Ivan Kennes

When growth, new technology, or market entry outruns the operating model underneath your delivery, quality, compliance, and commercial expansion, I redesign that operating model to be fit for purpose: rebuilding it under stress, building it from zero, or refitting it for the market it needs to thrive in.

Too many transformation programmes falter once the engagement ends; mine keep delivering after I step out, as my track record attests. Continuity is designed in from the start, not bolted on at handover.

And when AI is coming into your operation, I steer the direction, resourcing, and governance of the expert teams building or implementing it, with the procurement discipline and accountability a regulated, integrity-sensitive market requires.

Because your operating model runs on partner networks and recognised standards, I make the hard partner calls, exits, resets, renegotiations, without destabilising the network that has to keep working, and I design your commercial model to win where standards bodies and regulators decide what gets adopted.

My accomplishments and organisational impact are evidenced in my career record and recommendations below: 21 years across Pearson VUE, Certiport, ACT Education, and Oxford University Press; delivery networks spanning 90+ countries; operating models built, rebuilt, and handed over, from start-up mode to global scale. That foundation enables me to lead in your operating context from a standing start.

The Thriving Place is where those 21 years now work for you: embedded fractional leadership, a defined project delivered end to end, or advisory alongside your team.

If you need adaptive leadership to turn fragile operations into scalable growth, let's talk.

Oxford English Assessment appointed me to professionalise its operations from start-up mode into a scalable function that could sustain its 500% revenue growth ambition by 2030 and its expansion into high-stakes testing and private K-12, powered by new technology and AI-led assessment. Leading three functions, Test Delivery, Content Production, and Test Security, I laid the strategic foundations for a scalable, tech-enabled operating model built through modernisation, agility, and cross-functional execution, designed to absorb hypergrowth and change fatigue and clear legacy systems slowing time-to-market.

I built out the fundamentals that scale-up required. I made the operating model a priority and drove it to audit-ready, with over 100 documents brought to QMS standard in six weeks, removing a single point of failure: processes and knowledge recorded, so the work survived people leaving. Under my leadership, the team completed 46 deliverables on schedule for the January 2026 Ofqual submission, and I gave the three functions dedicated operational leadership through their three heads, set clear objectives and a performance cadence, and began the org redesign.

In Content Production, I strengthened item bank health: steering the team's build-out and resourcing, driving the new item banking platform to tender, growing the active pretesting network over 180% to rebuild content and calibration capacity, in parallel with governing the development of AI-generated assessment items and the guardrails on what could and could not be AI-generated. In Test Delivery, I led the design of the B2C and B2B2C test-delivery journeys, stepped in early to take direct command of a critical operational incident, and mapped out the improved live-incident processes. In Test Security, I built on the established framework, advancing the governance workflows for continuous quality and security improvement, and taking direct operational lead when the situation required.

Promoted onto the COO's global leadership team to oversee delivery and performance across ACT's international testing network, spanning 90+ countries and 300+ locations, accountable for the $3M+ budget and 2,500+ contractors, vendors, and consultants across India, MENA, and Asia. I built an offshore delivery team in India within nine months, transitioning ACT's US-based international operations and cutting per-head costs by 73%, while maintaining quality and continuity.

I spearheaded the Lean-Agile transformation of channel operations, reducing process steps by 40% and accelerating the vendor onboarding and compliance lifecycle by 95%, with a Lean optimisation charter that delivered approximately $250k in combined test centre costs and workforce efficiency savings. I commissioned the first multi-modal cost-per-test reporting framework, bringing transparency to all test delivery costs and driving an approximately 50% median reduction in cost-per-test across my tenure, landing at -35.8% from FY24 to FY25. I began introducing generative AI to enhance channel operations and further automate processes, preparing scalable implementation roadmaps.

Through the Egypt Score Validation Programme, I developed the phased technology and operations response that secured electronic score recognition with the national Ministry of Education, safeguarding ACT's market accreditation and the $13M MENA revenue stream.

To correct our lack of reliable visibility into how test delivery was performing in the market, I stood up a channel auditor programme: 691 audit instances across 9 countries that exposed previously unnoticed quality and security failings, alongside best practice worth scaling. The evidence drove immediate corrective actions and longer-term remedial measures, including a best-performer reward scheme that was still in build when I left, and I scaled the programme's quality and security insights into communities of practice across the international contractor base.