About Us

The iParadigms team is a group of dedicated professionals that includes award-winning teachers, graphic designers, computer scientists, and business professionals working together to stop the spread of internet plagiarism and promote new technologies in education. Our offices are located in the San Francisco Bay area.

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History

iParadigms, the company behind Turnitin, got its start in 1996, when a group of researchers at UC Berkeley created a series of computer programs to monitor the recycling of research papers in their large undergraduate classes.
Encouraged by a high level of interest from their peers, the researchers teamed with a group of teachers, mathematicians, and computer scientists to form Plagiarism.org, the world's first internet-based plagiarism detection service.
By late 1998, Plagiarism.org had become the center of international media attention. The small organization was featured in several major media venues, including Good Morning America, World News Tonight, and the New York Times. The site continued to grow and evolve, and is now recognized around the world as Turnitin and iThenticate, the internet's most widely used and trusted resources for preventing the spread of internet plagiarism.

Executive Bios

Chris Caren

President and CEO

Chris Caren

Chris Caren joined iParadigms in 2009 as President and Chief Executive Officer. Although his career has focused on software businesses, he comes from a family of scientists and educators -- a background which helped draw him to iParadigms. Chris previously worked for Microsoft Corporation as General Manager of Microsoft Business Solutions and Office Business Applications. His previous experience includes vice president of products and marketing at Business Objects (now part of SAP), product marketing at Manugistics Group Inc., head of sales and marketing at an Oracle financial applications company, and a leadership position at Accenture. He holds an MBA with distinction from Kellogg Business School and a bachelor of science in engineering from Stanford University.


John M. Barrie, Ph.D.

Founder & VP Product Management

John M. Barrie

Dr. John Barrie is co-founder and Executive Chairman of iParadigms. In 1996 iParadigms set out to create a new model for the protection of written work on the Internet. Dr. Barrie is the architect of the technology behind Turnitin®, the leading plagiarism prevention service used by millions of students and faculty in more than 100 countries (including every university in the U.K.), and iThenticate®, a commercial version of Turnitin designed for publishers, corporations, and non-profit entities.

Dr. Barrie is at the forefront of using technology to drive change in students' attitudes toward plagiarism and influence greater academic integrity in writing through web-based services that support instructor feedback, peer review, grading options and other best practices in teaching and learning.

As a leading expert in his field, Dr. Barrie has been featured on CNN, ABC (Good Morning America with Diane Sawyer and World News Tonight with Peter Jennings), CBS (48 Hours with Dan Rather/60 Minutes with Morley Safer), BBC, the New York Times and USA Today.

Dr. Barrie completed his undergraduate studies in Rhetoric and Neurobiology and a Ph.D in Biophysics, both at the University of California, Berkeley.


Sally Elliott

Chief Operating Officer

Sally Elliot

Sally Elliott is an academic publishing veteran and information technology executive with long time experience in building higher education and lifelong learning business ventures. Prior to joining iParadigms, Ms. Elliott was the President of True Outcomes (a Cengage Learning company) from 2005 to 2007 and CEO of Aplia Inc., a content delivery and services company focused on providing economic content to the higher education community from 2001 to 2005. Ms. Elliott served as the VP of Product Development at Pensare, Inc., a start up company focused on web-based tools for corporate executive and management education and training from 1998 to 2001, responsible for all areas of product concept and development. From 1976 to 1997, Ms. Elliott was a leader in the academic publishing community notably: Senior Editor at MacMillan Publishing (1981-1983) and President at Benjamin/Cummings Publishing (1989-1996) and President, Consumer Publishing Group at Addison Wesley Longman (1997). Ms. Elliott also served as a Board Director for Addison Wesley Longman from 1994 to 1997.

Ms. Elliott manages the Turnitin Sales, Business Development and Marketing units of iParadigms.


Melissa Lipscomb

Chief Financial Officer

Melissa Lipscomb

Melissa Lipscomb, CFO & EVP, Business Affairs. Melissa Lipscomb is a co-founder of iParadigms and was its Chief Operating Officer until 2007. Ms. Lipscomb managed the Company's UK operations from 2002 to 2004. Ms. Lipscomb has dual degrees in English and Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley. Ms. Lipscomb worked in the nonprofit and not-for-profit sectors, most notably as the sole operations and finance staff member for the current Attorney General (and former Mayor of Oakland and 2-time Governor of CA), Jerry Brown, then, the head of an Oakland-based non-profit organization, We The People, and was responsible for organizational development, large-scale volunteer coordination and supervision, and fund contribution management. Prior to the inception of iParadigms, she held a position within UC Berkeley's Finance administration in procurements, disbursements and grant accounting.

Ms. Lipscomb is responsible for the Company's Accounting, Administration, Human Resources and Business Affairs units. She is also the Company's LLC Secretary, responsible for corporate affairs and investor relations.


Christian Storm, Ph.D.

Chief Technology Officer

Christian Storm

Dr. Christian Storm is one of the founding members of iParadigms and has served as iParadigms Chief Technology Officer (CTO) since the inception of the company in 1994. Dr. Storm came to iParadigms as a graduate student in Biophysics at the University of California, Berkeley. He has focused on the creation of novel similarity searchalgorithms, architecting internet crawler technology, and search systems which span heterogeneous databases.

