After a long career in it education and certification, Joep van Nieuwstadt passed away last Saturday at the age of 68. He contributed greatly to the professionalization of the it sector and was known for his willpower, zest for life, energy and broad knowledge of the field.
He gained great recognition as general manager of the Exin, the organization that provided the AMBI certification and later the I-tracks. With these shorter, focused courses, he played on market demand for a wider choice of different modules. He was convinced that exam candidates need short, flexible learning paths. 'Our exam candidates are not young students who have time for a long education. They usually already work in ict and want to get higher in a quick, easy way with Exin certificates,' he said in an interview with Computable.
Furthermore, he changed this exam institute for ict workers from a typical Dutch organization to a global player for it certification. He served Exin from 1997 to 2010. When he left, Exin had grown into an international leader with eight regional offices, 120 employees and more than $20 million in revenue.
He then started Nieuwstadt Consultancy. In that role, he contributed to several organizations in Europe and the U.S., including PeopleCert, Quint Wellington Redwood, IACCM, IASSC and the German TüV Akademie. In 2020, he also became director of European Affairs at the International Association for Six Sigma Certification (IASSC). As an expert in it education and certification, he was deeply involved in several standards including ECDL/ICDL, ITIL, ISO 20000, ISPL, COBIT, Prince2, IPMA, ASL and BISL, MOF, Six Sigma, Tmap and I-Tracks.
Furthermore, he helped internationalize the Netherlands Informatics Register (NIR) foundation. His task was to align the definition of the term "register informatician" with the European e-Competence Framework (e-CF). Van Nieuwstadt had started his career as an education manager at NOVI (IT training). He also provided it training for the former EIT, an institute affiliated with Tilburg University.
