Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe^®) Transformations

Kathy Marshak is a Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) Fellow and Agile Transformation Coach and instructor with ICON. For more than 20 years, she has helped clients improve how they deliver value to customers and stakeholders through the adoption and sustainment of lean and agile values, principles, and practices. She works with C-suites, leaders of teams of teams, and team members to guide the cultural changes required to make a new way of working stick. Kathy became a certified SAFe Fellow in 2019, an immense achievement. She became a SAFe Program Consultant (SPC) in 2012 and achieved the SPC Trainer (SPCT) certification in 2014. 

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Kathy has leveraged her instructional design skills to create an engaging, interactive, and collaborative learning approach for online classes. Participants in her SAFe classes are happily surprised at the depth of learning, engagement, and fun they have. Prior to that, Kathy’s accomplishments include helping several organizations adopt SAFe and establish internal coaching programs and working with Dean Leffingwell, the creator of SAFe, to help a 3000-person program envision their SAFe transformation.

Kathy is grateful to her clients for their willingness to embrace change, run experiments, and collaborate to resolve challenges. 

With over 26 years of professional experience, Charlene has been a leader in transforming organizations, leveraging Lean-Agile practices across multiple functions within an enterprise. Charlene has experience working with enterprise Agile initiatives with publicly-traded corporations, large and small, as well as the Department of Defense for over 14 years. She is passionate about Agile and enjoys enabling enterprises on their journey towards organizational agility. A SAFe Fellow, SAFe Program Consultant Trainer (SPCT) and SAFe Contributor, Charlene has been part of several proven large scale Agile Transformations providing portfolio, program, team and leadership coaching and training, and frequently speaks at conferences including the SAFe Summits. When she is not working, Charlene can be found at the beach, listening to music, spending time with family and friends, sightseeing, and knocking items off of her bucket list.

Matt has been helping people build better business solutions for over twenty years. He has consulted or worked full-time for travel, retail, financial, medical, consumer products and technology companies (many of which were Fortune 100 companies) giving him a wide variety of experience and knowledge. Matt was introduced to agile methods in 2000 through Extreme Programming and has embraced Lean and Agile practices since that time. Matt implemented his first SAFe Lean-Agile transformation in 2012 after being introduced to SAFe by a colleague and has been helping large companies with their SAFe Lean-Agile transformations since that time. Matt was certified as a SAFe Program Consultant (SPC) in early 2014 and as a SAFe Program Consultant Trainer (SPCT) in January of 2017.

Matt has coached people on every level inside and outside of IT - executives, managers, developers, testers, operations personnel, infrastructure personnel, product managers, product owners, business owners, support specialists, etc. He has coached and worked with offshore groups all over the world and has extensive experience managing highly distributed teams. Matt has helped companies apply Lean-Agile principles and practices in finance, HR, recruiting, consumer product development, marketing, sales, business operations, and at the executive level as well as other business areas outside of IT.

Besides helping many companies as an outside consultant, Matt has also held key positions in different companies where he was instrumental in their transformation and adoption of Lean-Agile principles. He has been a Vice President of Technology and Lean Portfolio Management at a multi-billion-dollar travel company, a Vice President of Globalization and CFO at a software services company, a Director of Business Analysis and Quality Assurance at a health care analytics company and a Director of Quality Assurance and Internationalization at a voice of the customer company.

Duane Bushman is a Consultant, Trainer and Agile Transformation Coach with a genuine passion for helping organizations to understand and realize the business value of Lean and Agile principles. His pragmatic approach to applying principles and proven practices to develop a culture of continuous improvement has been cultivated from 10+ years of practicing and coaching Agile in IT and product development environments. Duane's personal journey in life-long learning includes being certified as a SAFe Program Consultant (SPC) in 2014 and an SPC Trainer (SPCT) in 2016. Duane brings an engaging, energetic and highly collaborative presence to both the classroom and the most challenging real world scenarios. Guiding teams large and small, he has consistently helped leaders understand what it is they need to do to unlock the potential of their people and become truly Agile.

Doug is an energetic and relentless Agile Transformation Coach with a passion for helping organizations navigate their journey to agility. He has over 20 years of multidisciplinary consulting services experiences with the last decade aimed at driving the adoption of Agile values, principles and practices to help people go beyond DOING Agile to BEING Agile. Doug's coaching approach involves applying compassion, humor, flexibility and creativity to navigate some of the most difficult transformation situations and motivate people into doing amazing things. He has been a SAFe SPC since 2015 and became an SPCT Candidate in November 2020. He has trained and coached teams, Scrum Masters, Product Owners, Product Management, Engineering Management and Executives at several large and international Scaled Agile Transformations. Doug draws his energy from a very active and adventurous family, including his wife Kerri and their three children Mackenzie, Miranda, and Mason.