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Management Team
- Chuck Moran - CEO & President
- Tom McDonald - CFO & Executive Vice President, Operations
- Jerry Nine - Chief Operating Officer
- Mark Townsend - Executive Vice President, Technology
- Colm Darcy - Executive Vice President, Content Development
- Lee Ritze - Senior Vice President, Marketing
- Kevin Young - Vice President and Managing Director, EMEA
- Glenn Nott - Vice President and Managing Director, Asia Pacific
- John Ambrose - Senior Vice President, Strategy, Corporate Development and Emerging Business
Chuck Moran
CEO & President
Chuck Moran founded SkillSoft in 1998 with venture capital backing of Warburg Pincus raising more than $20 million. The company went public in January 2000 raising $40 million and raised $88 million in a secondary offering in July 2001.
SkillSoft merged with SmartForce in September 2002 in a deal valued at more than one half billion dollars at the time of the announcement.
Prior to founding SkillSoft, Moran was with NETg, a computer-based training company, as president and CEO. His successful turnaround of NETg helped position the company for Harcourt Brace's acquisition of NEC – NETg's parent company – for $850 million in 1997, resulting in shareholder value increase of $750 million.
From 1993 to 1994, Moran served as chief financial officer and chief operating officer at Softdesk, Inc., a developer of CAD software products. Together with the CEO, Moran led the company's successful initial public offering, which was recognized by IPO reporters as the #1 IPO for the first quarter of 1994. Earlier in his career, Moran held several senior-level sales and marketing positions.
Moran holds an MBA from Suffolk University in Boston, Mass., and a B.S. from Boston College in Chestnut Hill, Mass.
Tom McDonald
CFO & Executive Vice President, Operations
Tom McDonald has more than 22 years of senior-level financial and operational experience in technology and manufacturing companies. Prior to joining SkillSoft, McDonald was CFO and VP of operations at NETg, where he assisted Chuck Moran in turning around NETg from 1995 to 1997. Before joining NETg, McDonald held the position of CFO and VP with Bear Automotive, a global auto technology equipment company. He has held senior financial and operational positions within SPX Corp., U.S. Industries and Cenco, Inc.
McDonald received an MBA from DePaul University in Chicago, Ill., and a bachelor's degree from the University of Illinois in Champaign, Ill.
Jerry Nine
Chief Operating Officer
Jerry Nine is the chief operating officer and a founder of SkillSoft. Nine is responsible for the non-financial functional divisions of the company including sales, marketing, customer service, alliances, engineering, content development and the Books24x7 business unit.
Following the merger of SkillSoft and SmartForce, Nine became the executive vice president, worldwide sales and marketing. In this role, he was responsible for the company's worldwide sales, services, support, alliances and marketing activities. Nine was also the general manager of content solutions, which includes Books24x7.
Prior to SkillSoft, Nine was the vice president, sales and marketing, at NETg and was with Sytron Corp., a leader in the software data storage management market, which was sold to Arcadia Software.
Earlier in his career, Nine held positions in engineering, marketing and sales with venture-capital-funded technology companies including Archive Corp. which grew to a $400 million publicly traded organization.
Nine holds a bachelor's degree in marketing from the University of Tennessee, a bachelor's degree. in electrical and computer engineering from George Mason University and an MBA from San Jose State University.
Mark Townsend
Executive Vice President, Technology
Mark Townsend is responsible for all product development activities at SkillSoft. He has over 20 years of experience leading the development of computer software products.
Prior to joining SkillSoft, Townsend was vice president of advanced technology for NETg.
Before joining NETg, Townsend was vice president of engineering for Sytron Corp., where, from 1994 to 1996, he led the development of network-based storage management products for PCs and client/server computing systems. From 1979 to 1994, Townsend held several software development management positions at Data General Corp., the most recent being senior manager of open network systems development.
While at Data General, Townsend led development of products used to connect and manage computers across local and wide area networks. Before joining Data General, Townsend was a software engineer for Leeds and Northrup Company where he designed and implemented communications software, operator display subsystem software and hot backup/fail-over capabilities for real-time operating systems from 1976 to 1979.
Townsend has a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Bucknell University and an master's degree in computer science from Stevens Institute of Technology.
