HDI-Certified Auditors

Pat Albright is Manager of Support Center Certification & Assessment at HDI. In this role, she is responsible for the management and continued development of the HDI Support Center Certification program and HDI Support Center Maturity Assessment service. She has been an HDI-Certified Auditor since 2003 and is certified in ITIL Foundations v3. She has served as a member of the review committees for the HDI Support Center Team Lead Certification Standard, HDI Support Center Manager Certification Standard, and HDI Support Center Standard. An active member of HDI since 1997, she has served as a volunteer local chapter officer and advisor, as a judge at the national level for the HDI Analyst of the Year and Team Excellence Awards, as a member of the HDI Member Advisory Board, and she is also a frequent presenter at industry events. She has been involved in the implementation and support of technology for more than 20 years.

Prior to joining HDI, she founded IT Support Consultants, Inc., in 2000, and served the industry as a consultant for seven years, working with support centers in nearly every industry. She previously worked as a practitioner, managing end user support for a 1500-user law firm, and has held business and technology management positions in non-profit and small business environments. She also serves as a part-time faculty member at Lakeland Community College in Kirtland, OH, where she teaches Help Desk Concepts and Management.

John Custy is principal of JPC Group, a professional services company focused on IT Service Management (ITSM). The staff and partners of JPC Group have extensive experience developing service management in both large and small organizations, and can leverage their knowledge and experience to assist you in meeting your objectives. He is an ITIL certified Service Management Manager, Service Management Practitioner, and is an itSMF certified ISO/IEC 20000 Consultant.

He is a member of the HDI Faculty and an HDI-Certified Auditor, and serves as a Subject Matter Expert (SME) for the HDI Individual Certification and HDI Support Center Certification Standards. He is also a member of the HDI International Certification Standards Committee. John has been involved with industry certification programs for over 15 years and was a key participant in the development of the HDI Support Center Certification program and the SSPA Support Center Practices program, for which he served as an auditor. He was also certified as an internal ISO 9000 auditor. John is a well-known and respected speaker and educator, and has presented at support conferences globally.

JPC Group services include:

• Training/Workshops: ITIL Foundations, Practitioner/Capabilities, and Service Manager; Customer service skills for support and service centers; performance measurements; design/setup/improvement of support centers; Request for Proposal (RFP) process; outsourcing; problem solving and troubleshooting skills; staffing and scheduling; certification preparation/planning; service level management and service catalogue
• Process: Process Maturity Assessments; Operational process assessment, Support, Restore, Control and Release/Deployment; and Service Portfolio and Service Level Management
• Technology: Technology strategy; Automation tools assessment
• Services Strategy: Services architecture; Services Strategy and Service Portfolio Management

John has a BS from Lowell Technological Institute and an MS in Innovation and Technology from Boston University. He is co-author of the paper "Customer Oriented Enterprise Integration Technology." His certifications include: ITIL Service Management Manager, ITIL Service Management Practitioner, ITIL Foundations; ISO/IEC 20000 Consultant; HDI Support Center Manager, HDI Support Center Team Lead, HDI Desktop Support Engineer, HDI Support Center Analyst, and Knowledge Centered Support.

Paul is president and a principal consultant at Optimal Connections, LLC, based in Lake Forest, CA. Optimal Connections specializes in providing customer support consulting and training services – solutions that bring companies closer to their customers.  As an HDI-Certified Instructor, Paul has taught hundreds of support professionals by delivering the HDI Support Center Analyst, Support Center Manager, and Support Center Team Lead classes across the Western U.S. and internationally.  He has served on the HDI Individual and Support Center Certification Standard Review Committees, and has been an HDI-Certified Auditor since 2003.  

Active in the support services community, Paul has served as President of HDI Orange County for the past two years (OCHDI – www.ochdi.com) and is currently Advisor and Newsletter Editor to OCHDI.  He also serves frequently as a presenter at HDI conferences and HDI Forum meetings.

