer and as a product owner. He first learned Scrum in 2007 by attending one of Scrum Inc’s first Scrum Master classes and has used it since to envision, create, market, and sell software products to customers around the globe across multiple industries. Prior to becoming an entrepreneur, Alex was a graduate student in Game Theory and released the first commercial Nash Equilibrium solver for Poker. In his spare time, Alex works with some of the best poker players in the world on the application of computational game theory to high stakes poker.