meet the team
Find out a little more about our management team.
Mary Clarke - chief executive
Mary J Clarke has served as Chief Executive of Cognisco since January 2004. Under her leadership the company has achieved sustained profitability and implemented a new operating model, developed a more customer and market driven culture and expanded the role and reach of Cognisco.
Mary brings a wealth of business experience to Cognisco. She has worked for a number of technology based companies including start-ups and high growth businesses. She has held UK, European and Worldwide roles for small, medium and large businesses. Her knowledge of Sales and Marketing together with experience in software and services organisations forms a basis of experience to guide Cognisco as it grows both nationally and into other geographical markets.
Before joining Cognisco Mrs Clarke spent over twenty years in the IT and Telecommunications industry. She has developed a number of businesses from start-up in the UK and Far-East, served as Vice President for Lucent Technologies, formerly AT&T Network Systems and as Director of Network Services, Digital Equipment Company Limited.
Mary is a mathematics graduate from Heriot Watt University, Edinburgh.
Scott Sharp - director
Scott Sharp is one of the original founders of Cognisco and a major shareholder. Based upon his experience in quantifying and interpreting market opportunities on behalf of clients around the world, his vision was to create an online system that would allow organisations globally to determine how, through their employee base, they could increase efficiency, reduce cost, mitigate risk and maximise productivity by accurately determining employees' levels of understanding, misunderstanding and confidence.
Taking the company from its inception in 1998, Cognisco today assesses client employees in over 140 countries and represents some of the world's leading blue chip organisations and governments.
Scott is also an international sales and marketing business applications expert having over 20 years experience working in the Europe, North America and the Asia Pacific markets.
Andrew Davidson - production manager
Andrew joined Cognisco in March 2007 as Production Manager and is responsible for the management of the production of the learning and assessment content, consultancy and research.
Andrew has developed training and learning materials for the past 10 years for a range of customers and organisations. Before joining Cognisco Andrew was Training Manager at Prolog working with British Airways to develop the customer service and IT training for the contact centre. He has also worked at Getronics in expanding their e-learning portfolio and management workshops in the UK and Ireland. More recently Andrew has worked as Programme Manager for Relate, a national charity delivering relationship and family counselling to the public, where he developed and implemented Relate's graduate, postgraduate and masters level programmes with the University of East London and the University of Hull.
Andrew also holds a BA (Hons) in Sociology and Social Anthropology from the University of Hull, a FE teaching qualification.
John Kattenhorn - chief technology officer
John joined Cognisco in January 2008 as Chief Technology Officer and is responsible for on-going research and development of Cognisco range of products.
John has been involved in the development of many large software applications for the last 18 years and well as running successful IT operations group for a major IT services company.
John is a committed advocate of advanced use of technology to enhance user experience and software capability.
Nick Amis - operations manager
Nick joined Cognisco in February 2007 as Operations Manager and is responsible for the implementation and support of all customer solutions.
Before joining Cognisco, Nick spent over 15 years in IT, delivering enterprise solutions for blue chip organisations. In 1997, he started Internet Media System Ltd to create a range of self-service solutions for enterprise wide management of personnel. The company developed a number of strategic partnerships and merged with The Program Management Group Plc in 2001 where Nick became Director of Web Technologies.
Nick is an advocate of knowledge sharing and business process development. He has successfully implemented operational procedures to meet the specific needs of a range of organisations. Nick also holds a BSc (Hons) from the University of Newcastle Upon Tyne.
Robert Bellew - finance director
Robert joined Cognisco in April 2007 as Finance Manager and is responsible for financial and management reporting together with process and system developments.
Robert has over twenty five years experience as a finance director / financial controller with SMEs within the service sector, including a two year contract in Barbados.
Robert firmly believes in the effective communication of financial information amongst all staff to enable the achievement of corporate goals.
Robert qualified as a Chartered Accountant with Coopers and Lybrand and also holds a BA (Hons) in German from Birmingham University.
