Congratulations to IAS Employees

This year, IAS was pleased issue staff promotions to Sandi McCracken, Mohan Sabaratnam, George Anastasopoulos and Greg West. These promotions provide professional recognition for each of these dedicated individuals who have worked tirelessly to help ensure the continued success of IAS as a growing accreditation body.

Sandi McCracken has been promoted from Senior Manager, Fabricator Inspections and Metal Building Accreditation Programs to Director, Construction and Industrial Relations. In addition to her current responsibilities, she will lead IAS initiatives with critical steel and metal industry groups and work closely with the regulatory communities.

McCracken manages six accreditation programs for IAS. She has been directly involved with structural steel fabrication and erection for over 35 years predominately in Quality Assurance and Quality Control and has been instrumental in the development of the most recent IAS accreditation programs for steel construction. She has delivered training for Special Inspection Agencies approved by the Professional Institute of Engineers and New York Structural Steel Engineer Association several times in the state of New York. Similarly, Sandi has delivered Special Inspection Agency training to the Las Vegas Building Department and others. In addition, she has worked with membership organizations to assist with solutions to their challenges with accreditation programs that strengthen their perception and efficiency in supplying excellent service to their customers. McCracken also serves on several construction committees including the ILAC NDT Committee and Chairs the ICC LADB Inspection Committee.

Dr. George Anastasopoulos has been promoted from Director, Conformity Assessment to Vice President, Global Development & Compliance. In addition to his current responsibilities, he will lead IAS’ business development initiatives in laboratory services, inspection programs and global activities.

Dr. Anastasopoulos is a Mechanical Engineer with an MSc and a Ph.D. in Applied Mechanics from Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois. He is also a member of ISO/TC176 and ISO/CASCO technical committees that developed the new ISO 9001:2015 and new ISO/IEC 17025:2017.

Previously, Dr. Anastasopoulos has served as General Secretary of Industry of the Ministry of Development for the Hellenic Government, Chairman of the International Personnel Certification Association IPC and member of the Bonn-Germany based, Accreditation Panel of the United Nations Kyoto Protocol system UNFCCC/CDM.

Dr. Anastasopoulos was awarded the EOQ Presidential Georges Borel Award for international achievements being at the edge of the development, use and diffusion of quality at the international level through his professional activities and behaviors, personally contributing to the development of the European Quality movement through his accomplishments with a global impact in the field of quality.

Dr. Anastasopoulos has presented many papers in technical and financial conferences, magazines and newspapers, and is the author of many articles and books. He also presented many lectures as keynote speaker in topics such as Management Systems, Business Process Reengineering, Telecoms-FTTH-IT, Quality Assurance and Process Auditing. He participated in numerous consulting and research projects sponsored by government and industry in the USA, European Union and many other countries worldwide.

Mohan Sabaratnam has been promoted from Director, Quality and Accreditation to Vice President, Global Accreditations & Quality. In addition to his current responsibilities, Mohan will lead the IAS activity in all regulatory approval and evaluations with domestic and international organizations. He will also represent IAS in the Global conformity assessment groups.

Mohan Sabaratnam has served as the Director for Quality and Accreditation at IAS. He has been with IAS for over 6 years and at IAS, he was responsible for managing the accreditation body’s quality management system, assisting in maintaining global recognitions including overseeing the overall operations in the Product, Personnel and Management Systems accreditation programs. Sabaratnam has a BSc in Biology from the University of Texas at San Antonio and an MSc in Strategic Quality Management from the University of Portsmouth.

With more than 25 years of experience in accreditation, technical standards writing, auditing, training and involvement in key ILAC and IAF committees, he has an all-round knowledge of conformity assessment and he contributed tirelessly to IAS achieving recognitions in both domestic and global arenas.

His past experience includes working with other accreditation bodies such as the Singapore Accreditation Council (SAC, Singapore) and the National Association of Testing Authorities (NATA, Australia). In both these organizations, he was involved in leading and supporting the operations in Chemical Testing, Non-Destructive Testing, Medical Testing, Reference Material Producer accreditation programs while his other key notable involvements at these organizations were:

(a) Represented SAC in National Technical Committee 212, ISO/CASCO WG 19 (ISO/NP 17040), APLAC Training Committee, ASEAN Work Group 4 on accreditation and APEC Sub-Committee for Standards and Conformance, etc.;

(b) Represented NATA on the ILAC Secretariat as the ILAC Coordinator, leading the annual NATA project with the University of Western Sydney Laboratory Management program, assisting the Diagnostic Imaging approval scheme, participating in development of the Australian technical standards (CH-040) and AS 1580 series (CH-030) under Standards Australia, key role in establishing the APLAC MRA for Reference Material Producer accreditation, etc.

On the international front, Sabaratnam was the past Vice-Chair of the APLAC Sub-Committee for Reference Material Producer and the past QUALITY MANAGER for the Pacific Accreditation Cooperation (PAC). He is currently an international evaluator for both APLAC and PAC, member of the PAC MLA Management Committee, IAF MLA Management Committee and the Co-Convener of the IAF Task Force for Fraudulent Behavior. His recent contribution was to assist in the development of a key Multilateral Recognition Arrangement procedure for managing evaluations under the newly formed Asia Pacific Accreditation Cooperation (APAC).

Greg West has been named Director, Customer Success Group. In this position for IAS, he is responsible for business development, customer service, regulatory services, communication and marketing.

Prior to this position, West served as Marketing Manager for the International Accreditation Service (IAS) and International Code Council (ICC). West has a broad range of experience in advertising, communications, customer service, marketing, public relations and government relations. West has published articles and given presentations internationally about IAS accreditation services, marketing and public relations. His professional career has involved work in several industries including automotive, construction and model codes, financial, legal, television and video conferencing. West was responsible for marketing at the National University Teleconference Network, an international consortium of universities and businesses. He also produced television commercials for KTEN, a dual NBC/ABC-affiliated television station. He has served as the Vice President of Public Relations for the Orange County Chapter of the American Marketing Association. He has taught business and communication courses at the Indiana University/Perdue University Campus in Indianapolis and Oklahoma State University and was a certified instructor with the University of Phoenix. Greg has a Master’s Degree in Communications from Oklahoma State University. West grew up in Kenya, East Africa, and he has traveled globally for business and recreation.

Please join IAS in congratulating each of these individuals and wishing them continued success in their new positions.