With over 30 years in the high technology industry, Paul has wide and in-depth experience. He has held positions in customer support, professional services and marketing. His expertise includes development and implementation of support policies and processes, business process re-engineering, support center assessment and integration, call tracking system installation, knowledge-base implementation, service/support collateral development, and service marketing.

Paul holds a Bachelors degree in International Relations from California State University in Fullerton, and an MBA from National University, San Diego. His HDI certifications include Support Center Analyst, Support Center Team Lead, and Support Center Manager. He is also ITIL Foundations and Practitioner certified (specialization in Service Desk and Incident Management), and delivers ITIL training classes.

Donna Holt comes from a strong background of customer service, sales, administration and management in diverse industries such as international trading, telecommunications, credit analysis, and mortgage banking. She founded HelpDeskXlence to promote best practices in the technical help desk industry. Its scope has expanded to include customer service/telephone skills training, individual and support center certification training, and consulting and process infrastructure improvement. A turn-around specialist, she will help you take your help desk, call center, customer service department or information technology department through process improvement and training to become world-class.

Donna is a founding member of the HDI Individual Certification Standards Committee and she served for three years as the Western Region Director of the HDI Member Advisory Board. She has been an officer of the Orange County, CA, chapter of HDI for eight years and is currently serving as its president. She is also an HDI-Certified Auditor and has served on the HDI Support Center Certification Standard Review Committee. She has recently been certified to present ITIL courses and offers consulting services on this process improvement infrastructure.

Darrell Bond is one of the founding partners of RADAR Solutions Group Inc., a consulting and training provider focused on creating service excellence. Since 1998, RADAR has been helping customers build and enhance their service delivery operations through business and operations assessments, process improvement activities and skills development. As the largest Authorized Training Partner for HDI in Canada, RADAR has played a pivotal role in cultivating many new help desk managers, senior analysts and agents in both government and public sector organizations. RADAR’s customers include such notables as HP, Cognos, Corel, Department of Defense, Industry Canada, and Public Works.

With nearly 25 years experience in customer service delivery, Darrell has built a strong background in new business start-up, outsourcing transition management, service desk operations, quality improvement programs, and service delivery management - locally and globally - with a reputation for exceeding client expectations. In addition to conducting the HDI Support Center Certification audit, Darrell can apply his expertise to help you with your plans to achieve best in class service delivery based on world-class standards.

Tatsumi Yamashita has 20 years support industry experience and has developed several help desks and support centers throughout Japan. In 1999, he became the first Japanese HDI intern and has since studied advanced support principles in the U.S. that could be applied toward the advancement of Japanese support environments. He finally established HDI-Japan in 2001 based on the strong demand of Japanese support service industries and he is working as CEO of HDI-Japan with many HDI members and partners in Japan now.

Moustafa Kadous, is an internationally recognized IT and technical support industry expert who has more than 15 years of experience working with major multinational organizations throughout the Middle East and Africa. In 2006, Kadous launched HDI-Middle East and Africa, the first member-based organization serving the region, based upon his commanding presence as HDI’s Authorized Training Partner in the MEA marketplace. Under his thoughtful leadership, HDI-MEA is dedicated to increase the community’s knowledge about the IT service and support profession and propel the industry forward.

Mr. Kadous shares his passionate commitment to customer service and professional excellence in the hundreds of seminars and workshops he conducts each year for the most prominent government organizations and private sector companies in the region. He has earned multiple technology and support industry certifications, including, CSS, HDA, HDM and deliver all HDI certifications as a Master Trainer. Kadous is also certified in ITIL Foundations, and A+ certification from CompTIA.

Nico van den Hout, based in The Netherlands, has more than 30 years of experience in the user and vendor environment of the IT support world. He worked for the German pharmaceutical multinational Boehringer Ingelheim for eleven years, in The Netherlands as EDP Manager for eight years, and in Germany as an International Project Leader for three years. He joined the British ICL group in 1986, where he served in several management positions, before founding HDI Benelux in 1993. He has been an HDI-Certified Auditor since 2002, and has served as a member of the HDI Support Center Certification Standard Review Committee.