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Paul Palmes

Alka Jarvis is the first and only individual appointed as the Distinguished Quality Engineer at Cisco Systems, where she has been for the past 17 years. Ms. Jarvis has 30 years of experience in software engineering, 19 of which have been in Total Quality Management. Her background consists of management of large scale systems development projects, quality control, quality assurance, specification reviews, management of testing processes for large scale companies and teaching. She has been a frequent invited speaker on quality assurance issues at international as well as domestic events and has worked in the software quality field in a variety of capacities for Bank of America, SBC, Pacific Gas & Electricity, Apple Computers Inc., Charles Schwab, Borland, Phoenix Technology, Informix, IBM, Hewlett Packard, Verizon Wireless and Intuit. She is an adjunct professor at Santa Clara University in the MBA program for Computer Science, and author of 5 books. Alka is also an instructor for the software quality courses at U.C. Santa Cruz–ext. and U.C. Berkeley. She won Silicon Valley’s “Corporate Woman Advocate of The Year” award for her accomplishments in the software quality field and her effectiveness in improving the environment for women in the workforce. American Society of Quality in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, recognized Alka by publishing her accomplishments in their “Who is who is Quality” article.

In her role as the Chair for the past 6 years representing United States to the Technical Committee 176 for the International Standards Organization (ISO), Alka has been instrumental in the development of ISO 2000, 2004 and 2008 versions of ISO 9001 and 9004 Standards and is currently working in the drafting group of the next revision of 9001, 2015 version.  She is an ISO Lead Auditor, certified by Registration Accreditation Board (RAB) of United States. Ms. Jarvis has served as the President of the Bay Area Quality Assurance Association (BAQAA), and has been an Applied Total Quality Advisory Board Member for University of California-Berkeley-Extension, an Advisory Board Member to the Certificate Program in Continuous Improvement & Quality Management - U.C. Santa Cruz Extension, Board Member for Quality Assurance Institute and Vice President of Indian Business and Professional Women. Alka resides in Palo Alto, California.

 

Paul Palmes is principal consultant with Business Systems Architects, Inc., Fargo, North Dakota and Prescott, WI. Working as a specialist in quality management and world-class quality systems over the past 27 years, he has enabled many organizations to attain ISO 9001 registration and many others to improve profitability and culture. He is a senior member of the American Society for Quality, a Certified Quality Manager and BSI Certified Lead Auditor. He is an active Podcaster with world-wide listeners through his “Quality 101” program series at http://www.pdcauditing.com. His many publications include two books, “Process Driven Comprehensive Auditing,” and “The Magic of Self Directed Work Teams,” published by ASQ Quality Press, and articles written for ASQ’s Quality Progress magazine and The Auditor Newsletter, published by Paton Press. He is currently Head of Delegation for SC 1 within the US TAG and international convener of SC 1, working group 1, responsible for the revision of ISO 9000. He maintains membership within the Steering Committee of the Open Compliance and Ethics Group (OCEG), developing fully integrated ethics and compliance guidelines for US public corporations. Currently a member of the US TAG to ISO TC 176, he held positions as Vice Chair and Membership Chair from 1997 to 2010 and represented the United States as lead delegate and working group secretary in the development of international guidance standard, ISO 10014–“Quality Management Systems: Realizing Financial and Economic Value.” During this period, he also served as US TAG representative and International TC 176 Liaison to the IAF and co Chair of the IAF’s ISO 9000 Advisory Group, a member of the Auditing Practices Group (APG), and the Quality Council of the ANSI/ASQ National Accreditation Board (ANAB).