Meet Our Team

Magda du Preez, PhD, is owner and lead researcher of ITD Assessments. She is a psychologist and management consultant specializing in leadership and team selection and development, transition management, and performance culture building. She is also an adjunct professor of management at Long Island University, teaching executive MBA courses on strategy implementation and organizational development. She has provided consultation to Fortune 500 companies, startups, and not-for-profit organizations in the United States and abroad. Her clients include mid-size privately owned and large publicly owned companies in retail and wholesale trade, not-for-profit organizations, educational institutions, and government agencies. She is an affiliate of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology and the American Psychological Association, and she serves on the advisory board of the South Africa Chamber of Commerce in America. She holds a master’s degree in psychology from University of the Orange Free State, South Africa, and a PhD in Business at the Wits Business School, Johannesburg, South Africa, where her dissertation was The role of personality in the relationship between feeling bored and decision-making competence: A study of managers in the retail industry (Du Preez, M. M., 2016).

Charmaine Swanevelder is President of TTS-Talent Solutions for the US, Canada and Latin America. She is an experienced I/O psychologist with a strong commercial background. For the last decade she has worked with decision makers across a variety of industries, mainly with Fortune 500 organizations in the US. Her focus is the optimization of pre-and post-hire talent programs, delivering sound solutions and products custom-designed to fit an organization’s culture and budget, partnering with a number of best-in-breed providers of talent management tools and programs. She actively consults in the field of job analysis and competency design, objective assessment, assessment centers, succession planning and HiPo, executive and leader assessment, volume screening solutions, validation of assessment tools, personnel decisions, team development, best practice approaches to interviews, and insights to support talent management in an organization’s unique context. Charmaine is an active member of various professional associations, including SIOP, and has presented 12 papers at refereed academic/scientific conferences. She was a member of People Assessment in Industry, an interest group of SIOPSA, and was chairperson of the Assessment Center Study Group for four years. She is licensed and certified to work with a broad range of psychometric instruments published by a variety of test vendors and has presented certification training in many of these tools. She currently lives in Austin, Texas.

Kevin R. Nash, PhD is an industrial/organizational psychologist and management consultant specializing in organizational development, employee development, and human capital management. Kevin has held senior management positions in marketing and human resources in the pharmaceutical and medical equipment industries, and he is the president and founder of Aspen Organization Development Consulting. He has worked with clients in Europe, Africa, and the United States, including Hawker Sidley Engineering, Borden Dairies, El Paso Pipeline Company, Anglo American Corporation, SAS Hotels, and Eskom Power Generation. His consulting assignments have included coaching executives and management teams, designing and implementing management training and development programs, designing succession planning and performance management processes, and providing change management consulting for organizations engaged in significant organizational change. Kevin's research into cross-cultural coaching practices in over twenty countries found that the way employees accept coaching is significantly affected by their cultural background and level of education. He subsequently developed and led workshops for clients to raise awareness of these differences and to enhance cross-cultural employee coaching skills. Kevin holds an undergraduate degree in marketing from the Dublin Institute of Technology, a master’s degree in management from the University of Kent at Canterbury, and a PhD in industrial/organizational psychology from Capella University, Minnesota, where his dissertation was Differences in the responses of managers to 360-degree feedback in low, medium, and high power distance cultures (Nash, K., 2005). He is a member of the American Psychological Society, the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, the American Society for Training and Development, and the Academy of Management.

Kathy Bluestone has over 30 years of experience in consumer marketing at Fortune 500 companies, small businesses, and not-for-profit organizations, where she has been responsible for new customer acquisition and retention, data mining, financial forecasting, team and project management, and working with consultants to assess culture and implement change. She has been an instructor in the Pace English Language Institute in Pleasantville, NY, where she taught classes in business writing, presentation skills, workplace pragmatics, conversation skills, and grammar. Her private English tutoring assignments have included clients at IBM, Siemens, Bayer Healthcare, Swiss Re, Hitachi Metals, and Mercedes USA. Kathy holds a bachelor’s degree from the College of William and Mary in Virginia, an MBA from Duke University, and a master’s degree in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) from Teacher’s College at Columbia University. She is a member of the national and New York State TESOL organizations and the Council on Adult Basic Education.

Joan Heynemann is a managing partner of Competence Incorporated, a consultancy specializing in the assessment and development of organizations and human capital for growth. At the Centre for Local Government Training: Western Cape (South Africa), she played a pivotal role in the acceptance and implementation of the use of assessment and development center technology as part of human capital development within the local government environment. She was also involved in other training related aspects of the Training Board which focused specifically on the development of newly appointed councilors following the 1994 South African national election. Joan also managed the selection/assessment department of Old Mutual South Africa (a multi-billion-dollar international financial services company), where she played an integral part in transforming Old Mutual’s human resource practices. As an independent consultant, Joan specializes in project management, facilitation, culture change/change management, leadership development, assessment, organizational design, role design, and the design of associated human capital practices. Representative clients include Old Mutual South Africa; Old Mutual Namibia; First National Bank; Sanlam; Safcor Panalpina (Logistics); E+PC (Engineering); Graham & Rhona Beck Skills Centre; DG Murray Trust; Local Government Training Board, Western Cape; and various local authorities within the Western Cape Province. Joan holds a master’s degree in psychology from the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa.

Richard Syrek is former chief operating officer for a consumer products company supplying decorative products for the home. He is also founder of Mentor Management, LLC, an executive management consulting firm located in Cold Spring, NY. During his 30 years as an executive he played a senior role in corporate acquisitions and oversaw the development of world-class systems and superior corporate staff. Richard has expertise in senior management counseling, strategic planning, business development, financial analysis, operations, and union contract negotiation. He uses his expertise to analyze symptoms, quickly determine problems, and break them down into simple solutions. He also uses his skills as a facilitator to help management teams resolve issues, develop strategies for success, and build or revise business plans. In addition to his consulting business, Richard has served as dean of The Center for Personal and Professional Development and is currently an adjunct professor at Rockland Community College. He also serves as treasurer for the Alice Curtis Desmond and Hamilton Fish Library, Garrison, NY; as secretary for the Rockland Business Association, on the board of the Suffern Rotary Club. He has a BS in Industrial Engineering from the New Jersey Institute of Technology and an Executive MBA from Pace University.