Testimonials
Turnitin has saved me so much work and provided documentation for papers I suspect. I feel much more assured in the grades I issue.
Stephen Smithson, teacher
View more testimonialsExecutive Bios
Chris Caren
President and CEO
Chris Caren joined iParadigms in 2009 as President and Chief Executive Officer. Although his career has focused on software businesses, he comes from a family of scientists and educators -- a background which helped draw him to iParadigms. Chris previously worked for Microsoft Corporation as General Manager of Microsoft Business Solutions and Office Business Applications. His previous experience includes vice president of products and marketing at Business Objects (now part of SAP), product marketing at Manugistics Group Inc., head of sales and marketing at an Oracle financial applications company, and a leadership position at Accenture. He holds an MBA with distinction from Kellogg Business School and a bachelor of science in engineering from Stanford University.
John M. Barrie, Ph.D.
Executive Chairman & Founder
Dr. John Barrie is co-founder and Executive Chairman of iParadigms. In 1996 iParadigms set out to create a new model for the protection of written work on the Internet. Dr. Barrie is the architect of the technology behind Turnitin®, the leading plagiarism prevention service used by millions of students and faculty in more than 100 countries (including every university in the U.K.), and iThenticate®, a commercial version of Turnitin designed for publishers, corporations, and non-profit entities.
Dr. Barrie is at the forefront of using technology to drive change in students' attitudes toward plagiarism and influence greater academic integrity in writing through web-based services that support instructor feedback, peer review, grading options and other best practices in teaching and learning.
As a leading expert in his field, Dr. Barrie has been featured on CNN, ABC (Good Morning America with Diane Sawyer and World News Tonight with Peter Jennings), CBS (48 Hours with Dan Rather/60 Minutes with Morley Safer), BBC, the New York Times and USA Today.
Dr. Barrie completed his undergraduate studies in Rhetoric and Neurobiology and a Ph.D in Biophysics, both at the University of California, Berkeley.
Sally Elliott
Chief Operating Officer
Sally Elliott is an academic publishing veteran and information technology executive with long time experience in building higher education and lifelong learning business ventures. Prior to joining iParadigms, Ms. Elliott was the President of True Outcomes (a Cengage Learning company) from 2005 to 2007 and CEO of Aplia Inc., a content delivery and services company focused on providing economic content to the higher education community from 2001 to 2005. Ms. Elliott served as the VP of Product Development at Pensare, Inc., a start up company focused on web-based tools for corporate executive and management education and training from 1998 to 2001, responsible for all areas of product concept and development. From 1976 to 1997, Ms. Elliott was a leader in the academic publishing community notably: Senior Editor at MacMillan Publishing (1981-1983) and President at Benjamin/Cummings Publishing (1989-1996) and President, Consumer Publishing Group at Addison Wesley Longman (1997). Ms. Elliott also served as a Board Director for Addison Wesley Longman from 1994 to 1997.
Ms. Elliott manages the Turnitin Sales, Business Development and Marketing units of iParadigms.
Melissa Lipscomb
Chief Financial Officer
Melissa Lipscomb, CFO & EVP, Business Affairs. Melissa Lipscomb is a co-founder of iParadigms and was its Chief Operating Officer from 2005 to 2007. Ms. Lipscomb also managed the Company’s UK operations from 2002 to 2004. Ms. Lipscomb has dual degrees in English and Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley. Prior to collaborating on the foundation of iParadigms in 1994, Ms. Lipscomb worked in the nonprofit and not-for-profit sectors, most notably as the sole operations and finance staff member for the current Attorney General (and former Mayor of Oakland and 2-time Governor of CA), Jerry Brown, then, the head of an Oakland-based non-profit organization, We The People, and was responsible for organizational development, large-scale volunteer coordination and supervision, and fund contribution management. Ms. Lipscomb moved to France for a year and returned to begin work with iParadigms’ founding team, concurrently working in UC Berkeley’s Finance administration until 2000. Ms. Lipscomb was responsible for the initial research leading to the inception of iParadigms, Inc., as a formal entity.
Ms. Lipscomb manages the Company’s Accounting, Administration, Human Resources and Business Affairs units. She is also the Company’s LLC Secretary, responsible for corporate affairs and investor relations.
Christian Storm, Ph.D.
