Software Testing specialist group: Committee

Chair and Inclusion officer
Nicola Martin

Nicola is currently Head of Quality Engineering for Adarga. She has more than two decades of experience in the technology industry. Nicola is a skilled professional in the areas of quality and testing. She has worked on projects across various industries and tech specialisms, including AI and Data Science. Nicola is also a supporter of diversity and inclusivity in the technology sector.

Nicola is an active member of the BCS, additionally working with BCSWomen and BCS Council. In these capacities, she advocates for underrepresented groups in the field of technology.

Vice-Chair and Programme Secretary
Mike Harris

Mike has been a tester for 20 years and is the lone tester for Geckoboard. He has been a member of a test team, a lone Tester and a Test Lead. He has also worked as a part of waterfall, lean and agile teams. Mike has a testing and quality blog.

Mike has a BSc. (Hons) from Middlesex University and is an Associate of the University of Hertfordshire. He has set up and led a Testing Community of Practice and been part of a successful agile transition. He also is a conference speaker and has contributed to two ebooks: How Can I Test This? and Testing Stories.

Treasurer
Geoff Thompson

Geoff is currently Senior Account Director for Qualitest, specifically responsible for managing key BFSI accounts. He has gained wide experience, having worked in QA/QE for over 32 years.

He is a founding member of the International Software Testing Qualification Board (ISTQB), the TMMi Foundation, and the UK and Ireland Testing Board and is the immediate Vice President of the ISTQB and Chairman of the UK and Ireland Testing Board.

He co-authored the BCS book Software Testing - An ISEB/ISTQB Foundation Guide and is a recognized international speaker, keynoting in many conferences, and was the chair of EuroSTAR in 2011.

Marketing and Communications Secretary
Paul Mowatt

Paul is Software Testing SG's Marketing and Communications Secretary. Paul is a fellow BCS member and a BCS CITP assessor with 20+ years’ experience in technology delivery and advisory. Paul is a Director within Deloitte Consulting specialising in Quality and Cloud, and has assessed organisations with formal and informal assessments to optimise ways of working.

Deputy Marketing and Communications Secretary
Beth Clarke

Beth is a Software Tester, Quality & DevOps Specialist, and passionate advocate for getting more women into tech. Beth has held a variety of roles in sectors including Satellite Communications and Energy, and is an advocate of using tech for good and the important role quality plays in all software products. Beth also runs a tech blog where she shares her thoughts on tech, diversity and testing.

Beth enjoys speaking at conferences about technology and testing, and volunteering with organisations like WISE to improve the gender balance in STEM industries. Her dedication and expertise has been recognised by a number of awards, including being included in Computer Weekly's list of Most Influential Women in UK Tech. She is currently working at ROSEN, spearheading their quality and devops practices globally."

The Tester Editor
Andy Shaw

Andrew is a software tester who has experience in testing web based and desktop software in the geographical, cargo and shipping, and lone worker industries.

He focused on the software testing area following a redundancy at the end of 2013 and has not looked back since. He is an advocate of exploratory testing, and has gained experience of manual and automated testing, and continually developing his career as a professional software tester.

He enjoys public speaking about software testing, at networking events and universities, as well as organising events for BCS. He also supports the different BCS Student Chapters and mentors people considering software testing as a career.

Sponsorship Coordinator
Jonathon Wright

Jonathon Wright is a digital therapist, strategic thought leader and distinguished technology evangelist. He specialises in emerging technologies, innovation and automation, and has more than 20 years of international commercial experience within global organisations.

He is currently the CTO of Digital-Assured based in Oxford in the UK.

Jonathon combines his extensive practical experience and leadership with insights into real-world adoption of automation, performance and security testing. Thus, he is frequently in demand as a speaker at international conferences such as TEDx, Gartner, EuroSTAR, STAREast, STARWest, UKSTAR, Guild Conferences, Swiss Testing Days, Unicom, AI Summit, DevOps Summit, TestExpo and Vivit Community (of which he is currently the president of a not for profit, independent software community with over 70,000 members across 125 countries). Jonathon is also the podcast host of the QA lead (based in Canada) and the author of several award winning books.

Early Career Advocate
Paul M Smith

Cllr Paul M Smith is an experienced financial and capital markets professional, as well as being the former Sales Lead on many Commonwealth projects, (including the Commonwealth Yearbook). More recently, Paul has worked as an award-winning ICT Sales Director at Hewlett Packard, specialising once again in Africa/EMEA. He holds many senior non exec roles, including as a Committee Chair within BCS and member of many other BCS Committees. Paul also proudly serves as Vice-President, isc2 (East of England Region as well as on Chartered Insurance Institute Cambridge Committee.

He also serves as a Councillor in his home village of Sawston, Cambridgeshire. Paul is also a Certified NLP master Practitioner and hold many qualifications across NLP, financial services, ICT, project management and cyber security. Paul is passionate about Africa, American Football, ESG, CSR, Financial Services regulatory reform & GRC issues. He is devoted to his beloved wife Yari and hopes that her home country of Venezuela will soon be free one day.

International Project Liaison
Mihai Grigorescu

Bio to follow.

Committee members

Adam Leon Smith

Adam is a senior technologist focused on systems quality, testing and emerging technologies. Currently, building the neuro product and taking it to market - revolutionising project reporting. Also, leading the technical Dragonfly consulting team.

Very active within BCS, and working with ISO/IEC, the EU and ISTQB on AI Testing. Finally, an elected Board Member of ForHumanity. Oh... and podcasting see fuzzyquality.com.

Laveena Ramchandani

Laveena Ramchandani is a Quality Engineering Manager with a comprehensive understanding of tools available for software testing and analysis. She aims to provide valuable insights that have high technical aptitude and hopes to inspire others in the world through her work. Laveena holds a degree in Business Computing from the Queen Mary University of London and regularly speaks at events on data science models and other topics as well as blogs, hosts, and trains future testers. She is also a finalist for the Digital star award at the FDM every woman’s award 2022.