Colm Darcy
Executive Vice President, Content Development
Colm Darcy is the executive vice president of research and development at SkillSoft. Darcy was appointed to this position in April 2002 and is responsible for all research and development activities within SkillSoft. Darcy is also responsible for SkillSoft's operations group that maintains SkillSoft's hosted Web site infrastructure. Previously, he held the position of vice president of solutions management where he was responsible for managing the integration of SmartForce's content and software solutions.
Darcy joined SmartForce in January 1995. He served in a number of senior management positions in SmartForce's research and development organization as well as in the sales and marketing organization where he held the position of vice president of strategic alliances. In this role, Darcy was responsible for managing SmartForce's strategic relationships with its e-learning partners including Microsoft, Cisco and Oracle.
Prior to joining SmartForce, Darcy held various positions in finance, human resources, training and information technology in the Irish Government's Department of Health and Child Welfare. Darcy is a native of Ireland and was educated at Trinity College, Dublin.
Lee Ritze
Senior Vice President, Marketing
Lee Ritze is the senior vice president, marketing for SkillSoft. Ritze was an original founder of SkillSoft. He has been responsible since SkillSoft’s founding for the company’s product marketing and strategic alliances activities worldwide, and marketing communications for the Americas and corporate.
Prior to joining SkillSoft, Ritze worked for NETg from 1985 to 1998, holding various sales, sales management and marketing management positions. From 1995 to 1998, Ritze served as director of product marketing at NETg and earlier in his career held key positions in engineering, customer service and marketing management roles with Unisys, Control Data Corporation and Via Computer.
Ritze has 33+ years experience in the information technology and technology-based learning industries and is a 1974 graduate of The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, where he graduated cum laude with a Bachelor of Science degree in computer science from OSU's College of Engineering.
Kevin Young
Vice President and Managing Director, EMEA
Kevin Young has 15 years experience in the IT industry, 12 of which have been in the technology-based training sector. Before joining SkillSoft, Young headed up CBT Systems UK operations, managing a team of more than 40.
Between 1990 and 1998 Young held a series of sales/senior management positions with NETg International. He established the UK Strategic Account Group in 1995 and was directly involved in signing the largest-ever UK technology-based training agreement, valued at $10 million over five years.
From 1997 to 1998 Young was based in Australia, tasked with setting up NETg's AsiaPacific/Japanese operations. With a small team he grew the revenue base significantly, through the effective application of a direct and channel-based sales operation.
Kevin has a BSc(Hons) in plant biology and geography from Newcastle University and was an associate member of the Institute of Personnel Management.
Glenn Nott
Vice President and Managing Director, Asia Pacific
Glenn Nott has been involved in the IT and the education industry for 15 years. Beginning his career in IT during the early 1980s, Nott joined the IT training department of a major bank in Australia for which he delivered instructor-led training courses to IT staff. It was in this role that he became exposed to alternative forms of delivery such as computer-based training. Seeing the way of the future, Nott left the corporate world and joined Australia's largest supplier of technology-based training, Applied Learning.
In 1997, CBT Systems acquired Applied Learning. As part of the acquisition, CBT Systems' goal was to enter the Asian market. Nott took on the challenge of spearheading this initiative.
John Ambrose
Senior Vice President, Strategy, Corporate Development and Emerging Business
John Ambrose is senior vice president, strategy, corporate development and emerging business. In addition to identifying new strategic opportunities for the company, he oversees the operations of SkillSoft’s Books24x7 and the Leadership Development Channel. Previously, he had served as vice president and general manager of Books24x7, a subsidiary of SkillSoft and the developer of online Referenceware® which he co-founded. Books24x7 was acquired by SkillSoft in December 2001.
Ambrose has more than 23 years experience in executive, international business development, web marketing and software marketing roles. Prior to Books24x7, he held executive positions including CEO of DeltaPoint, a NASDAQ-listed web tools software firm in Monterey, CA, and vice president of corporate marketing for SystemSoft, a firmware company based in Natick, MA. He spent 10 years with Phoenix Technologies Ltd where he co-founded and was vice president, marketing and business development, of Phoenix Publishing Systems, a worldwide software publishing business unit that in 1994 was acquired by Softbank of Japan. He began his career in 1984 in marketing at Cullinet Software.
Ambrose earned a bachelor's degree from Drexel University and a master's degree from Columbia University.