Dr. Storm received his doctorate in Biophysics from the University of California, Berkeley. His work at Berkeley began with analyzing the stability of biologically inspired pattern recognition systems, which utilize nonlinear dynamics as their information-processing medium. From this research he developed a nonlinear systems identification methodology that can track nonlinear switching events in near real time. He authored a paper ("Detection and Classification of Nonlinear Switching Events," Phys Rev E Vol. 66, 2002) on the application of this methodology to breaking hyperchaotic key shifting codes used in secure communications. Using this methodology he also demonstrated that epileptic seizures can be anticipated in advance of seizure onset by 15 or more minutes in a large fraction of seizures. Prior to his doctoral work at Berkeley he was a member of the weather-sensing group at MIT Lincoln Labs.


John Hartman

Vice President of Engineering

John Hartman

John Hartman joined iParadigms in November of 2008 with over 20 years of software engineering and product development leadership in both large and small companies. Most recently, John held overall responsibility for development of the patented audio system for the revolutionary Livescribe Pulse SmartPen, a consumer product that records and plays audio tied to hand-written paper notes.

Prior to LiveScribe, John served as CTO and Vice President of Engineering for CrossTest, Inc, a software testing vendor serving the device software market.

As Senior Director of Platforms Engineering at Wind River Systems, John led the Engineering team responsible for developing many of the company's core product offerings. John started his career in software and hardware engineering at Varian, developing chromatography systems.

He holds a degree from University of California, Berkeley, in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Today, John leads the Product Development and Site Operations teams at iParadigms.


Liz Rockhold

Vice President, Sales and Customer Care

Liz Rockhold

Joining iParadigms, LLC in September of 2008, Liz brings over 20 years of experience in building and managing sales and marketing teams and driving growth in start up, turnaround, and established company environments. Her background includes extensive experience in the education, and technology industries where she held a variety of executive positions in sales, marketing, and management. Liz was Director of Marketing at ABC-CLIO, Director of Technology Sales and Marketing at Cengage Learning, Manager of Technology Sales at Addison Wesley/Benjamin Cummings, and National Sales Manager for Education at Macmillan Computer Publishing. Prior experience also includes positions in sales and management at Borland and Prentice Hall.

Liz manages the Sales and Customer Care teams at iParadigms.


Katie Povejsil

Vice President of Marketing

Katie Povejsil

Katie Povejsil joined iParadigms, LLC in March 2008 as Chief Marketing Officer.

Katie has more than 20 years experience in business development and strategic marketing for technology companies in the consumer, education an enterprise markets. Prior to joining iParadigms, she was president of Catalyst Consultants where she developed marketing strategies and programs for some of the most recognized companies in media and technology, including Adobe, Cisco, Gateway, Handspring (now Palm), Hewlett-Packard, Macromedia, Panasonic and PBS.

Before launching her consulting business in 1994, Katie was director of business development at Claris, where she founded and managed a new business unit to acquire publish, distribute and market software products from independent developers under a new label for Claris. As vice president of New Media Publishing at Authorware (which became Macromedia, then acquired by Adobe), she was responsible for the development of a new content-based business model and the developer relations program. Previously at Apple Computer, she served as manager of Software Solutions Marketing where she crafted curriculum solutions campaigns, lead the launch of the revolutionary multimedia authoring tool HyperCard, and started a campus solutions newsletter called Syllabus (that became Campus Technology magazine).

Katie graduated with a bachelor's degree in engineering from Cornell University and received a master's degree in engineering from Stanford University.


Max-Emmanuel Briand

Chief Information Officer

Max-Emmanuel Briand

Max-Emmanuel Briand is one of the founding members of iParadigms and has been the company's Chief Information Officer (CIO) since its inception. Mr. Briand created and built the company's network topology and operating system configuration. He currently manages the company's Information Technology Department and its co-location facility staff. Mr. Briand is also the company's media spokesperson for the French and French-speaking nations' press, having been interviewed extensively by publications such as France's Figaro and Le Monde, and Quebec, Canada's public radio programs.

Mr. Briand received a degree in Mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley. He has worked in a variety of industries, from the travel-writing business to systems administration management at Silicon Valley startups. He brings solid IT experience to the team's technology management team, and has been instrumental in brokering the company's partnerships with key IT companies throughout the Bay Area.


Contact Us


United States

Sales

A sales representative can be reached by either phone or e-mail.
Higher Education: (866) 816-5046 x240
Secondary Education: (866) 816-5046 x239
sales@turnitin.com

Technical Support

If you are having difficulty using our site or any of our services, technical support is available. The best way to ensure a timely response is to e-mail us using our online helpdesk system.

Media and Press Inquiries

press@turnitin.com
510-764-7600 x287

Mailing Address

iParadigms, LLC
1111 Broadway
3rd Floor
Oakland, California 94607

UK and Europe

nLearning
6-8 Charlotte Square
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE1 4XF
UNITED KINGDOM
+44 (0) 845 643 0105
sales@nlearning.co.uk