First and foremost, it has been my great honor and privilege to serve as Chair of the ISACA Board of Directors. It has been my true pleasure to be surrounded by the sincere dedication of the staff, the board and ISACA members around the world.
Three years ago, the board set out on a mission to grow and expand the organization and to ensure that it stays relevant for its next 50 years. We decided upon an ambitious program: hire the right talent into the organization, invest in our infrastructure, execute a digital transformation, provide our learning experiences in expanded and innovative formats, explore new domains in adjacent spaces, bring younger members into the organization, modernize and grow our certification offerings, and create new frameworks and learning resources in emerging areas of technology.
I’ve managed organizations through a lot of turbulent events in my career, and this past year was challenging from a number of perspectives. In a normal year, the board would spend at least 20 hours with each other at each meeting working through the agenda. This year we could only meet virtually for about 10 hours due to the geographic dispersion of the board and the associated time differences. It forced us to be leaner and more focused in our conversations. Meanwhile, ISACA’s staff leadership, like many employers, had to make the shift to virtual from an everyday operating perspective as well as from a member engagement perspective. And from the member and volunteer perspective, you were all coping with lockdowns, family pressures, and uncertainties in employment, and yet stayed engaged, learning and devoting time to ISACA, which was beyond admirable.
Well, I am pleased to say that despite one of the absolute worst global events possible, the path we set ourselves on is starting to become more visible to the membership. Some of these developments the members can readily see. ISACA is launching into:
- A new membership focus to bring in the next generation of ISACA members with the ITCA stackable certificates; and
- New strategic initiatives such as working to help close the gap in skilled workers with workforce development in the form of both the Emerging Technology and ITCA certifications.
Some things you cannot see as readily but are critical to our evolution as an organization:
- An entirely new IT architecture and platform that gives us a more solid foundation on which to operate;
- A new customer management system that will enable us to provide a better experience; and a
- A new learning platform that will enable us to be more agile in our product development and deliver a more modern learning experience, among other benefits.
These investments are progressing and will enable ISACA to be a far more agile player, providing us with the ability to deliver on the promises made in the past and to fulfill future promises.
The one thing that was a great disappointment during my year as Chair was the inability to travel and meet more of our passionate membership. I had every global ISACA conference on my calendar and planned to travel to each to meet, talk and listen to as many members as possible. However, I will remain on the ISACA board even after my term as Chair concludes next week, and I look forward to getting on the road and meeting more of the membership in the future.
So, if I could sum up my year as Chair, 2020 was a bit like A Tale of Two Cities: It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. Despite the extra work and difficult working conditions, it turned out to be a tremendous year for ISACA, ending the year with record membership of over 157,000 and doubling the average growth rate of membership in Asia.
I hope that you will all enthusiastically support our incoming Board Chair, Greg Touhill, and I cannot wait to see what the next year brings for ISACA!