Honours for IT professionals

Karen Price OBE and Donald Yeates each received an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Technology at a graduation ceremony yesterday. (Wednesday, September 1 2010)

Karen Price is the Chief Executive Officer of e-skills UK, the employer-led Sector Skills Council for Business and Information Technology.

Donald Yeates works as an Executive Coach and is a Visiting Executive Fellow at Henley Business School.

The honours were presented by the University’s School of Computing and Information Technology at Wolverhampton Grand Theatre.

Following a wide-ranging career encompassing education, business and a number of roles in IBM UK’s Corporate Affairs and Global Services divisions, Karen Price was responsible for the mergers which created e-skills UK. In 2009, under Karen’s leadership, e-skills UK was rated ‘outstanding’ in the process to re-license Sector Skills Councils.

Karen focuses e-skills UK on innovation in bringing together employers and educators to ensure the UK has the IT skills it needs to compete in the global economy. This includes, for example, work in schools to transform the attitudes of young people towards IT, the creation of new employer-led degree courses in response to the changing nature of IT employment in the UK, and the development of proposals for an industry-backed National Skills Academy for IT.

Karen has been awarded an OBE for her services to the IT industry.

Donald Yeates’ IT career began by programming in IBM Assembler. He was involved in the management of the UK National Plan for Systems Training and an IT training business, and went on to direct the leadership development of a global IT services company.

He also wrote text, radio and TV materials for the Open University, to broadcast on radio and TV, and to lead national initiatives to enable unemployed young people and adults to find work and develop computing and business careers. Additionally he was an external examiner, advisor and visiting lecturer for the Open University, City University, and the Universities of Westminster and East London.

Donald is an honours graduate in Economics and a Chartered Fellow of BCS. He was awarded an additional honorary fellowship in 1994 and given a lifetime achievement award by BCS in September 2009. He is the founding Chairman of the Information Systems Examinations Board.

Publications include writing and editing 10 books on systems analysis and design, project management and business analysis.

ENDS

Note: Official graduation pictures of both honorary degree recipients are available on request. For more information please contact Vickie Warren in the Media Relations Office on 01902 322736 or email v.warren@wlv.ac.uk