Chief Technology Officer
Dr. Christian Storm is a co-founder of iParadigms and has served as iParadigms Chief Technology Officer (CTO) since the inception of the company in 1994. Dr. Storm came to iParadigms as a graduate student in Biophysics at the University of California, Berkeley. He has focused on the creation of novel similarity search algorithms, architecting internet crawler technology, and search systems which span heterogeneous databases.
Dr. Storm received his doctorate in Biophysics from the University of California, Berkeley. His work at Berkeley began with analyzing the stability of biologically inspired pattern recognition systems, which utilize nonlinear dynamics as their information-processing medium. From this research he developed a nonlinear systems identification methodology that can track nonlinear switching events in near real time. He authored a paper ("Detection and Classification of Nonlinear Switching Events," Phys Rev E Vol. 66, 2002) on the application of this methodology to breaking hyperchaotic key shifting codes used in secure communications. Using this methodology he also demonstrated that epileptic seizures can be anticipated in advance of seizure onset by 15 or more minutes in a large fraction of seizures. Prior to his doctoral work at Berkeley he was a member of the weather-sensing group at MIT Lincoln Labs.
John Hartman
Vice President of Engineering
John Hartman joined iParadigms in November of 2008 with over 20 years of software engineering and product development leadership in both large and small companies. Most recently, John held overall responsibility for development of the patented audio system for the revolutionary Livescribe Pulse SmartPen, a consumer product that records and plays audio tied to hand-written paper notes.
Prior to LiveScribe, John served as CTO and Vice President of Engineering for CrossTest, Inc, a software testing vendor serving the device software market.
As Senior Director of Platforms Engineering at Wind River Systems, John led the Engineering team responsible for developing many of the company's core product offerings. John started his career in software and hardware engineering at Varian, developing chromatography systems.
He holds a degree from University of California, Berkeley, in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
Today, John leads the Product Development and Site Operations teams at iParadigms.
Liz Rockhold
Vice President, Sales and Customer Care
Joining iParadigms, LLC in September of 2008, Liz brings over 20 years of experience in building and managing sales and marketing teams and driving growth in start up, turnaround, and established company environments. Her background includes extensive experience in the education, and technology industries where she held a variety of executive positions in sales, marketing, and management. Liz was Director of Marketing at ABC-CLIO, Director of Technology Sales and Marketing at Cengage Learning, Manager of Technology Sales at Addison Wesley/Benjamin Cummings, and National Sales Manager for Education at Macmillan Computer Publishing. Prior experience also includes positions in sales and management at Borland and Prentice Hall.
Liz manages the Sales and Customer Care teams at iParadigms.
Katie Povejsil
Vice President of Marketing
Katie Povejsil joined iParadigms, LLC in March 2008 as Chief Marketing Officer.
Katie has more than 20 years experience in business development and strategic marketing for technology companies in the consumer, education an enterprise markets. Prior to joining iParadigms, she was president of Catalyst Consultants where she developed marketing strategies and programs for some of the most recognized companies in media and technology, including Adobe, Cisco, Gateway, Handspring (now Palm), Hewlett-Packard, Macromedia,Panasonic and PBS.
Before launching her consulting business in 1994, Katie was director of business development at Claris, where she founded and managed a new business unit to acquire publish, distribute and market software products from independent developers under a new label for Claris. As vice president of New Media Publishing at Authorware (which became Macromedia, then acquired by Adobe), she was responsible for the development of a new content-based business model and the developer relations program. Previously at Apple Computer, she served as manager of Software Solutions Marketing where she crafted curriculum solutions campaigns, lead the launch of the revolutionary multimedia authoring tool HyperCard, and started a campus solutions newsletter called Syllabus (that became Campus Technology magazine).
Katie graduated with a bachelor's degree in engineering from Cornell University and received a master's degree in engineering from Stanford University.
Max-Emmanuel Briand
Chief Information Officer
Max-Emmanuel Briand is a co-founder of iParadigms and has been the company's Chief Information Officer (CIO) since its inception. Mr. Briand created and built the company's network topology and operating system configuration. He currently manages the company's Information Technology Department and its co-location facility staff. Mr. Briand is also the company's media spokesperson for the French and French-speaking nations' press, having been interviewed extensively by publications such as France's Figaro and Le Monde, and Quebec, Canada's public radio programs.
Mr. Briand received a degree in Mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley. He has worked in a variety of industries, from the travel-writing business to systems administration management at Silicon Valley startups. He brings solid IT experience to the team's technology management team, and has been instrumental in brokering the company's partnerships with key IT companies throughout the Bay Area.